"You wouldn't happen to be," Hama ventured, her clever eyes peeking out of the creases of her face, "Hakoda's daughter, would you?"

Katara's eyes widened even more. "You know my dad?"

The old woman grinned, her teeth and her pale eyes gleaming. "He's here! Well, somewhere around here," she grumbled, peering about the airfield like she was looking for a misplaced ladle in her kitchen. She waved one gnarled, clawed hand. "Men, always running off to find trouble. He and his crew have been staying with me for a few days. Good boys. Good soldiers."

"He-! I can't believe he's still here!" Katara clasped her numb hands before her, so shocked and excited she had sort of forgotten where they were standing right now, what she was in the middle of doing. "Can you take me to him?"

"Oh yes, Katara. But perhaps it would be better to let him find us - my eyes are old as the glaciers and I couldn't see well enough to track him down in these woods at night. Surely there are better things for two waterbenders to get up to by the light of a full moon!"

She grinned again and Katara grinned back. And remembered where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. "Actually, I really should finish destroying these airships before I think about going anywhere."

"Airships, hm?" the old woman asked, peering up at the balloon overhead. "Well, I'll help out and we'll make short work of them."

"We should be careful, though. Uh... we wouldn't want to be spotted..." Katara trailed off, glancing around the deserted expanse surrounding them. The fog was dense below her knees and sprawled the entire length and breadth of the airfield. Here and there, fire lilies poked up like little clawed hands rising out of the murk. No lights shone, not even from the tower that oversaw everything. It was all so unnervingly still.

"Scared of a few soldiers, Katara? I'd heard you were a mighty warrior..."

"Oh! Well! Yeah! Did... Did my dad say that?"

Katara looked back to find Hama watching her like a cat. She could not have put words to it in that moment, but there was a distinct difference between the cat Lady Gan resembled and the one Hama seemed to contain within herself. It was the difference between an indolent observer, confident of her high perch, and a feral and hungry beast possessed of the claws and the will to devour many, many lives.

But this was not a thing Katara truly understood in this moment; it was only a thing she felt, an unsettling chill against the small of her back.

"Not exactly, but you shouldn't hold that against him," Hama said a little dismissively. "Even the best fathers can sometimes struggle to believe their daughters can hold their own. No, I heard about you through the rumor mill long before Chief Hakoda appeared at my door. The Fire Nation loves to tell their stories, especially when they think they've got a tough opponent beat. But if I was to hazard a guess, Katara-" Her eyes traced the stretching shape of a war balloon and snapped back down to her. "-it'd be that you aren't beat. Not in the slightest."

"I'm not," Katara confirmed, tipping up her chin. "This fleet was going to put the Fire Nation on track to win the war this summer. But I'm not about to just let that happen."

Hama emitted a delighted little cackle. "Oh, that warms my heart to hear. Now, teach me how to really ruin one of these things so we can strike that killing blow. And maybe, when we're done, I can teach you a thing or two..."

.

.

Zuko blinked hard and clenched his teeth against the pounding in his head - which the hair-pulling was not helping. He had to breathe carefully to get enough air under the strap securing his chest and belly to the back of the chair.

The last time he had seen the man presently scowling back at him, he'd been carrying Katara out of the throne room over his shoulder like some kind of barbarian. It wasn't the only memory that set a seething ember in Zuko's chest, but it was the freshest.

The last few weeks did not appear to have been kind to Chief Hakoda. He was thinner and, where he and his men had looked like renegades before, now he had a finely honed edge of desperation that made Zuko nervous. It made him want to look away, but he knew instinctively that that would be a mistake, so he met the chieftain's hard eyes and focused on his anger-

And it was so easy to be swept away on that familiar current. Fear and pain hardly touched him when anger was having its way.

"What are you still doing here?" Zuko demanded in a slurred wheeze. "You broke Sokka out of the Boiling Rock almost two weeks-"

The grip on his hair tightened, jerked shortly. "Don't talk to me about my son. Where is Katara?"

Zuko gritted his teeth and glared. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized there was really no reason not to tell him, but Zuko didn't want to just cooperate. Looking up into Hakoda's scowling face was bringing back a lot of very sharp emotions from that last night on the ship.

When Hakoda had demanded he make his choice and Zuko had stood there hesitating like a fool until his time ran out-

When someone had struck Zuko in the back of the head, and they all piled onto him and tied him up - very much like he was tied now-

When Hakoda had taken Katara's necklace and exposed the faded bite mark on Zuko's shoulder and realized what had been going on and had been so obviously furious, so contemptuous that his daughter had already chosen him, that she would want to share her life, her body, her love with him-

Zuko was not consciously aware of it - and he certainly did not have the wherewithal at present to realize it now - but he thought of Sokka's motivations that night as completely separate and different from Hakoda's. Zuko could understand that Sokka had locked him up for his own good to stop him from making a terrible mistake. To save him from himself.

Hakoda was another matter entirely. While Sokka had been almost a brother, had called himself Zuko's brother, Hakoda had never really stopped viewing Zuko as just another firebender. Just another enemy in the war he had been fighting for years. All those sailing lessons, all the seemingly idle questions about the Fire Nation or Zuko himself, none of that had meant anything in the end. All that time, while Zuko routinely bit his tongue to stop himself from bringing up his sweet, aching hope that Katara might marry him, Hakoda had just been waiting for his chance to get rid of him. Scrape him off like mud from a boot.

Because, to this man standing over him now, Zuko was simply unworthy to be his son-in-law. Not good enough. A firebender to be dealt with in the usual way; strap him and lock him in the trunk and finish him off later.

Hard feelings hammered through Zuko, especially compelling now, when he was still groggy, still trying to get his wits back. Still possessed by that special fury and defiance.

"Why? So you can try to abduct her again?"

Hakoda bared his teeth and gave Zuko's head a firm yank to one side. "That's bold coming from you after you dragged her all the way to the Fire Nation."

"At least she wasn't struggling over my shoulder the whole time!"

"No. I'd imagine you had her in chains, didn't you?"

"Not for as long as you'd think."

For reasons Zuko didn't try very hard to understand, this seemed to snag Hakoda on a hook of rage. His free hand, Zuko saw from the edge of his vision, curled into a quaking fist. For a moment Hakoda teetered just a heartbeat away from unleashing some terrible punishment, and Zuko snarled silently up at him, daring him with his eyes to do it, just do it!

Just hit me!

But another voice sounded from behind the chieftain.

"As I recall, he's the one who tried to foist her off on us." Zuko didn't look - couldn't tear his eyes from the furious blue stare piercing through him, but he knew the dry voice of the tall man, Hakoda's second. "Like things hadn't really panned out the way he was hoping once he got her here."

Hakoda abruptly released Zuko's hair with a shove and stalked around him, stepping out of sight. Zuko followed him with a mutinous scowl until he could no longer see him, then assessed the men gathered nearer to the door. There were six of them, all men he recognized from the attack on the throne room and, before that, the ship. Some sat in chairs but most stood or leaned against the wall with arms crossed, all relaxed and calm and patient. They all watched him with disdainful eyes.

Zuko glared back. He hadn't been intimidated by this crew of ruffians before, and he wouldn't be now.

"That's what I saw," one of the younger men said with the sort of false lightness that was intended to cut. "A spoiled prince who wasn't winning the game quite like he wanted, so he decided to flip the board."

"Guess she wasn't impressed anymore after being collared like a dog," another man muttered through his teeth.

"Actually," Zuko growled, slashing his eyes over to what turned out to be the late-middle-aged man who had always suspected Iroh was trying to poison them, "she demanded that collar. I said no but she insisted - because she wanted to punish me every time I looked at her. Now she-"

"Ho, that's convenient," scoffed the open-faced young man who had been injured in the throne room. "Don't worry, guys! She actually wanted to wear a collar, so, actually, it's not his fault. It's a punishment for him, actually!"

"That's not what I mean!" Zuko wasted too much breath on being loud and had to stop to settle himself. They carried on in his pause.

"This all must be so hard for you."

"Pompous little spark-tosser."

"-weakest kind of man, making excuses for mistreating a girl-"

"I'm grateful," Zuko finally managed, hot-faced. "I was confused and she made it really simple. There was no way I could see that collar and not be reminded how wrong I was to give that order. Every day. I let my temper rule me and have regretted it every day since. I-"

He blinked, grimaced down at his knees, and drew as deep a breath as he could.

"I'm doing it right now," he realized, then turned his head sharply to the side to address the man still out of sight behind him. "Katara's at the airfield, sabotaging war balloons. I was distracting the patrols. I have to get back-!"

"Bato," Hakoda's voice came suddenly, level and in control. "Take three. If she's there, help however you can and send word."

"She's there!" Zuko insisted. "You think I'm lying?"

No one answered as the tall man swiftly picked his three and departed. The door shut behind them, leaving the dour older man and a thick-shouldered guy Zuko couldn't immediately place. They both watched him with flat distaste and the grim patience of soldiers.

These men would kill him, Zuko realized abruptly, and the truth of it settled in his stomach like a stone. He was thoroughly tied and effectively helpless. There was no second knife this time. No Sokka to vouch for him. Hakoda still stood behind him, and the hairs on the back of Zuko's neck prickled with his persistent awareness of the threat. Whatever these men decided to do to him, he wasn't going to be able to stop them.

"So now what," he finally demanded. His voice was hard and steady but, in the back of his mind, some very dark, painful ideas were presenting themselves.

"Now we wait for Katara," Hakoda said, and he paced slowly around to move a chair. With careful poise, he sat across from Zuko and folded his arms over his chest. Grim. Patient. Holding back a powerful force. "If she comes, she can tell me what I want to know. If she doesn't, I'll have to ask you."

.

.

Katara showed Hama what parts of the engine to target and the old woman went to work with giddy enthusiasm. She was kind of too loud about it. But when Katara peeked back out at the airfield, there was no one there. No lights. No squadrons on patrol. No horns sounding, near or far.

No bugs.

"See anyone?" the old woman asked from inches behind her.

Katara squeaked and whirled around, then chuckled nervously. "Nope, all clear. I just don't understand it. There were soldiers crawling all over the place before."

"Maybe they all took a break," Hama said with another of her creepy little smiles. Then her eyes lit up. "Can't we pop the balloons? It seems like a shame to go to all this trouble crunching up fiddly little parts and not just pop the balloons."

It was so achingly heart-warming, watching this woman - who was so like Gran-gran - get such a kick out of committing sabotage against the Fire Nation.

"Yeah, okay, I guess it does seem like nobody's watching now," Katara said with a smile and a shrug. "There's kind of a trick to it..."

They went down the row and finished destroying engines, then went back and began popping all the balloons in storms of ice needles. The work went so much faster with two, and Katara found herself again and again forgetting the weird situation, the vanished guards. It was weird that Zuko had been gone for... hours now... But maybe that was why all the guards were gone. Maybe they had all gone off to chase him...

That didn't seem right, but Katara did not get much time to reflect on what about it troubled her.

"My my, I'll admit I walk the woods around this base fairly often on the full moon, but I have never had this much fun." Hama peered up at Katara, smiling so deeply her eyes crinkled. "I don't think I've had such a good time since I was a girl at the South Pole."

Katara's jaw dropped all over again. "You're from the South Pole, too? I- Hama, I thought I was the only Southern waterbender in the entire world..."

Her smile was like thin soup, but her eyes gleamed, wildly alive in the moonlight. "I have often felt that way, too, Katara. When I was taken from our home, I was the last of many. And the cruelties I endured after I was brought to the Fire Nation-"

She shut her eyes and Katara laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. When Hama opened her eyes again, something in her expression had sunk down deep, iced over again. She peered steadily at Katara now.

"I expected I would leave this world without ever having the opportunity to pass down Southern style, Katara. Even when your father told me he had a daughter who was a waterbender, I never dared to dream that you would come here. I want so very much to teach you our tradition, Katara, so that you can carry on our ways after I am gone."

Katara felt like she was soaring, like one of the balloons, filled to bursting with lightness that sought only to rise against whatever harder matter held it down on the earth. "To learn about my heritage! That would mean everything to me."

"Dear child," Hama said, and cupped her cool fingers against Katara's cheek.

It shot through Katara's mind - and she stamped it down guiltily - that having those long, sharp fingernails so close to her skin was dangerous.

"I must teach you now," Hama said softly, "because there is never enough time for anything in this life - especially for our people, Katara."

"I'm ready to learn. Besides, we're kind of finished with the airships..."

She glanced at the wreckage of the fleet surrounding them. They had kept the pin holes subtle at first, but by the end, that caution had drained away. This was the last airfield, after all. It didn't matter if the sabotage was discovered now; the damage was done. So Katara had let herself get carried away by the power of the moon and Hama's delight and they had shredded row after row of airships. Now they lay strewn across the field, slashed open like a herd of disemboweled animals.

"Thoroughly finished with them, I'd say." Hama shot Katara a wicked smile, and Katara grinned back. "Now. As to what waterbending lessons I can teach you. You already possess almost all of the skills I might have shared. Your technique is very Northern, either hard or soft, so rigid! But a waterbender's greatest strength is the quick transition. Soft to hard. Solid to liquid to vapor and back, so fast your enemies do not even know that you are attacking them before you have pierced them through their charred hearts. Here, let me show you... Let me teach you our old ways. And then," she smiled her rickety smile, "I will teach you a few new ones as well."

.

.

Zuko waited long enough to draw a few deep breaths - or as deep as he could manage under the strap, anyway - and tried to settle his mind. It was hard. He could feel Chief Hakoda's eyes on him like blue suns, crisping his nerves, and it made him want to snap back, take offense, lash out.

Instead, he only raised his chin, meeting Hakoda's stare evenly.

"Why don't you just ask me whatever you want to know now? It seems like we've got time."

"I don't expect to get a lot of reliable answers out of you, Prince Zuko. Whatever story you would tell me, my guess is it would justify every villainous thing you've done."

Zuko clenched his jaw and scowled at a corner of the floor. He absorbed this without comment, and as the immediate outrage faded, he realized that he had already done exactly what Hakoda was saying. He'd made an excuse to justify the collar. He'd only been trying to explain and he'd still managed to put the blame on Katara for his decision, his order-

"But you can tell me exactly what you meant," Hakoda said in a cold, low voice, "when you said she didn't stay in chains for long."

Zuko took in the tic in the older man's jaw. He wasn't sure what that repressed anger was about, but he knew better than to ask. Hakoda had plenty of reasons to think the worst of him. Zuko was just going to have to accept that if he hoped to control his temper through this little chat. So, finally, he just shook his head and shrugged as irately as his bonds would allow.

"She has a technique for escaping waterbender control chains. She wore them up until the full moon, then broke out and trounced me and half the guards on the royal cruiser before Azula nearly killed Sokka. After that, Katara was bound by the oath and it was pretty obviously pointless to keep her in chains anyway, so I had them struck."

Hakoda frowned back at him, assessing, trying to decide if he believed this.

"Actually-" Zuko frowned at his own habitual use of the word. He'd just been mocked for it... "-I had to do it myself. The guards were so afraid of her by then that none of them wanted to be in the room when the cuffs came off."

"Atta girl," murmured the big-shouldered man by the door.

In the moment when his eyes flicked to him, Zuko finally remembered where he had so often seen this man. It had not clicked, because he was not smiling. But back on the ship, he had almost always had a faint, bemused smile on his face, laughing as he leaned in to listen to some joke from the man beside him. At the sight of him, at the memory, Zuko felt the worst of his anger drain away.

"I'm sorry my sister killed Tukna," he said, figuring he might not get another chance. "He was your brother?"

The grim look on his face twitched. "Cousin."

Zuko nodded, not knowing what more to say. And then very suddenly he did. "I lost a cousin in the war, too. We weren't as close as you and Tukna were, though. That must have been really hard."

"I'm surprised you even remember his name."

"Next to my uncle, he was the fattest man I've ever met," Zuko said solemnly. "And he was... kind of funny."

Both men by the door scoffed, but with very different attitudes. The dour man curled his thin lip. The thick-shouldered man just smirked. "I don't recall you ever laughing."

"I'm not really big on levity. It just made him memorable. I don't remember your names at all."

"Akuma." Akuma tipped his head to the side to indicate the other man. "Kottik."

Zuko nodded in acknowledgment and looked back to Hakoda, who had tipped his chin up and was watching Zuko with a considering look.

"The last I spoke to Katara," Hakoda said at length, "she was determined to fulfill her oath. How's that going?"

"She did it." Zuko didn't really pause to register the surprised hop of Hakoda's eyebrows. "I released her publicly like she-"

"How?"

"What?"

"How did she fulfill her oath?" Hakoda asked slowly, as if speaking to an idiot-

-or trying to restrain powerful emotions. Zuko drew another not-deep-enough breath and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, struggling to keep an even tone of voice.

"She fought an Agni Kai on my behalf," he said, frowning.

He didn't want to... couldn't get into all that had happened, all that it meant, especially not in front of this scowling man who loved Katara so very much. He did not want to admit how he had risked her. How very horribly close it had been.

He was so excruciatingly ashamed that he had done that. He couldn't even meet Hakoda's eyes as he went on.

"She fought bravely and with honor. I decided that was enough to justify dissolving the oath. More than enough."

Hakoda watched him steadily, tightly as one would watch a faulty explosive. So Zuko pressed on.

"When I freed my crew from jail, I tried to send her away with them. She left on the ship, but... then she came back again..."

He stopped there. This audience wasn't going to appreciate hearing about how she'd saved him from assassins. Hakoda had chastised her for saving Lieutenant Roshu - how much more disappointed would he be to know she'd saved Zuko, too?

"Sounds like that's been a real problem for you," Hakoda said with a distinct lack of sympathy.

"I get a chance to try and make amends for my mistakes, so I'm not complaining. She can stay as long as she wants."

They watched him for a long moment, each man holding his own thoughts behind his eyes. "The last time I spoke to you," Hakoda said coldly, "you wanted her gone. You were pretty vocal about it."

A blush seared its way down Zuko's grimacing face as he remembered the things he had shouted at her in the throne room. "Yeah. That was... I was wrong when I said that stuff. Both the things I was saying and the way I was saying them... I made a spectacle of myself in front of Katara's family and embarrassed her. And I was deluding myself about pretty much everything I said. Because Katara was right; the sight of her was a constant reminder of all my mistakes. I made myself miserable and then blamed her for it. It was... childish and pathetic."

"I'm so glad you could learn that valuable insight at the expense of my daughter's self-respect."

Zuko scowled up at Hakoda and the fury came scorching back through. "I'll bet she had a much easier time respecting herself while she was hanging over your shoulder like a sack of seaprunes!"

Hakoda squinted and Zuko belatedly realized the phrase sounded stupid coming out of his Fire Nation mouth. He didn't care. He glared just the same. But Hakoda tipped his head back, thinking.

"She said that to you," he stated.

"She... Yeah. When she explained how messed up it was that I tried to hand her off to you like that. She was pretty mad about it."

"And I suppose you came to that conversation with the kind of calm restraint we saw in the throne room?"

Zuko scowled at the ceiling, his anger pulsing slowly out like blood from a deep wound.

"Pretty much. Only without her family there to distract her, Katara was free to come back at me just as hard and lay into me for all the things I'd said. And for trying to blow up everything she was working toward - just over my own hurt feelings." He shut his eyes, remembering, aching over his mistakes again. "And for taking her choice... All of which was true and, honestly, I needed to hear."

He could still remember the hurt and fury on her face as she defended herself, her genuine love for him, her very real heartbreak. It had been so hard to accept that it was true at the time - because accepting that it was true, that she was true, forced Zuko to begin to accept how terribly wrong his thinking was at the time, how wrong it had been for so long...

It battered at him again now. She had loved him. They had thought she was carrying his child. And he had chosen his destiny, the fool's errand his father sent him off to chase for five years - probably for his whole life if the Avatar hadn't reappeared... He had chosen to pursue the love and acceptance and forgiveness of that man over the girl who actually loved him and the sweet promise of the family they could have made together.

Worse, he hadn't just abandoned them. He had dragged Katara with him, forced her into a situation where she felt the need to use his child as a political tool against the Fire Lord - because Zuko wasn't strong enough to do what was right himself. He had forced her to change, to harden into someone who could deal with the situation she was faced with.

And then, when that hardened version of her had cut at him and struck at him in any way she could, using any scrap of power that remained to her, Zuko had had the audacity to feel like he was the one being wounded and wronged.

Reflecting on this under the eyes of her father and uncles, Zuko felt the shame even more acutely. Hakoda had asked him that last night if he was a good enough man to receive Katara's love, and he knew now the answer was no. He wasn't good enough. He hadn't been good enough then, and he obviously wasn't good enough now after all the terrible choices he had made.

Maybe that was why Hakoda had rejected him so fully. The look on his face when he saw that mark on Zuko's shoulder... he had been so repelled by the notion that his daughter would choose such a man. Maybe it was because he had been able to see even then just how unworthy Zuko really was.

Like it was stamped on his face.

Zuko was scowling at the corner of the floor again, so he didn't see the look that passed between the two men at the door. Bewilderment, suspicion, annoyance.

Hakoda, meanwhile, only frowned at the distracted Fire Prince. He knew there was a strong chance that anything this man said was another trick. Whatever strange performance of penitence he was putting on now, his past actions remained damning, and Hakoda kept sight of them as he would the stars guiding him through the blind night.

Prince Zuko had sent them into that trap at the prison tower, after all. He had threatened and kidnapped Hakoda's kids, had put them through untold hardships, and had lied to Katara, convinced her he would marry her, and somehow got so insidiously into her head that, when he tried to discard her, she had turned on her own tribe to get back to him and the impossible task he had set her.

...And, apparently, to tell him off so thoroughly that he was still, weeks later, thinking about details of what she had said.

Which actually sounded much more like the Katara he had raised... and did not entirely fit with the image of the prince that had solidified in his mind.

Hakoda had tortured himself during his time stranded in the Fire Nation over what could be going through his daughter's head. Whatever the reason, she had committed herself fully to the cause of changing the way the Fire Nation viewed the Water Tribe - which had seemed entirely hopeless to him. It had become a recurring nightmare for him, watching her run back to the palace on her futile quest, trapping herself in anguish forever.

Now, though, she had apparently escaped that foul oath and was sabotaging Fire Nation airships. She was making a real difference, fighting the war where she was. Like she had said she would.

Or so the Fire Prince claimed.

Hakoda frowned at his children's abductor and tried to see what lay beneath this veneer of a properly scolded boy. The prince just looked angry and bitter and ashamed - all seemingly genuine, or at least the same sort of prickly, apparently-guileless performance Hakoda remembered from conversations aboard his own ship.

He had forgotten how convincing the prince could be, how easily he donned the appearance of an earnest young man. There had been no whiff of deception in his apology to Akuma. No hint of nerves or performed contrition. If he had said the words to win himself an ally, it was a well-delivered attempt. Akuma would certainly allow him to think he had succeeded.

But they all knew how this had to end.

This same man had stood on a beach and threatened to make Sokka pay if Hakoda did not yield. It had been easy to set aside memories of sailing lessons when Hakoda carried such an overpowering parting image. And towering for all these weeks in Hakoda's mind was his terror that Katara had stumbled out of her depth, that she had landed herself in the Fire Nation at the mercy of a cruel, selfish, unyielding man.

But there was a slim chance... Perhaps Prince Zuko was not so unyielding after all. He was here too, after all, sabotaging airships. Perhaps. And it would seem - if appearances counted for anything - he was not at all immune to being lectured.

Which would throw some things into question for Hakoda. He had come to think of the prince as ruthless and false. The sight of him in the throne room, decked out in ornate black armor and shouting his crazy-eyed accusations at Katara, had fit perfectly into Hakoda's notion of him as an entitled prince who could proudly deny he was a liar and in the same breath twist facts to see his own selfish desires justified and fulfilled.

In the back of Hakoda's head for weeks now, Katara's voice had echoed again and again...

...like a good little slave... pour his tea... let Fire Nobles stare at me... don't speak... don't waterbend... unless my master tells me...

She had only explicitly complained about the misery of her humble role and had imbued the word 'master' with such scorn and disdain... but Katara had hidden things from Hakoda before. He did not doubt there were things the prince had done that she would gladly hide from him forever. Certainly, he had encountered enough atrocities committed by the Fire Nation in this war that he was deeply reluctant to pull any threads or venture guesses about what might have been done to his child.

And horribly, the prince kept saying things that poked right into the raw spot Hakoda was avoiding. It was difficult to tell whether that was intentional or... just the bad luck of a dense, kind of blundering... kid. It was always possible he could be a better liar than Hakoda had estimated... and yet.

The prince remained difficult to read. That remark about Katara's quick release from chains had initially seemed like another boast. Another gift, as he had called the love-bite she had left on his shoulder. But he claimed he had meant the comment about the chains as a simple fact.

Not, your daughter was eager to pay the price I demanded for her release, but yeah, she escaped and beat me up.

It hardly mattered one way or the other. None of this was real until Katara confirmed it. Hakoda had that fixed in his mind as well. But it was getting harder to look at this young man and see that crazed prince instead of the unsettling teenager who had knocked around his ship, asking questions about sailing craft and staring after Katara like a moth at the moon.

...for taking her choice... he'd said, his voice pained.

Hakoda suddenly remembered Iroh, floating around alone with his teapot during the month it took to sail to the Fire Nation. The old general had never mentioned losing a son to the war. He had only ever spoken of his nephew, and only in those earliest days of the voyage.

You took away his choice. He is lost now, because you were impatient!

Prince Zuko had not looked lost on that beach. Furious, ruthless, forbidding. Not lost at all.

And he hadn't looked lost in the throne room, either. At first, he had appeared perfectly at home sitting behind the flames, like any piece of the jagged decor. But the more he talked - yelled - the clearer it became that he was truly deranged. He was not lost, but he had the look of an animal with its foot cinched tight in a snare. Teeth bared, ready to tear himself and everyone around him apart to escape.

He did not look lost now either. Scruffy and dressed for stealth, with his hair loose and grown into an awkward in-between phase and his sharp eyes turned aside in thought, he seemed... different. Troubled, and quick to slip back into anger, but working each time to climb back out again and for the most part remaining calm as he reflected and spoke tersely of his mistakes...

Maybe it was just the strap that had him so much calmer this time. He couldn't really work himself up to a rage when his breath held him hostage.

But Hakoda had a gut-deep feeling that this went beyond the strap.

It was unsettling to think what it might truly be. He needed to hear Katara's side of things. But until then, as long as he held the constellation of facts in his mind, there was no harm in asking...

"What are you doing here, Prince Zuko? Katara, I understand. You... I would have expected you to be proud of your nation's ingenuity. Flying machines, after all. What a wonder."

"An Earth Kingdom mechanist designed them," the prince said at once. "If anything, the wonder is how the Fire Lord can pillage something from another land, slap the flame on it, and convince the world it's Fire Nation ingenuity." The distasteful curve of his mouth tensed further. "He intends to drop bombs on Ba Sing Se and raze the entire Earth Kingdom from the sky. I couldn't stand by and let that happen. So I got Katara to come with me to use the full moon to destroy the fleet before it can ever launch."

"Got her to come with you," Hakoda repeated flatly. "What does that mean?"

"I asked for her help. She agreed it needed to be done." His broody face tightened in sudden offense. "You think I commanded her? I told you already, she's free."

Hakoda wanted so badly to believe that... but the enticement of the thought made it even more likely it was some smokescreen. So he did not argue, only tipped his head to the side. Kottik took the opening.

"So we're to believe you're some altruist now, just out here averting calamity?" he sneered. "The lives of a bunch of common Earth Kingdom folk mean something to you all of a sudden?"

"Yes. The lives of innocent people matter to me," Prince Zuko ground out. "Even when I sailed with you, I wanted the war to end. I thought I would have a better chance of stopping it from inside a war meeting." He glared but then shut his eyes bitterly. "I was wrong."

"Daddy wasn't open to suggestions, huh?" Akuma rumbled.

Hakoda watched the Fire Prince twist his mouth and seem to focus for a long moment on his breathing. The proud and angry son of a cruel man, he remembered thinking not so terribly long ago. Now, though, something more was going on, some deeper struggle that was harder to characterize than the barely-restrained hostility he remembered.

"Not from me," he finally said. He still looked angry - furious even, it was so intense - but his voice came out quiet and tight. Controlled. "I tried pretty hard to build a proposal that would save lives and still lead to a victory for the Fire Nation. I based it on documented strategies that had worked. I was careful and patient and presented it at the perfect moment, in words that could make an act of mercy seem like strength and strategic wisdom." His frown got deeper, his voice got closer to a growl. "He wasn't interested. He mocked me - because Sozin's comet is coming and that power, to him, means he no longer needs to even bother pretending he doesn't just want to dominate everything and everyone."

Hakoda listened and watched him even more closely. Sokka had mentioned the comet. The Avatar had had a vision, and the end of summer was going to be the end for them all if they couldn't stop the fighting by then. That knowledge had added even more desperation to his efforts to escape the Fire Nation, and then for the past few nights, that desperation had had him following a strange cluster of lights Bato spotted in the sky - lights they had tracked here, to this airfield.

Because if he couldn't get out of the Fire Nation, he certainly wasn't going to just waste his time hiding. Not with the end two months away. He and his men were going to do something. And if it led to their capture or death, they would at least go fighting, and perhaps strike a blow to the hearts of their enemies.

Instead, his carefully planned raid on that observation tower had been abruptly and perhaps foolishly canceled because some idiot with swords was running around, stirring up the guards. Instead of following through on his plan, Hakoda had stumbled upon his daughter's kidnapper and couldn't resist the chance to squeeze him for information.

Or, on the bright side, instead of maybe taking control of that tower and maybe finding some good intelligence or a way to blow up all those airships, Hakoda had acquired a disaffected prince. Who could say how many useful secrets were stored in that head? What might Hakoda accomplish here in the Fire Nation with the use of such a resource?

Another enticing thought. Another possible smokescreen. But unlike talk of Katara, Hakoda did not feel his sentiment might outweigh his cunning in this. He was in no danger of losing his own temper over strategy; that was an occupation he had sunk years into mastering.

"He mocked you," he repeated quietly, at once drawing focus to the point of contention. Wounded pride, he had learned, was often very motivating for Fire Nation captives who might be convinced to give up information. "Right there in the war meeting?"

Prince Zuko looked at him sharply, seemed to sense a shift in tone.

"I would have thought, after you captured the Avatar, you would have enjoyed a bit more status."

Those yellow eyes narrowed, assessing him right back. Coming to some decision. "I did. For a while. But that dried up pretty quick when I kept disappointing him."

"By letting us escape the throne room that day."

"By being me."

It sounded like the kind of thing a petulant teenager would say about his father, but somehow, coming from the Fire Prince, it was not a complaint. It was a grim admission of reality.

"My father," he said, almost spitting the word, "thinks I'm weak. He heard my plan and called me a humanitarian. To him? That's an insult. Because he believes that treating other people like human beings instead of chits on a battle map is a sign of weakness. Something to be ashamed of.

"The really pathetic thing is," Prince Zuko said with a sardonic flash of his teeth, "I believed him. For so long, I thought I was just weak, that that's what it was when I felt bad for other people. I thought I was weak when I couldn't bring myself to be ruthless and do the things I knew he would do, things that would work." He clenched his jaw but quickly pressed on. "I kept trying to burn that weakness out of myself, and I kept failing. I did so many things I thought were half-measures. Half as hard as I needed to be to achieve my goals. Half as cruel. Weak."

Hakoda felt his face going stonier because he understood without the prince even explicitly saying it that these half-measures were things he had done to Katara and Sokka. Prince Zuko only went on, meeting his eyes with an intensity that was... unclear in its nature.

"And after the..." the prince hesitated, then pressed on. "It was only after hearing the Fire Lord's plans and seeing... the reality of what I was trying to sacrifice that I started to really understand that all those half-measures? That wasn't me being too weak to go all the way. That was some instinctive part of me resisting because what I was trying to do was beneath me. If I went that low, I wasn't gonna come back."

Lost, Hakoda's mind provided, though he did not reflect on it. He only watched as the Fire Prince shook his head and continued. He watched and he wondered why he was being told all this, what purpose it might serve for the prince to reveal so much. What was he looking to gain?

"I let you go in the throne room that day," Prince Zuko went on, "not because I wasn't strong enough to fight you and slow you down until reinforcements came, but because using your kids to trap you and your tribe was twisted and wrong." He paused a beat, then frowned at the floor. "I wasn't really thinking clearly, though. I probably would have kept fighting you if Katara and my uncle weren't there."

He seemed almost... ashamed. Hakoda, after a beat, shrugged and shook his head.

"If your uncle had been more amenable, and if my daughter hadn't been watching, I would have killed you that day."

Those yellow eyes flashed back up to him, fearless. Not even that angry. Just thinking, weighing Hakoda's expression and tone carefully.

"So I suppose," Hakoda went on after a beat, tipping his head dryly to one side to let off some of the pressure, "it's a lucky thing for both of us that they were there. Otherwise, you would be dead and my men and I wouldn't have made it out of the capital."

"Is that why you haven't killed me yet tonight?"

"It'd be pretty short-sighted to kill you before finding Katara."

"Right, but - I mean... is my uncle still with you?"

Dread. Anxiety. Hakoda read those vulnerable emotions and very briefly considered withholding the information, using it to work some other angle later, but decided to relent, more interested to see how the prince would react.

"Iroh parted ways with us to travel with the Avatar."

"Good, that's good," the Fire Prince breathed, though whether he was relieved his uncle was alive or that he wasn't about to have to face him, Hakoda couldn't guess. The relief itself was obvious, though, tilting back that one eyebrow in its intensity.

Prince Zuko remembered himself and put the look away.

"You never said what you were still doing here," he said.

"Never mind that for now," Hakoda said. He certainly wasn't about to admit that they were not in the Fire Nation intentionally. Instead, he tipped his head thoughtfully at the prince and shrugged. "I'd like to hear more about this war meeting."

.

.

Katara shifted through the movements with devastating smoothness. Her water flashed and rushed and hissed around her, solidifying and crashing apart easily. Vapor became blades of ice just long enough to sever some lilies, then liquid just long enough to snatch the flowers from the air, then solid to freeze them in place - and then the ice burst back into gas, shredding the flowers to tiny bits.

It made so much sense. As soon as she understood that the water was never only one thing; it was always all things, and the notion of distinct phases was only an illusion. The ice melted to water the instant her breathing shifted because there was no such thing as solid or liquid or gas. Water was always water. The capacity to shift from one to the other was like a compressed spring, always just waiting for release.

"Very well done, Katara." Hama's eyes shone in the moon's cold light, her teeth almost skeletal as she grinned. "You truly are as prodigious as they say. A master waterbender, and now that you possess the fundamentals of the Southern tradition, you can truly carry on my legacy."

"Hama, thank you so much," Katara said, shaking her head and grinning. "I can't wait to try this out on-"

The disquiet she had put away came roaring back. Zuko had been gone for a long time now. Too long. There was no sign of him and there was no sign of any of the guards. And Hakoda had not emerged miraculously from the forest. Katara was starting to get the feeling that she needed to at least figure out where Zuko had gone...

...because if he was in trouble, she couldn't just leave him to face it alone. They were finally working together toward their shared goal! He was finally doing the right thing! If he got captured or... whatever, the whole strategy for slowing down the Fire Nation's war efforts would fall apart.

That's why Katara felt a frisson of real fear. Practical concerns. Worry for her people. Not for Zuko, alone and in trouble.

"Hama, this is all so amazing and I'm so grateful to learn... but I think I need to go find my ally. He's been gone for a really long time and I'm honestly starting to worry a little."

"Your ally, Katara?" Hama asked, her voice cold and dry as a winter wind. "You don't mean the Fire Prince?"

Katara felt herself freeze, but quickly shook it off. Hama had heard stories about her. Maybe she was just taking a wild guess. "Actually, I know it seems crazy, but yeah... We came here to destroy the airships and he was keeping the guards busy but-"

"He can't be counted on. Surely you know that by now, don't you? Surely that ugly jewelry he gave you is reminder enough?"

The words were harsh, faintly mocking. It took Katara a little by surprise, that sudden change in tone, but she could understand it. Hama had suffered in the Fire Nation, and she had obviously heard... some things... and didn't want to see Katara fall back into the trap she was honestly still fighting to escape.

She met Hama's stare steadily and raised her chin. "I know better than to trust too much. But he is my ally and we're working together for the time being. And this-" she said, pointing at the collar that hung heavy around her neck. "-is a symbol. I could remove it at any time, but I'm not taking it off until my people are free."

"Then you'll still be wearing it when you're my age," Hama smirked. "Our people - our people, Katara - can never truly be free. Even in my day, the Fire Nation had carved away too much for us to ever really be a society again. Hakoda told me what's become of the village now. We can never recover what we were! We can never be free of the Fire Nation, because the scars it has left on us will last forever!"

The pain and rage in Hama's voice rang in tune with a note that had been ringing in Katara's heart since the day her mother had died.

"I know that," Katara said, her arms coming up to fold over her chest. "And I'll always bear the scars of what was done to my family and my people. But scars are different from servitude. Just because we've been hurt doesn't mean we can't ever be free. We can be free, but to do that, we have to be brave enough to hold onto hope."

Hama stared at her, a hollow sorrow and uncertainty crumpling her expression. "Maybe such a thing is possible for you, Katara. But I was taken by the Fire Nation when I was not so many years older than you, and even after I escaped that horrible prison, I spent another forty years trapped here, cut off from everything and everyone I ever loved."

Katara shed a tear just trying to imagine it. An entire life spent and spoiled in tragic isolation. "Oh, Hama. I'm sorry. You must have felt so alone." She laid her hand on the old woman's hunched shoulder. "I'm sure my dad could take you with him when he leaves. You could still make it back to the South Pole one day."

But her bowed head was already shaking. "No, no. I will only be free of the Fire Nation when I am dead, Katara." She smiled faintly, sad and wry. "And only when I'm dead will the Fire Nation be free of me."

The words were... a little weirdly ominous, but Katara forced out a little laugh to be polite.

"I owe you an apology," Hama said finally, her eyes dropping to the collar. "After a little reflection, I understand exactly why you would choose to keep wearing such a terrible symbol. An evil thing was done to you, and you cannot be at peace until that evil is paid back. Is that it?"

"Well... I thought of it more like... stopping the evil from being done to other people... and forcing the people who are indirectly benefiting from the evil to look at the ugly reality of the evil they were willing to accept... so kind of?"

"Kind of," Hama repeated. She nodded a little and smiled. "Close enough."

"To..."

"Let's walk a bit. Perhaps we will come upon your father. Or your... ally." Hama smiled again and led the way out of the clearing.

Katara hesitated in the moonlight and had to remind herself that Hama was only a strange, deeply lonely old woman, just trying to be helpful. She didn't mean to be so creepy...

She wasn't sure if it was a good idea to leave the airfield entirely, but she couldn't just wait around here for Zuko to come back or Hakoda to find them. Maybe she and Hama really would find a trail in the woods.

But there was a little part of her that was suddenly certain it would be better if they didn't cross paths with anyone. Especially Zuko.

"Coming?" Hama called from out of the dark.

"Uh, yeah! Right behind you."

As she followed, Katara snapped a thin branch so it hung at about shoulder height - just enough to signify to a searching eye which way she had gone. Then she hurried after Hama, breaking branches occasionally along the way.

"I hope you'll forgive my skepticism, Katara, but in my experience, allies tend to come and go," the old woman said as Katara caught up to her where she had begun to ascend a long slope. "The paths we walk grow narrow and we are forced sometimes to walk alone. It's best to be ready for that time when it comes. Otherwise, your allies can be just as dangerous to you as enemies would be."

She was breathing a little hard, clearly struggling despite her familiarity with this area. Katara followed at a polite distance, listening and remembering how Gran-gran sometimes struggled with long walks across new snow. She wanted to help Hama along as she would her gran-gran, but something was telling her to keep back. "I guess that's been kind of true for me, too... None of my friends could stay with me here in the Fire Nation. I had to do this on my own. And... Zuko has been... yeah, the line between ally and enemy has been especially sketchy with him."

"Hah! Well. In the end, you can only really rely upon yourself." Hama paused to catch her breath and looked back down at Katara. It wasn't easy to read her expression in the hard darkness of moonshadow, but she sounded sad. "You know, when I escaped the prison, I freed my friends - what I thought were my friends - those few that had managed to endure the long years of deprivation. That prison was full when I arrived. Dozens of waterbenders all lined up in our cages... When I escaped, after twenty long years, there were only two strong enough to flee with me."

Her voice was reedy and hollow, her sorrow a deep wound Katara could feel in her own chest.

"Kima died the next day, staring into the rising sun and weeping - she was so relieved to die free. Nortuk... he only wanted to go home. Back to the South Pole." Hama's tone darkened and she began climbing again. "Even after all those years, he could only think of his wife and their child - by then a grown man... and likely killed by the Fire Nation along the way. He couldn't seem to grasp that, back there, in our village, we were powerless. There was nothing we could do from our home except wait for the Fire Nation to take its next greedy slice of our lives. And if we fought to protect what was ours, if we used our waterbending, more soldiers would come to subdue us again, to unleash their fury on our people again. Why go back to our loved ones when defending them would mean their ultimate destruction? They could only suffer retaliation for our attempts to help."

Katara felt a terrible shudder come creeping up her spine. Something about this did not sit right. She broke a branch and followed on.

"For Nortuk, that price was worth seeing his family again... and I suppose I cannot blame him, really. He was my last companion, and he left me alone here forty years ago. I do not think he even made it back home after all that. None of the men of your tribe recognized his name."

Hama stopped for another moment, breathing hard. She half-turned in the patchy moonlight, peering off into the distance.

"For me... There could be no going back. My time in the Fire Nation had changed me. I refused to be made powerless again, to be unable to exact any price for the hardship my people endured. I had been dragged into the den of my enemies. They foolishly sought to hold me close - so close that, free at last, I could enact retribution against them."

Katara, who might once have been horrified at the notion of a heart that beat only for vengeance, looked into Hama's faded, cunning profile and saw all the women she knew who had suffered in just a year of captivity. Bogara's wounded dignity. Keyu, always afraid. Dakata's grief, so deeply swallowed. Yakita's nervous eyes. Loska always with her head down. Pawe and the pregnancy no one spoke of.

Katara thought of their damages, their resilience, and she looked at Hama and could see a woman who had endured unimaginable pain and grief - truly off the scale of comparison - and rather than collapse under the weight of it, she had forged her pain and grief into a vicious weapon that could do something to right that wrong.

"What kind of retribution?" Katara asked, her voice a little high but steady.

Hama turned fully to face her and smiled. Her pale face appeared almost skeletal in the gloom. "The terrible kind."

Wrinkles pulled her mouth like strings, and her teeth when she grinned were still so sharp.

"Walk with me just a little farther, Katara. I think you are ready for the greatest lesson I have to teach you. Let me tell you how I took my freedom."

They continued on up the slope. Katara listened as Hama described how, during the many full moons of her captivity, she had noticed... blood. She had honed her awareness of the blood pumping in the rat-vipers that crept through her cage. She had practiced and planned for years before the right moment arrived. As Hama talked, they ascended the final steps and came to a banded steel door set right into the face of the mountain.

There was a... smell. Faint at first, but unmistakable. Something had died and was rotting nearby.

And Katara had a feeling - dread rooted deep in her gut - that that smell of death was coming from beyond that door.

Hama stood there in the threshold, looking back down at Katara and seeming to grow taller and fiercer in the moonlight.

"Bloodbending," she said, "controls the water inside a living body."

Katara had bent sweat before, and she had bent the water inside plants. She had drawn the water out of food to preserve it, and she had used her waterbending to heal - though how that worked exactly was not entirely clear to her, since she hadn't really trained in healing. But, of Katara's experiences, that seemed like the closest thing she had encountered to controlling the water inside a living body.

"That sounds a little bit like healing."

"Phuh." Hama waved a hand in dismissal. "Healing is what they teach girls in the North because they think it isn't dangerous. But healing is just the soft side of bloodbending. Healing asks the body to do what it would eventually do anyway. Bloodbending imposes your will over flesh itself. And," she smirked, "over the will of the current occupant."

Katara had to take a moment to swallow down a sick feeling. That rotting smell seemed to be growing more intense. "You mean you-" She thought of all her experiments dragging the water out of seaprunes and imagined instead a living person. "-you just... take control of someone's body- like- like-"

"Like a puppet, Katara." Hama raised her arms out wide to either side and bowed her head, watching Katara closely. "Or like the chains we both once wore..."

Suddenly, Katara recognized the posture Hama was assuming. She remembered those cruelest days aboard the royal cruiser, when she had been chained in that same position every time she was given a drink. She thought of the control chains that had yanked her off her feet hundreds of times in training to prepare her for reality...

"The strong impose their will over the weak all the time," Hama said, lowering her arms back to her sides. "That is what war is. The Fire Nation has imposed its will over the Southern Water Tribe for generations. They abducted our waterbenders until the village was a ruin, and they kept us strung up in chains to watch each other slowly die. Now I hear they drive waterbenders into battle with threats against their captive families. That is monstrous. That is the sort of great evil that was done to me, Katara. To us! To all the Water Tribe!" The furious sorrow in her voice turned cold and sharp. "That is the evil we must pay back to them in kind."

Katara licked her dry lips and finally thought to try to calm her breathing. Her heart was pounding hard in her throat. Because she agreed - those things the Fire Nation had done were monstrous and evil - but the notion of paying it back in kind, of taking that sort of cruelty and evil into her own hands to deliver justice by imposing her will on others, was terrifying. Hama went on, watching her steadily.

"Bloodbending is the ultimate weapon, because it takes the weapons of your enemies and makes them yours to command. Let me show you." She reached out one clawed hand and pulled open the steel door.

The stench that rolled out of the lightless hole beyond was overwhelming. It made Katara's eyes water and her nose burn. Worse, at the sound of the door, several voices in the distant dark emitted stifled cries of terror. There were living people in there. And there were rotting corpses in there. That certainty filled Katara with such horror that the only thing preventing her from turning around and racing down the mountain and back to the airfield was the sudden terrible realization that-

Zuko might be in there. Dad might be in there.

Slowly, unsteadily, Katara followed Hama into the dark.