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Katara loves fire.
She’s four, and she knows that fire can be dangerous, and she takes care not to touch it when her big brother isn’t around. But she can’t help being fascinated and enamored with it, because it reminds her of her favorite person in the whole wide world.
Sokka’s eyes glow like the flames that dance between his fingers, warm and safe and oh-so pretty. It fits him, she thinks, that he can make fire bend to his will, because he himself is like fire.
He’s the best and she loves him.
That’s why it confuses her that other people don’t seem to realize that her big brother is the best and that fire is awesome, and his fire is the most awesome.
She hoped she’d eventually be able to make fire like him, but instead the water from her mug starts floating after her fingers. At first she pouts, because snow and ice and water are everywhere and boring, and it’s unfair that she doesn’t get to make pretty colorful fire and sparks like Sokka.
But then she thinks that it makes sense, her big brother protects her and teaches her all sorts of things, so of course he has the cool magic fire, because fire can be dangerous but also keep people safe. In contrast she’s always making trouble and has a bad temper, if she was able to make fire she’d probably have lots of accidents. Not like Sokka, who was always so careful.
(that one of her temper tantrums could bring down every single igloo in the village eludes her)
Even though she is a little disappointed she rushes out of their home and towards where she knows her brother is doing his fire exercises, eager to have her favorite person be the first to see her new magic tricks. She loves her brother’s bending, so surely he’ll love hers just as much, even if it’s only boring water.
“Sokka!” She calls as he comes into view, sitting under a lone, barren tree with a pretty flame in his hands. She’s so giddy and excited to show him her magic water that she stumbles in the loose powder snow. Sokka’s laughter carries over the flat expanse, carefree in a way it rarely is these days, and she sticks her tongue out at him. “Meanie!”
“Yeah, yeah, twerp,” he chuckles, but his eyes seem sad as she approaches him. “I’m the mean, evil brother and you’re the good one.”
Katara pauses. She hates the look in her brother’s oh-so pretty eyes, glowing like embers. It’s the same look he gets when one of the other children trip him up, or an adult recoils from him when they realize who he is.
Lately, the other villagers have started to give her suspicious looks too. She doesn’t get it, Sokka is the best person ever, why do the others not like him?
Hands at her hips, she pouts. “You’re not mean or evil,” she declares with all the conviction of a four year old. “You’re great!”
Sokka smiles, and it makes Katara proud to know she’s the cause of it. He ruffles her hair fondly. “So, what got you so excited you just had to come find me?”
It wasn’t really a question of finding him, really. He always came out here to practice his firebending, far away from the village where no one would bother him about it. Part of her suspects that they’re too young to know how to avoid attention.
She kicks at the snow at her feet, suddenly feeling unsure if she should share her discovery after all. What if she was wrong and Sokka didn’t like her magic water? But if anyone would understand… it would be her big brother with his pretty eyes and magic fire, right?
“I-,” she cuts herself off, blinks. “I think I’m like you,” she settles on, looking at those glowing blue eyes.
On her head Sokka’s hand stills, and his voice has an edge to it. “What?”
“N-not like like you, but sort of?” She makes a frustrated sound. “I think I can do magic too.”
“It’s not really magic, twerp,” he chuckles, but the worry etched onto his face is palpable. It’s the same face mom makes when someone is mean to Sokka where she can see it. “So, when you say like me, but not like me, what do you mean?”
Katara waves her arms around. “So, you do pretty stuff with fire, and make it warm and stuff, right?” He nods, lips twitching like he wants to laugh at her. “I think I can do that with water.” She pauses, amending. “Well, not make it warm, but do pretty stuff.”
Sokka’s hand twitches on her head, and something in his pretty eyes turns dark for just a moment, before he smiles, and it softens his face. “Really? You gotta show me, then!”
Later, after the village has celebrated the first waterbender born in half a century, a four years old Katara will realize what it was that had shadowed the light in her brother’s eyes, and she will hate herself for bending water rather than fire.
There are bruises on her brother’s arms, and as she goes to cool them with water on her hands, the liquid glows the same color as his eyes, and when she pulls away the bruises are gone.
Her brother praises and thanks her, hugging her close, but even at four Katara knows it won’t be the last time she will need to heal him.
It’s not.
There are cuts on her brother’s face, and she pulls the water to her hands and puts them to the wounds without hesitation.
Katara is no stranger to physical scars. Many of the men have them from hunts gone wrong, some women from kitchen accidents. Sokka and Bato got some from a great white sharktopus once.
Katara is no stranger to mental scars. No matter how many bruises she turns from purple to yellow to nothing, no matter how many cuts she closes, she can see their remnants in her brother’s eyes, in his rarer and rarer smiles, in the tension in his shoulders when she bends water.
Katara hates healing.
There comes a day she wishes she could close the wound in her heart left by her brother.
But water can only heal the body, not the spirit.
And so the wound festers.
“Where’s Sokka?”
Her mother sobs and pulls her into her arms but doesn’t answer.
Katara doesn’t need her to.
Some days it’s like Katara never had a brother.
No one mentions him. No one talks about the raid. No one says his name.
Until one day her father gathers the men on ships to go to war. He hugs her tightly, then grasps her mother’s face and presses their foreheads together.
“I’ll find the people who took Sokka from us and make them pay,” he promises with a dark voice.
And then he’s gone, like Sokka but not.
Because where the village pretends their chief only ever had a daughter, they still talk about her father. He’s still there, in their thoughts, in their midst.
It’s like Sokka has vanished into the Fog of Forgotten Souls, but instead of losing himself, he was lost to the world.
There comes a day that Katara sees a ghost.
The head soldier is getting back to his feet, fire burning around his fist as he snarls. It’s the first time Katara has seen firebending since her brother was taken and it still looks beautiful to her. Another soldier runs up to him and holds him back. He doesn’t wear a helmet and his skin is dark, and when he turns towards her his eyes are blue flames. Inside her chest her breath freezes.
The ghost of her brother opens his mouth, and his voice is the same yet not. “If you have the Avatar, hand him over. We’ll leave you alone then.”
It’s like a punch to the gut, this simulacrum of her brother on the enemy’s side, dressed in red and black and looking to squash the one hope the world has left. Behind her her mother cries his name, but his eyes don’t leave hers, a twitch going through him. “Do you have the Avatar, yes or no?”
Her mother throws herself into his arms, and his face goes pale and tense as she weeps into his shoulder. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
The head soldier moves to grab her mother by the back of her parka, but before he can the man who looks like her brother grabs her shoulders and pushes her back. He meets her eyes, hesitating only briefly. “Let me go.”
“Huh?”
Her brother’s ghost pushes her again, harder this time, and she lets him go. He takes another step back for good measure and crosses his arms behind his back. The head soldier steps forward again, putting himself between her mother and the simulacrum. “We asked you a question, answer it or we will be forced to search your village.” He raises a hand, a bright orange flame dancing in his palm. “I cannot promise that your village will come away unharmed if we do.”
“Are you fucking serious, Sokka?” Someone shouts and, oh, that is her voice, isn’t it? When had she decided that he was her brother and not an imposter? “You show up again after these ashmakers took you, working for them? What is wrong with you!”
“That’s a nice way of saying we ransomed you to the raiders, Katara,” he growls, and wow, he really is her brother, is he? That’s him, wearing the enemy’s colors, standing on the wrong side of this war. When did that happen? He steps closer to a tent and a flame dances in his palm, and-
That really is him. Katara would recognize her brother’s fire anywhere. “Now tell us what the source of that light beam was and we can all go our separate, merry ways again.”
Katara runs forward, hurt and confused and enraged, whipping molten snow at him only for him to sidestep her like an annoying bug. He swipes her feet from under her and pushes her to the ground with his heavy boot like she was nothing. Like she didn’t mean a thing to him at all. Her eyes burn. “Quit this bullshit, Katara. I don’t want to be here any more than you lot want me here.”
Then there’s wind, and Aang, and words she barely understands through her blood rushing in her ears. Her mother’s hands are on her arms and helping her up, and almost on their own accord her eyes find Sokka’s once again.
“What are you talking about, Sokka?” Their mother says, voice wavering with tears. “We didn’t ransom you, they took you.”
“If that lie makes you sleep better at night, mother dearest,” Sokka sneers, then focuses back on Aang, like they were not worth his time. “You can either come peacefully, brat, or we burn down the village, your choice.”
“Wait… you’re Katara’s brother?”
“Agni, give me patience,” Sokka mutters and grabs Aang, who seems too bewildered to resist. “Come with us already, I’m sick of this fucking snow.”
“But… you’re Water Tribe-, ow!”
Sokka’s shoulders are tense when he replies, and Tui and La, what had happened to her brother? “I’m Fire Nation, brat, and if you know what’s good for you and the savages you’ll shut up now and get going.”
Katara doesn’t know when she decided to try and attack again, but it’s as futile as her last attempt. Her brother evades her with practiced ease and kicks her so hard in the stomach it knocks the wind out from her and sends her careening into a pile of snow. “Nice try.”
With a groan she gets back up, lungs burning with the need to breathe. “How dare you? Aang is our only hope and you… you traitor! What happened to you?”
Sokka only rolls his eyes and follows the soldiers to the ship, Aang in tow. His heavy boots crunch in the tacky snow and almost drown out his last words.
“Ask our grandmother.”
The words buzz in her ears.
No.
No.
She didn’t.
She did.
Katara had never thought much about the Fire Nation, beyond the vague notion that it was a distant evil that took all their waterbenders. For her, the Fire Nation was wholly separate from the great-grandmother she had never met and the big brother she adored. His firebending didn’t make him Fire Nation, because the Fire Nation was an evil force far away from them, and Sokka was the furthest from evil you could get.
Then Sokka was taken, and the Fire Nation became a more concrete evil in her mind.
Then he returns, in reds and blacks and willing to hurt her and the world, and Katara no longer knows what to believe.
If the Fire Nation is evil, why would her brother fight for them? Why would their village sell him out to them, the same people that had chipped away at their culture until only a shadow of it was left?
Why was Katara seemingly the only one who could see that her brother’s bending didn’t make him evil?
Or was it her that was wrong?
Katara is sitting by the stream running through the deserters’ camp, idly playing with the water, when Jeong Jeong takes a seat by her side. “You’re a waterbender.”
“Yes,” she says, unsure where he intends to go with it.
“I always wanted to be one, you know?” Katara lets the water slide from her grasp and turns to the old firebending master. The thought is a foreign concept to her, even now. If she’d had the choice-
She hums, and turns back to the stream. “I always wanted to bend fire, myself.”
Jeong Jeong takes in a sharp breath to her right, and when he speaks his voice is shaking with disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Yep,” she nods, tiny droplets following her twitching fingers. “Fire’s beautiful.”
“It’s a curse.”
Katara inclines her head and lets the droplets fall. “I think it’s both.”
Fire is beautiful.
Fire cursed them to stand on opposite sides.
The north pole is bittersweet for Katara.
It’s what her home should have been, but home has also changed meaning in the last few months. She suspects that soon, neither pole will feel like home anymore.
“Katara, right?” She looks up to see an older boy, maybe nineteen, twenty, walk towards her after waterbending practice. His skin is lighter than normal for the Water Tribes, but not unusually so, his eyes the gray of a stormy sky.
“Yes?” She wracks her brain for his name, but comes up short. Seemingly understanding, he smiles at her.
“It’s Yakone,” he introduces himself. “You’re pretty good.” For a little girl. Katara frowns slightly.
“Thank you. You gotta learn quickly when you run from the Fire Nation every other day.” Something you lot wouldn’t know.
He flinches slightly. “Fair enough.” Yakone fidgets, suddenly nervous. “There’s… rumors going around, and I just wanted to ask if they’re true.”
“What rumors?”
Yakone raises his hands quickly. “Not that I really believe them, but I’m curious, you know?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Spit it out already.”
He leans towards her, like he’s telling her a dangerous secret rather than rumors likely making their way through the whole of Agna Q’ela. “I heard you’re related to an ashmaker.”
Katara grits her teeth. “What of it?”
“It’s true?” He recoils as if struck, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“What of it?”
He flounders a little at her sharp tone and gulps. “Just, how’d that happen? Your mom doesn’t really look like she’d-,” he cuts himself off, suddenly pale. “She wasn’t… you know?”
For a moment Katara has no idea what he’s talking about, but when it dawns her insides turn to ice. “What the fuck? No! Tui and La, we had a firebending ancestor three generations back and-,” she cuts herself off this time, and glares at him. “It’s none of your business.”
Yakone waves off her anger again. “Sure, sure, your denial doesn’t make you look great, just saying. But whatever.” He turns around without a goodbye, walking over to a group of his friends Katara hadn’t noticed before, and she vows to pummel the dick the next time Pakku pairs them off.
She can’t wait to leave this place.
Katara doesn’t know what to say to her brother. It still feels too good to be true, that they want to join them in their fight against the Fire Nation.
No, not the Fire Nation, only Ozai. Because Sokka insists on staying loyal to a nation of warmongers and murderers.
He swallows dryly and averts his eyes from where he’d studied them throughout their mother’s apology. “Okay. I believe you.” It looks like he almost chokes on the words; like he has to force them out. Looking back at them he continues. “But that doesn’t mean I-, that I can just forgive and forget. That has nothing to do with the Fire Nation and everything to do with everything before .”
Sokka insists on staying loyal to a nation of warmongers and murderers, and Katara can’t even blame him. She’d healed his bruises and cuts before she could read and write. Why wouldn’t he latch onto any kindness shown to him, no matter the source?
He leans back on his hands and looks at the clouds slowly drifting over the sky. “I think I’d still feel the same if I never had been taken, if I’m honest. The Fire Nation just put things in perspective for me.” He takes a deep breath and leans forward, arms resting on his thighs as he stares at his clasped hands. “The village… stopped being my home long before I left. My home is in the Fire Nation, with Zuko, Iroh, Ty Lee. They were there for me at my lowest points and I trust them with my life,” he looks at their mother. “I’m not saying that… that I’m unwilling to reconcile, but it’s not something I can focus on right now, not with the comet only half a year away. I’m just not ready yet.”
There’s silence in the wake of his words, only broken once their mother takes a shaky breath and nods. When Katara looks, her eyes are wet. “I understand. I’m just glad you are willing to try, someday.”
“Yes, well,” he looks away, scratching the back of his head. “Second chances and all that.”
“Were you happy?” It’s the first thing Katara has said to him that morning. She hadn’t even truly planned to say anything. This was a conversation her mother had wanted to have, not her.
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “I was very happy. Still am.” For a moment his eyes find Zuko some ways off, his face softening involuntarily. “In a way it was for the best, I think. With the village the way it was, I don’t think I could have ever been actually happy there.” He looks at them again, biting his lip. “I just wish the circumstances had been different.”
The admission breaks something in her, makes the festering wound in her heart throb painfully. “Me too.”
Katara can’t forgive him for everything he’s done since he showed up at their shore like just another ashmaker, ready to take their only hope from them without a second thought. She isn’t sure she’ll ever truly move past that, seeing him in enemy colors and threatening to burn their home like the only thing connecting them was the color of their eyes. But she thinks she’s willing to try, down the road, if this hand he’s extending is held out in honesty, if this isn’t just a ploy.
Katara is far from ready, but she also has a bleeding heart. It’s that heart which made her stage a prison revolt with every odd stacked against her. Which makes her even give him a chance in the first place.
She wonders if she will end up regretting this choice.
Sokka bites his lip again, and hesitantly opens his arms. He’s frowning. “One hug, and don’t make it a habit.” They barely let him finish before they envelop him in a hug as tight as they can manage. He smells like fire and ash, but somehow it’s comforting rather than discomfiting.
Katara has never properly met Zuko’s sister Azula, but she recognizes her the moment she lays eyes on her. It’s the shape of her face, the color of her eyes, her posture; even dressed in Earth Kingdom green it’s obvious who she is.
And they are at her mercy.
“Oh, hey,” Sokka snarks, sitting up as best as he can. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Isn’t it?” The reply is as rhetorical as his statement had been sarcastic. “I was quite surprised when the Dai Li told me about Uncle’s treachery. But then I remembered the swordsman helping the Avatar at the Outer Wall, and Mai told me about a swordsman with a peculiar mark on his arm, and really, it was pretty obvious in hindsight.” She tuts. “I would like to say I’m surprised, but-,”
“What are you talking about?” Zuko says from beside her, and her blood freezes in her veins. No, there is no way. Not after everything, they won’t-
“Don’t play dumb, Zuzu,” Azula rolls her eyes, waving a hand dismissively. “I know you’re helping the Avatar, we even found you at his house , with his waterbending teacher, ” she turns to Sokka. “The reunion seems to have been more amicable than you claimed.”
Yes! Katara wants to scream. She finally had her brother back, and she is starting to like Zuko and Ty Lee and Iroh and-
Zuko laughs. “I can’t believe you-,” he breaks off, laughing harder. Azula just frowns. “You didn’t figure it out?”
“What are you talking about?” She snaps, eyes furious.
“We’re playing them, you dumbass,” Sokka finally admits with a tone like it ought to be obvious. And it should have been. Katara is so, so stupid. Why did she ever trust him to begin with?
(because he’s her brother and she has always loved him-)
“Did you really think we were on their side? I thought you were smarter than that.”
Azula rolls her eyes, sounding quite unimpressed. “I’d claim the same if I were as helpless as you are, right now.”
“‘Zula,” Zuko says with the tone of voice reserved for older brothers. “You know I’m an awful liar,” Katara would beg to differ, they were all no better than the other ashmakers, lying and ruthless. “We were pretending to side with them when we found out they were headed for Ba Sing Se. It was the perfect opportunity.”
“Then why did you stop the drill?” Mai sounded bored by the whole thing.
“It was the perfect way to make sure they’d trust us,” Ty Lee shrugs, face as innocent as always.
No, not innocent. All of them were nothing but awful, terrible, rotten people-
“Azula,” Sokka says, sounding exasperated. “I know we hate each other, but even you know me well enough to know that I’d never forgive these savages for everything they’ve done.”
Savages.
The word burns in her brain like a branding iron, and she’s going to be so, so sick.
How can he call her that? Just like that?
The phantom feeling of his careful, gentle fingers brushing through her hair makes her itch to rip out every strand of hair he’s touched. When she blinks his beautiful eyes glow in the darkness and his smile makes her want to scream.
“We were going to conquer Ba Sing Se from the inside and then keep the Avatar contained until we could transport him home safely,” Zuko says, the words smooth and uncaring. “We thought it was quite reminiscent of your usual ploys.”
Azula was looking at her nails, seemingly unimpressed, but her eyes were sharp and attentive. “And Uncle?”
The three traitors look at each other, and again it’s Zuko who answers. “We didn’t tell him. You know he hasn’t been the same since Lu Ten’s death.”
“I can’t believe you,” Katara’s voice is a whisper, yet it echoes in the wide cave like the accusation it is. “I can’t believe you, Sokka.”
Her brother just scoffs. “ I can’t believe you trusted us. How stupid are you, Katara?” He turns to her, and falters only a moment when he sees her tearstained face. She’s utterly broken, that festering wound in her chest ripping open and bleeding her out from the inside. He pushes on anyway. “Why would we ever side with savages over our own people?”
Savages.
There it is again, said with no hesitation or remorse, and she wants to spit at him.
Instead, she cries.
It’s all she’s ever been able to do anyways.
Katara looks at the water, fingers hovering over the surface and shaking with nerves.
As a child she had wanted to be a firebender, had gotten to terms with being a mere waterbender, had become a master of her craft.
Now she is back to square one, hating herself for bending water instead of fire.
The feeling of her own blood working against her is still fresh in her mind, Hama controlling her limbs like a puppeteer.
Hama using Sokka as a shield, about to kill him-
“A copper coin for your thoughts,” Sokka mutters, startling her out of her dark thoughts as he sits down beside her, leaning his shoulder against her. “Talk to me, ‘Tara.”
She wraps her arms around her knees, gnawing at her lip. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a firebender.”
Sokka takes in a sharp breath between his teeth, stiffening beside her. “If this is about Hama-,”
“Not just,” she shrugs, huddling more into herself. “But she made it worse.”
He shuffles closer to her, a warm weight at her side, wrapping an arm around her hunched shoulders. “Hama doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that?” She turns around to look at him, his eyes aglow in the new moon dark. “She wanted to kill you. She is everything the village was but worse. She was going to bend your blood out of your body, Sokka, I-,”
“Hey,” he cuts her off, right hand coming up to brush some loose strands of her from her forehead. “She didn’t.”
“She was using waterbending to control people and-, fuck, I could probably do that. I’m just like her and-,”
“You are nothing like her, Katara,” Sokka cuts her off again, his voice firm. “She let her hatred get the better of her, let it fester like a wound until it consumed her. I can’t even really blame her, not with what we did to her, but she had a choice, Katara. She could have gone home and tried to heal, but she chose to stay and take revenge. You didn’t.”
“I almost did though,” she whispers, and he sighs, hugging her closer to the point she’s almost sprawled on top of him.
“And yet you didn't, and that’s all that matters.”
Katara is lying on the couch, finally allowed a moment of reprieve with her son asleep and watched over by Aang.
She loves that little guy, but Tui and La she’s tired.
A short nap surely won’t hurt-
“I can’t believe you gave birth to my nephew while I’m off at Kyoshi! Worst sister ever!”
So much for a nap.
Katara opens her eyes, glaring at her brother leaning over the back of the couch and pouting at her. “Welcome back, Sokka. Yes, I’m fine, Sokka, thank you for asking.”
He waves her off with a scoff. “Please, I knew everything went well or someone would have kidnapped me away from Suki and Lily. No, instead I find out from Mai. Mai saw my nephew before me! The disrespect! I will ask Zuko to banish you the second your kid doesn’t need to be breastfed anymore!”
She snorts, closing her eyes just to annoy him. “Please, Zuko would never.”
“Bitch.”
“Dick.”
“Hey Katara what’s going o-, oh, hi Sokka!” Aang is beaming like the sun, Bumi in his arms and snoring softly. “Was wondering when you’d drop by.”
“I would have come sooner,” Sokka says pointedly. “But no one thought to tell me my sister had birthed my nephew. Instead I have to find out from Mai, which is just so fucking rude-,”
“Don’t curse in front of Bumi!” Aang’s eyes grow wide, carefully putting a hand against their son’s ear and pressing the other side against his chest. “We don’t need him to turn out like Izumi.”
Sokka gasps, offended. “Nothing’s wrong with my daughter, how dare you!”
“Sokka,” Katara sighs, rubbing at her temple. “Her first word was ‘fuck’.”
“Katara, language,” Aang chastises her, pouting. “And Izumi is precious, but sweetie is right, we don’t want Bumi’s first word to be a no-no word.”
“No-no word,” Sokka snorts, walking around the couch and peering down at Bumi with the kind of expression she’d only ever seen him give to Izumi. Good, he better look at her awesome kid that way, the jerk. “So you’re Bumi, huh? Hopefully you’ll have better hair than your namesake!”
“Bumi’s hair wasn’t that bad,” Aang tries to argue, but he doesn’t look convinced either.
Sokka looks like he wants to make another quib when Bumi fidgets in Aang’s arms, yawning and slowly blinking his eyes open and staring up at Sokka. “Oh.” For a moment Sokka falters, his next words sounding slightly choked. “Mai didn’t mention that.”
Katara is confused for a moment before she remembers, smiling as she watches Sokka wiggle a finger in her son’s face and let him reach for it, giggling and drooling. “Yeah, go figure that between an air- and a waterbender our kid ends up a firebender. Hope he won’t be as much of a pain as his silly uncle.”
“Rude,” Sokka snorts, gingerly accepting Bumi from Aang and bouncing him a little, ample experience after Izumi. “I’ll teach him all the shenanigans, just you wait.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
In a remarkable show of maturity he sticks his tongue out at her before focusing back onto the cooing baby in his arms, smile growing a bit wistful. “I’ll spoil you rotten, take revenge for all the silly things your parents do with your cousin.”
The words are light, and he and Aang quickly devolve into cheery banter, but Katara can tell there’s more to it than meets the eye. There is that underlying pain of remembrance, even if Sokka knows that Bumi has nothing to fear, will grow up just as loved and cherished as Izumi has been for the past three years.
But some scars remain, no matter how healed and faded, and she nudges his hip with one of her feet. He throws her a quizzical look and she just smiles, rolling her eyes. Sokka blinks, then returns the gesture and focuses back on Bumi and his fussing.
Maybe Katara’s plans for a nap had been foiled, but seeing the way Sokka coos at her son more than makes up for it.