the waterbender’s spirits
Zuko runs out the cell when he gets the injured waterbender on his back. He closes the door silently, the waterbender’s arms and legs wrapped around him tightly.
His hand stays on the door handle, and he looks at the metal door. Everything in the Pohuai Stronghold is metal. Could he melt the door and doorway together with his firebending? Should he try to do that?
He thinks better of it—he doesn’t have too much time to try doing that—and turns around. Zuko adjusts the waterbender on his back, and runs, thinking it’s better to try melting metal when he isn’t carrying a burned girl on his back.
He isn’t one for good choices, but he figures that that’s a good choice.
“Hey! What are you doing?” A guard yells from behind him. Zuko just runs faster. Faintly, he hears the guard yell for backup and there’s the sound footsteps running through the hall, which makes his stomach churn with unease. Zuko makes it through another doorway, slamming the door shut and locking it. Extremely doubtful that it’ll work—that his fire will melt metal—he firebends at the door, the door’s lock, and the doorway, and to his surprise, the metal actually does melt.
When he thinks it’s all melted together enough, he turns around, processing what he just did. If Zuko wasn’t running for the waterbender’s life and his own, he would definitely be celebrating the fact that he can melt metal.
He decides to celebrate it later (and obviously not tell Uncle Iroh how exactly he discovered his ability to melt metal. Zuko doesn’t want to hear a lecture full of weird metaphors that don’t make sense).
Zuko starts running again, praying to the Spirits loudly in his mind. Miraculously, he makes it out of the prison, but Zuko hears a handful of guards running after him, and someone—not Zhao, obviously—is making some commands rather loudly.
But when the man making commands suddenly yells out that Blue Spirit is an enemy to the Fire Nation, Zuko can’t help but freeze in place.
He’s an enemy to his homeland.
But maybe if he turned himself and the waterbender in, then...maybe—
‘No, Zuko. The Blue Spirit is the enemy to the Fire Nation. No one knows that you’re the Blue Spirit,’ the voice that isn’t Ursa insists. The voice...it almost sounds like—like Ozai. ‘As long as no one knows that you’re the Blue Spirit, you can still regain your honor. You can still go home and be someone who your dad will be proud of.’
Zuko bites his bottom lip and sighs in frustration. He can’t think about this right now; he doesn’t have the time!
Zuko sprints when the guards are a safe distance away from him and the waterbender, and he sticks to the walls’ shadows as much as he can, keeping his footsteps silent like he was taught. Zuko crouches down when he hears guards close by and throws a sizable rock to his left as hard as he can.
It’s more difficult for him to do everything with someone’s dead weight on him, but he manages it, and stands up, listening. He really hopes that it works—that the guards get distracted by the rock.
A beat.
“Over there! I think I heard something!” A guard cries out and the handful of guards run to where he threw the rock.
Zuko’s shoulders slightly relax. He honestly can’t believe that worked. His ideas never work out that well for him.
He starts running again, looking for any way he can escape. All of the gates are already closed, and the alarm is still blaring. Feeling like he doesn’t have many options, Zuko runs towards the sewer drain from before when he spots it.
As carefully as he can, he lays the waterbender down on the ground on her back. Zuko grabs a hold of her from under her armpits, making sure not to touch her burn with his slightly shaking hands. He exhales slowly and hooks his legs through the sewer drain bars, then moves the girl through the bars slowly, slowly. Zuko even moves half of his body between the bars to make sure she lands safely in the sewer.
Zuko finally gets the waterbender in the sewer, on her back yet again. He lets out a sigh of relief. He tells himself that he’s gonna make it.
Then the firebender yelps loudly in surprise and in pain. An arrow got shot into his back, into his shoulder blade—then another arrow got shot into his right calf. The pain is what makes him let go of the sewer drain’s bars.
Zuko falls through the sewer drain, landing next to the unconscious waterbender on his elbows and knees. He gets up, and another arrow flies through the drain. Zuko burns it before it can reach the waterbender.
He curses quietly under his breath, pulling the waterbender and himself away from the sewer drain above them.
He did it just in time, too—if he had waited a few seconds more, then all the countless arrows that went through the drain would be in the both of them.
Zuko takes a second to reach over and grab the arrow in his calf, and burns it until its ashes are in his hand. He flicks his wrist, and the ashes land in the sewer water. The tip of the arrow stays in his calf; he can’t take that part out yet. Zuko moves his Blue Spirit mask so it stays on the back of his neck securely.
Zuko grunts, lifts the waterbender into his arms, and starts running. He’ll put the waterbender in clean water eventually; he’ll stop running when he’s sure they’re safe.
He’ll do everything when he has the time.
—
Zuko doesn’t keep track of the time, but he runs for a really long time in the sewers. He keeps going straight, ignoring the other paths in the sewers that he sees every once and a while. Zuko doesn’t necessarily pay attention when he stops hearing the guards’ footsteps from the ground above him.
He just focuses on running as far away as he can.
And he does just that. He runs until he sees the end of the sewer—a large, wide, circular opening with the dark, murky sewer water appearing like it’s pouring out of it.
Zuko frowns and looks at the exit warily (for all he knows, the guards from the Pohuai Stronghold could be waiting out there), but he doesn’t have the energy to turn around and find another way out of the sewers.
At least it looks like it’s still nighttime. Zuko hopes that that’s a good sign for him and the waterbender. He thinks it might be.
Zuko takes a deep breath as he gingerly holds the waterbender against him with his left arm, and reaches for the arrow in his back with his right arm. He burns the arrow in his back like he did with the one in his calf—he leaves the arrow tip inside of his body. Zuko moves the waterbender around and lifts her onto his back (his arms are exhausted from carrying her for so long).
Her arms and legs are clinging to him once more; she snores softly, her cheek resting on his good shoulder.
Zuko is kind of glad she’s still unconscious at the moment. The Spirits know that she was awake right now, she and Zuko would be arguing right about...something, that’s for certain. If the waterbender was awake right now...Zuko thinks that they would probably argue about the Avatar.
Zuko runs to the end of the sewer and pokes his head out, just to make sure there’s no one near by. The murky water is all in a large, man made pond. At least it’s not attached to a river or a stream? It probably used to be attached to a natural body of water—but right now it isn’t and he’s glad for that.
Mainly because the waterbender needs clean water for her burn.
(He once heard Uncle Iroh say that waterbenders have a natural healing ability, and maybe he has wishful thinking right now, but he just really hopes the waterbender can heal.)
Zuko carefully jumps down from the sewer, cringing at the noise the contaminated water makes when he lands in it. He quickly gets out of it, thankful that the water ended up being just ankle deep.
Zuko runs into the forest, adjusting and tightening his grip on the waterbender. He pauses when she snuggles into his good shoulder. Well...maybe snuggling isn’t the right word for what she just did to him. She kind of—just—rubbed her face against his shoulder and squeezed her arms around his neck for a few seconds. Then she let out a soft sigh.
Is that what people call snuggling? Zuko truly doesn’t know the answer to the question, if he’s gonna be honest with himself.
Nevertheless, he keeps running.
And when he finally reaches a river, Zuko swears that for a moment, he could cry in relief. He lays the waterbender down next to the river and he sits down next to her.
Zuko grabs the dagger his Uncle gave him years ago; he always keeps it on his person. Zuko moves his leg so his foot is on the ground. This way, he’ll be able to see his wound better.
He cuts off the fabric on his right leg up to his knee. The arrow wound on his right calf really made his pants wet and sticky with his blood. He frowns and discards the blood soaked part of his pants behind him. Zuko cuts off the left side of his pants up to his knee, and cuts that in half. He ties the pieces of cloth together to make it as long as an actual bandage would be. He’ll use it for when he takes the arrow tip out of his calf.
Zuko shoves some of his shirt into his mouth until all he can taste is fabric. He bites down on it hard when he sticks his thumb, index finger, and middle finger into his wound to get a good hold of the arrow tip. He shakes in pain and pulls the arrow tip out of his calf. He throws it away quickly, wraps the makeshift cloth bandage around his oozing wound as tightly as he can make it, and ties it together with a secure knot.
Zuko looks at the waterbender, then, and she stirs. His breath hitches and he waits for a few seconds.
But she doesn’t wake up.
He can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.
Zuko looks at her burn and feels his heart clench. He should’ve gotten there sooner. Maybe then she wouldn’t have been burned.
A terrifying thought—what if she’s dying from the burn?—appears in his mind, even though he can see her chest rising and falling without any trouble. Zuko scoots closer to her, while his body screams in pain and exhaustion, and presses two fingers against her wrist.
Her pulse is strong and steady against his fingers, and her skin isn’t cold at all—both really good signs.
She’ll live.
“Good,” Zuko mumbles under his breath, pulling his fingers away from her. He didn’t risk his life for her to just...die on him.
He looks at the burn again. Zuko can’t let it get infected. It doesn’t matter if he’s still bleeding, if he’s exhausted.
A burn like that, infected, can be really fatal.
It could kill her.
Zuko says a prayer to Agni quietly. He pauses a bit. Hesitantly, he says a prayer to Tui and La, despite being really unsure as to whether or not he got the waterbender’s Spirits right.
He thinks he did.
He just...if the waterbender can’t heal herself, what will he do? Zuko doesn’t know where he is, so he can’t take her to a healer (not to mention—he doesn’t have money to pay for a healer). He’s in his Blue Spirit disguise, too—while the Blue Spirit is an enemy to the Fire Nation—in Fire Nation territory.
Zuko would’ve wrapped his shirt around the waterbender’s burn, but he knows firsthand that the last thing you want to do with a burn like that is put fabric on it. (Especially since he feels as if all the clothes he’s wearing right now are filthy with his sweat and blood.)
If she can’t heal herself completely, though, he’ll make her a burn salve, a paste—he’ll make her something. That much he can do for her, if she isn’t able to heal herself. He feels like he knows more than enough about plants, herbs and making medicine, thanks to Ursa.
Zuko moves closer to the river, and eases himself into it. It’s not too cold and not too deep. It barely reaches his waist. The river flows, and pushes him, but not enough to knock him off his feet. Zuko delicately tugs the waterbender over to him with her limbs, and carries her bridal style in his arms yet again.
“Please, please work,” he whispers and dips her body into the river, only leaving her head above water.
Her burn starts glowing a bright, brilliant blue, and Zuko’s eyes widen in amazement. He stays still. After a few moments, the waterbender’s burn stops glowing that dazzling blue, and Zuko watches anxiously as the waterbender’s blue eyes slowly flutter open.
Then, Zuko freezes when her blue eyes meet his gold ones.
Oh, Spirits—she’s gonna kill him now, isn’t she?
—
Katara immediately went unconscious when Zhao burned her. She has no idea what happened after Zhao burned her.
The point she’s trying to make is—she has no idea how she ended up in a river and in Zuko’s arms.
Katara doesn’t know what shocks her more—Zuko being the one to save her from Zhao (she’s just making a wild guess here—why would Zuko want to save his enemy?), or Zuko deciding to take her to a river so she could heal herself (again—another wild guess, because why would Zuko want to heal his enemy?).
Before she can ask him anything, though, her burn throbs in pain, demanding her attention. Katara winces, and Zuko notices. Without pausing to think about it, he lays her back down on the ground to where she was before.
Zuko pulls himself out of the river and gets on his knees beside her.
“Give me your hands, waterbender,” Zuko clears his throat awkwardly. Zuko reaches his hands out to her and Katara purses her lips as she looks at his hands cautiously. She reaches for his hands, and he simply pulls her up into a sitting position.
Oh.
Okay.
Her burn really hurt when he pulled her up but she won’t tell him that. Katara looks at him for a few seconds, then says, “Katara,” to him. Zuko furrows his eyebrows at her questioningly.
She sighs quietly, fiddling with her fingers. “My name is Katara.”
“...Oh. Okay. Um, my name is—“
“—Zuko. Yes, I know.”
A beat.
Another beat.
Silence.
Katara cranes her neck and stares up at the night sky. At least she was right earlier about the moon not being full. With her right hand, she shakily bends all the water out of her clothes and her hair, and puts it back into the river. She does her best to not focus on how the burn keeps throbbing, and throbbing, and throbbing.
“I’ll be back,” Zuko informs her, stands up, and limps away into the forest before Katara can respond. She glances at the forest, expecting Zuko to be back any second.
Instead, she ends up waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
And...waiting.
She groans. Katara knows she should be angry or annoyed with Zuko right now. She knows that should be demanding answers from Zuko, but she’s just so tired. Not to mention, she’s in a lot of pain. Katara bites her lip, praying to Tui and La (and to other spirits, too, of course) that Sokka, Aang, Appa, and Momo are all safe and sound.
Katara’s head snaps up when she hears the sound of footsteps close by. She frowns, nervous, as she stares at the forest. She can’t see past the first row of trees.
“Zuko?” She calls out, her trembling hands clenching themselves into fists. “Is that you?”
Zuko walks out of the forest, shirtless, a bundle of sticks under his right arm, and he seems to be using his shirt to carry something in his left hand. The shirt’s sleeves appear to be tied up to keep whatever he’s carrying inside of the shirt.
He motions for her to come closer, and Zuko sits down. He places the half of the sticks down in front of him, and sets the rest of the sticks beside him.
“Um—here, Katara,” he jerkily thrusts a decently sized, metal canteen full of water into her right hand.
Katara looks at the canteen in surprise. Wait, when did Zuko get this? Did he have this the whole time? How did she not notice that Zuko had this? Why is he being so nice to her right now? She focuses on the water in the canteen, and she can feel the water’s purity—it’s completely clean and safe for her to drink.
Huh.
“Thank you, Zuko,” she whispers, twists the canteen open, and drinks the water greedily. Katara hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she emptied Zuko’s canteen of its water. She moves to hand him back the canteen, but Zuko shakes his head.
“Keep it,” he clears his throat. “You need more than I do. So, just—just—keep it, Katara.”
“Oh...okay. Uh—thanks, Zuko.” Katara is so confused. At least Zuko also looks confused with himself, so that makes her feel less weird about this situation.
Okay, well—no.
That’s a lie.
She still feels really weird about this situation.
Zuko looks at the bundle of sticks and then looks at her. “Close your eyes, Katara,” he tells her awkwardly, reaching out and pushing the bundle of sticks farther away from her body.
Katara swallows and nods stiffly, kind of feeling embarrassed that she knows why he’s telling her to close her eyes. He’s about to firebend, and he doesn’t want her to see. Zuko knows she’ll get uncomfortable and nervous when he firebends.
Zuko understands how she feels.
“Okay. You can open your eyes now,” Zuko says, and she does.
Katara looks at the orange fire as it crackles, and she hesitates. She can hardly feel its warmth, and well—she’s cold. She scoots closer to the fire, and reaches her hands out. Her hands shake and she tries her best to stop them from shaking so much. She’s just cold. Right?
That’s why her hands are shaking—because she’s cold. Her hands aren’t shaking because of the fire. Because if her hands are shaking because of the fire, and not because of how cold she feels, then that means she’s afraid of the fire.
And she can’t be afraid of the fire. She can’t be afraid at all.
And she can’t deal with how she’s feeling right now because she really doesn’t want to get overwhelmed in front of her enemy.
Katara just places her right hand on her knee, and stares at the fire. Her mind tells her that Zuko will use the fire and hurt her like Zhao did. But when Katara looks at Zuko with her own eyes, he just looks exhausted. He has a makeshift mortar and pestle in his hands, and he looks pretty focused.
“What are you making?” Katara asks him and Zuko jumps in surprise. He probably wasn’t expecting her to talk to him. And she didn’t plan on it either, but she wants a distraction from her thoughts, and well—Zuko is a pretty good distraction.
He looks at her, then answers: “A burn salve.”
Katara frowns at him, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Why is he doing that? Didn’t he see her heal herself in the river? “But I’m a healer. You saw me heal myself, Zuko.”
A beat. “Yeah, I know.” He gets back to making the burn salve, breaking the eye contact he made with her. “But it hurts right now, doesn’t it? And you’re not healing it right now, even though you’re right next to a river, and you could be healing it right now.”
“I can do it,” Katara huffs. What, does he think her healing is just a one time deal type of thing? Who does he think he is? Honestly.
“Great. Then do it,” Zuko stares at her, lowering the clumsily made mortar and pestle onto his lap. “Heal yourself right now, Katara.”
“Fine, I will,” Katara gives him an annoyed look, “but not because you told me to, but because it’s hurting a lot right now.”
Using her right arm, obviously, she reaches for the river’s cool water with an open palm, and Katara bends the water onto her hand like a glove. She almost smiles, pleased with how she’s doing so far. She knew she could do it.
Katara decides to glance over at Zuko, and Zuko just stares at her, his blank face giving her no hint whatsoever as to what he could possibly be thinking. Annoyance flares up inside of her.
‘Don’t focus on him,’ she tells herself in her mind, ‘just focus on healing yourself.’
As she inhales and exhales slowly, Katara calmly moves her water gloved hand to her burn—and right before the water can make physical contact with it, her right hand starts to shake, violently. She bites her lip harshly, and she lets go of her hold on the water. The water splashes onto her lap, and when it splashes on her lap, a few of the water droplets make contact with the fire. The fire hisses at the water.
Katara doesn’t look at Zuko, and bends the water out of her lap and back into the river. Her right hand clenches at her side out of Zuko’s eyesite. Much to her displeasure, her right hand is still shaking. She’s so—she feels so—
“Well, Zuko, I hope you’re happy,” she finds herself snapping at Zuko, anger and bitterness rising up inside of her. “No, really, I hope you’re really pleased with yourself, Zuko. I failed at healing myself right now. I bet that’s what you wanted—“
“Katara,” Zuko interrupts her quietly and scoots closer to her. “It’s okay. I finished making the burn salve.”
“Stop doing that, Zuko,” Katara hisses at him, frustrated. The bitterness and anger inside of her turns ugly, viscous. “Stop being so nice to me! You—you’re the Fire Lord’s son—spreading war, and violence, and hatred is in your blood—“
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the firebender says defensively in response. Zuko’s grip on the mortar and pestle tightens for just a few seconds, and Katara notices it right away.
Good, she thinks. She wants him to be angry at her, to fight back. That’s what enemies do, after all.
“I don’t?” Katara looks over at him in pure disbelief. She could fight him right now—she really could, even though she feels so drained of energy. Maybe it’s the pain from the burn that makes her so tired.
Spirits—could she fight a firebender so soon after getting burned by one?
“How dare you? You have no idea what this war has put me though. Me, personally.” Out of habit, she reaches for a necklace that isn’t even there. That just makes her more upset.
It takes her a second or so to keep speaking, but Zuko stays silent. “The Fire Nation took my mother away from me,” Katara’s voice breaks and she looks down at her hands, tears running down her cheeks.
The firebender’s grip on the mortar and pestle loosens. “I’m sorry,” Zuko looks over at her, his broad shoulders slumped over in what seems like resignation. “That’s something we have in common.”
Katara looks at him in shock, and wipes her tears off her cheeks. The bitterness and anger inside of her fades away as quickly as it appeared. Then, regret and guilt replace the bitterness and anger, and she finds herself wanting to apologize.
So she does.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you, Zuko. It’s just—“ her voice breaks again, and she feels so, so embarrassed of herself and how she just acted.
“I know, Katara. I know.”
—
Zuko wants to be angry at Katara. He feels like he should be. But his wounds throb and cry out for attention, and his whole body feels so worn out. He just can’t muster up the energy to be mad at her right now.
And besides—she’s not actually angry at him, he doesn’t think. On his ship, he’d yell at Uncle, but he had never actually been angry at the old General. On his ship, Zuko was just always angry at himself. His patience would be short and it would never take much to set him off. If Zuko wasn’t so tired right now, he’d be yelling at the waterbender.
‘No you wouldn’t,’ the voice that sounds like Ursa tells him gently. ‘You wouldn’t yell at her even if you weren’t tired. You’re better than that. You know you are, Zuko. Just be patient with her.’
Zuko sighs and adds more sticks to the fire. He lays down on his good shoulder (no, he didn’t tell her about any of his wounds). Katara had stared at him with caution while he applied the salve to her burn then she fell asleep when he was done.
He falls asleep as soon as he closes his eyes.
—
“Zuko, remember how the turtle-ducks acted with you after you threw that rock at them?” She had asked with a warm smile. Her son nodded and grabbed a piece of bread, looking very nervous.
“See how they are with you now? That’s because you were patient with them,” Ursa watched as her son reached out to a turtle-duckling, his palm open with the piece of bread in the middle of it. Zuko looked up at Ursa anxiously and she nodded at him. It was his first time trying to feed the turtle-ducks after the incident from before (when he threw a rock at them to show Ursa how Azula supposedly fed them, and the mother turtle-duck got protective of her babies).
“In the beginning, my love—it was hard for them to trust you after what you did to them. And you got impatient with them on the first day, yes, but you calmed down. You came back day after day; you gave the turtle-ducks time to warm up to you, to trust you.”
A turtle-duckling swam over to Zuko’s open palm, and put the piece of bread in its mouth. It quacked at Zuko quietly, and swam back to its family.
Zuko looked up at Ursa with a shocked yet pleased expression, a smile on his lips. He was too happy to even speak, really.
Ursa looked at him with fondness. “See, Zuko? You waited a long time for the turtle-ducks to trust you again. Wasn’t it worth it?” Ursa stroked his hair gently and Zuko nodded eagerly, reaching for more pieces of bread.
Ursa grabbed his wrist gently, stopping him from getting the pieces of bread. “But, Zuko, my love, sometimes,” she paused and he looked up at her. Zuko tilted his head, confused, but he waited for her to speak. Usually, when Ursa took the time to stop and think about what she was gonna say, it meant she was gonna say something important (but then again, Zuko supposed that could be applied to anyone while they’re engaged in a conversation).
“Sometimes, both with turtle-ducks and people, you can hurt them and wait for them to trust you again. But, look.” She placed several pieces of bread into Zuko’s hand. She nodded at him silently, motioning him to feed the turtle-ducks.
Zuko frowned and reached his hand out to the turtle-ducks. This time, only a handful of turtle-ducks swam up to his hand to eat the bread, but the rest of them just stayed behind.
“You can give both turtle-ducks and people all the time in the world to trust you again,” Ursa spoke softly. The turtle-ducks ate all the bread in Zuko’s hand and swam away. Zuko leaned against his mom’s side.
“But sometimes...it just won’t happen, Zuko. And all you can do is accept it and move on.”
A beat.
“Mom?”
“Yes, my love?”
“You’ll always be around, right?”
Ursa wrapped her arms around Zuko and squeezed him. “Of course,” she told him.
He timidly asked her to sing his favorite song for him (it was a song from ‘Love Amongst the Dragons’), and she smiled at him. Ursa agreed and Zuko cuddled into her eagerly as the sun set in the horizon.
She began to sing softly:
“When the pretty fire-poppies start to bloom,
I know love just has to be around the corner.
But, who am I to hope—to assume?
Of course, I know that I am not the one for her,
but maybe if I were to buy her a nice perfume…”
During the middle of the song, Zuko fell asleep in her arms, but Ursa kept singing.
—
Zuko wakes up when the sun rises (like always), and he sits up groggily. Zuko looks over at Katara, and yawns. He cranes his neck to look up at the sky.
“Okay, fine, Spirits,” Zuko mumbles with an eye roll. “If making me dream about that really nice time with my mom and the turtle-ducks is your—your weird Spirit way of making me be nice and patient with Katara, I’ll do it.”
He huffs in annoyance and looks at the sleeping waterbender. He figures that she might be cold, so he crawls over to his stick pile and tosses fresh sticks into the pile of burned ones; Zuko snaps his fingers and the fire turns back to life in response. Zuko goes back to his spot across from Katara, and gets into a mediating position. He exhales, focusing on relaxing his mind and body.
After all, if he’s gonna have to be patient and nice with Katara, he’ll need to mediate for a long time today.