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“Do you really believe in destiny?” Katara asks the midnight sky. Zuko is sprawled in the sand, looking more the misplaced prince than he ever has in all the months that she has known him. He looks almost peaceful, even though she knows there is fire in his blood. His chin is tipped towards the stars, eyes closed against the pale, trembling light. She doesn’t know what it means, that he is so comfortable lit by the moon that gives her power. “Is this where I say something about my honor?” he asks, voice wry. She does not watch his throat move in the darkness. She does not think about his mouth, or his hands, or any part of him.“No—I mean,” she says, and then stops. “I just don’t think I can handle, you know, fate or whatever.”Now he’s looking at her: gold eyes against a black sky and this is a truth she did not need. Not now. Spirits help her, she thinks.“My Uncle—he told me once that my destiny was a choice. That I had to choose it; that I had to choose my path.” His voice has gone low and rough and full of regret. “And after—after everything, I think I’ve realized that destiny is a direction, more than a—a destination.”“So do you think it’s a choice?”His eyes are fierce, hands fisted in the sand. “I’m here, aren’t I? I made that choice—I chose to walk away from my father, my home, my—the world I knew because I knew I didn’t want—” He pauses, and still he watches her. “Being able to choose is important.”She thinks about choices and destiny and about a war that has taken so, so much from so, so many. This is a thing they might not come back from, she’s realizing: she might never get a chance to choose any direction that isn’t fight. And she feels a strange, tight anger in her chest that looms deep and hot, something that once scared her but is now just another thing no one understands. Almost no one, she amends.“Does it ever get easier?” she asks after a moment of silence. He snorts, filling the beach with the faint and familiar smell of woodsmoke, and turns his attention back to the sky. “If it does, you’ll be the first to know.”::Katara doesn’t like lies, but that hasn’t stopped her from lying to herself about—About everything.She fears this war, but she fears what ending the war will mean more.She loves her tribe, but she loves the freedom she has found in the world more. She wants her friends to be happy, but she wants her own happiness more. Her selfishness is somehow not that surprising; the wanting, however, is.::A day later, Katara stands in the midday sun and lets it warm her blood. The sea churns at her feet, the tide rolling in and in and in. She can feel it surging in her veins. Behind her, Suki and Sokka are bickering; Toph is amusedly playing devil’s advocate to both of them; Zuko and Aang are practicing their bending katas.For now, this is their routine. And it is familiar and it is enough. It has to be; anything more would be—Destiny is a strange thing to contemplate, standing on a beach in the nation that destroyed her childhood and plans to destroy everything else, too. Destiny feels like a too small word for a too big world. She thinks about war and golden eyes and unwanted kisses and thinks, enough.“You’re pretty riled for someone standing all by her lonesome,” Toph says, suddenly at her elbow. “Thinking riley thoughts?”“I’m thinking about destiny,” Katara answers, and her voice is a question.Toph, of course, refuses to answer. “If this is about that stupid play—”“No. It’s—not about that, exactly. Just something that happened after.”Toph manages to elbow her right in the stomach. “Oooooh, nice. Never knew you had it in you, sweetness.”“Toph! It wasn’t—it isn’t—anything like that!”The Earth Bender huffs. “Of course it isn’t. Now tell me what’s got your pelts all in a twist.”Katara folds her arms and looks back out at the waves. “I want to be able to make my own choices.”“Is that all?” Toph’s feet spray sand as she kicks a heel up. “What makes you think you can’t?”“Something—something Aang said to me.”Toph stops kicking sand, expression firm and solemn. “Well, there’s your problem: you can’t exactly trust the Avatar to understand that people get to decide their own paths. He’s been told since he was even smaller than he is now that he’s going to save the world, restore balance, all that blah blah blah—it’s not like he’s got a lot of options, y’know? But the rest of us—we get to decide. Otherwise, what's the point?”Katara feels something tight and twisted in her loosen. “Thanks, Toph. You’re pretty smart—for a kid, I guess.” She throws an arm around Toph’s shoulders and gives her a quick squeeze. “Ew, get off! I didn’t ask for your affection, gross.” But Katara can hear the warmth in Toph’s voice and she thinks this just might be enough.::Katara is a Water Bender. She is a healer. She is a girl—a woman, in many ways. She is old enough to have seen fire, and fights, and destruction, and death. She has felt pain and caused pain and healed pain. She has kissed and been kissed; she has learned and taught and grown. There is more under her skin than she could ever hope to explain, and still she is—afraid. Katara has thought about her own death and the death of her family, and the death of her friends. She has pictured them laid out in the snow in straight lines: stitched into tiger seal skins and anointed in oil, awaiting their final funeral rites. She has stood over them and felt the guilt of knowing that she is the reason they are dead. That she has failed them all.These are the terrors she doesn’t know how to name.Destiny, she thinks, is a choice. She wonders what will fall under the spear of the choices she makes.::“Katara, Toph says you’re being emotional and I need to fix it by being your brother,” Sokka announces after dinner. “Tell me what I need to do.”Katara rolls her eyes and focuses on her needle. “Go away, for starters.”He ignores her, dropping into the seat next to her and stretching his stupid long legs out in front of them. “Is this about Zuko?” She nearly stabs herself in the finger. “Why would this have anything to do with Zuko?” “I don’t know! He’s always been weird about you and I just figured he’d probably said something extra stupid and made you mad. I can punch him a bunch, if that will help.”“Weird about me—?” Katara doesn’t think about pale skin under a full moon or golden eyes or any of it. She doesn’t think about choices.“Well, yeah, he didn’t really care if any of the rest of us hated his guts but when you hated his guts it was the end of the freaking world or something. I mean, the guy’s a little—” He gestures at his head, eyes wide. “Sokka: it’s fine. It’s not Zuko.” She will not think about— “Is it Aang, then?” “—Aang?” The anger rises again, raw and real. “Yeah. Did he—did he say something stupid? Again?”Katara doesn’t answer; can’t answer. If she opens her mouth, all her frustration and rage will come spilling out into the open, rushing out and out and out until there's nothing left. “I’m not trying to...interfere or anything, first of all. I mean, I’m your brother and I’ll kick everyone’s butts if necessary, and second, I know Aang is our friend and the Avatar or whatever, but I—sometimes it seems like maybe Aang doesn’t think about what you want? I don’t know; I’m probably crazy. But you don’t always seem...happy about him and his—feelings or whatever and I worry about you, okay? Brothers get to worry; it’s their job.” He finishes in a rush, arms crossed as he glares at her. Katara has to fight down the sudden urge to throw her arms around him and cry. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?” she says and ends up hugging him anyway. ::Here is a known truth: Katara of the Southern Water Tribe will not accept a life dictated to her. Master Pakku learned that at her hand at the North Pole, bitter and cruel as he denied her the power she knew to be hers. Her father learned that after too many years of silence, trying to protect their tribe even as he left it vulnerable to attack. Even Sokka has had to learn that he cannot tell her what to do, no matter his duties as brother or strategist. And Aang—Aang will learn it, too, eventually. Because she is not a prize to be won at the end of some battle: she will be the one sweeping victorious across the field, claiming for herself the life she chooses. ::The moonlit beach is familiar and welcoming. Suki and Aang are skipping rocks down by the shoreline while Zuko watches from further up the dunes, hunched over his knees. There’s a pang in her chest that is part warmth, part mourning because this—this peace, captured for a brief moment before war—cannot be their forever. Suki glances up from the water. “Please tell me you left Sokka alive.”“Define alive,” she calls back. She folds her arms against the breeze off the water and watches Aang skip a stone in circles. Zuko huffs: it’s a small, amused sound that Katara recognizes without turning her head. She has learned to decipher him in all these small ways—and she will not let herself consider why. When she looks over at him, he’s studying the sand under his boots, hair falling over his eyes.“Sounds about right, yeah,” Suki responds, shrugging as she skips another stone. She doesn’t watch it sink, but instead turns and heads up the beach towards Katara. “He’s lucky he’s cute.”“He’s my brother. For the record: ew.” Katara shudders, nudging Suki’s shoulder. Aang is watching them, expression blank, and Katara thinks about choices. “You could do so much better.”"Maybe,” she answers, laughing. She nudges Katara’s shoulder back. “But maybe not.”Katara looks up at the moon. “How—how did you know? That Sokka was—?” It comes out as a whisper, a question fit into the silence so only Suki can hear her. She does not let herself look at anything but the sky. Suki stays quiet for a long time, hands planted on her hips as she watches Aang skip rocks. “Sokka doesn’t take himself very seriously. But then I realized that what he takes very, very seriously is the people he cares about. And that kind of selflessness is...special.””Thank you,” Katara answers after another long moment of silence.Suki glances over, gaze a knife-point. “Are you asking for any particular reason?” she asks, and the truth is already half-exposed under her knowing eye."Sokka talks too much,” Katara answers instead.Another moment, another beat, before Suki turns and offers Katara a quick, hard hug. “You are the only one who can know what you want. Don’t let anyone else tell you what that is.”Katara nods, and nods, and keeps nodding. There is an itch rising in her blood, a choice she has already made but refuses to name. It feels too fragile to define; too deeply rooted to be revoked.The breeze off the ocean smells of salt and heat; it’s still warm even in the depths of the night. She breathes out and out.::When Katara thinks about after, she can’t make it beyond facing the Fire Lord.It’s hard to think in absences: what will the shape of the world be without war? What will they become without the looming threat of invasion? What will take the space once filled by fear? It was so long ago that there was peace—such a thing feels more like a story told to soothe terrified children. She wonders if she will ever feel safe again.::Aang seeks her out on the beach the next morning as she stands knee-deep in the sea and practices her forms. She can feel the shape of him echoed in the water; it is suddenly icy where she stands, even under the midday sun.”I’m sorry,” Aang says. “I shouldn’t have—it’s just that I like you so much, Katara.”She keeps her eyes on the horizon, pulling and pulling until the retreating tides are held fast by the force of her will. “That’s not a good reason, Aang,” she says, voice a wave-battered cliff. “That’s a horrible reason. You can’t claim to—to care for someone and then completely ignore what they want. That’s—that’s—”“I’m sorry,” Aang repeats petulantly, and Katara cannot bear it anymore; the fierce rushing in her veins is anger, is frustration, is clarity. She spins towards the beach, water surging around her in churning waves as she glares at the boy who is the Avatar and will save the world. “I don’t care!” she shouts. “I don’t care if you’re sorry or if you promise not to do it again. I get to be mad if I want to be mad. I get to be angry at you for kissing me when I didn’t want you to. I get to be upset that you think what you want matters more than what I want. I get to choose that, Aang. And I don’t want this. I definitely don’t want this.”Aang looks stricken, pale and shocked in the shadows of the waves Katara has summoned. He nods, sinking into a bow that is both devastated and devastating. “I—I understand, Katara. I am sorry, but I understand that it’s not what you want right now. I’ll go; please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”He backs away from the beach, head lowered, and Katara feels the anger start to ebb. She releases the water, releases the tides, releases the tight knot of emotion that has been roiling in her chest for days. ::The night sky is blushing as dawn arrives. The beach is quiet, still; Katara sits at the edge of the water and tries not to think. There are footsteps in the sand and she knows she is not alone.”Katara? Is everything okay?” It’s Zuko, voice rough with the lateness of the night. “What are you doing down here?””I’m fine; just can’t sleep. You?”He shrugs, stealing forward another two steps. “Same. You’d think with all this training it’d be easy to fall asleep, but…”She slides over, patting the sand next to her. “You’ve picked an exhausting destiny, Zuko,” she says as he folds himself into the spot next to her. She never seems to remember how much warmer he is than everyone else until he’s right next to her. It’s...soothing.”Could be worse: I could still be evil.””You might have been sleeping on silk sheets, if you hadn’t chosen...us.” She lets herself study the tired droop to his shoulders, the concern in his eyes. She remembers how he had looked at her when she spoke of her mother, how he had listened, how he never told her how to handle her grief or how to feel or how to act. She remembers realizing he had somehow become important—to Sokka, to Aang, to her. She remembers golden eyes, pale skin, moonlight.He swallows, chin ducked. ”There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be,” he says, and there is honesty in his voice and the space to choose in his silence.”Me, too,” she answers.She looks over at him as the sun slides over the horizon, lighting him in gold and blue. They are running out of tomorrows; soon, there will be war and soon, there will not be time. The choice is made; her direction chosen. She reaches out and takes his hand, turning her face into the morning light.