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Katara The bumps and ridges carefully written across the parchment scrape against her fingers as they trace the delicate markings, and she can see every little place where Zuko’s brush hesitated before making the stroke of another intently thought out word.
Dear Katara,
I’ve tried reaching out to you, but I never know where to find you anymore. I hope things are well, although I know you’ve been busy going— well— everywhere.
I’m sure you’ve already heard by now, but I still felt like writing you just in case you were back home by the time this reached the Southern Water Tribe. I wrote Sokka a while back and got his confirmation that he would be attending the first annual Festival of Lights celebration at the end of the month here in Caldera to commemorate five years of steady peace around the world.
Can you believe it’s already been five years since we ended the war? It seems like so much time has gone by, but also no time at all. With how crazy things have been, and with how busy all of us got with trying to pick up the broke pieces of the world, I was beginning to think we would never see each other again. At least— not for a long while. I guess I was right, in a way, but I won’t hold it against you.
I can’t blame anyone for falling off, really. Life happens, work takes a hold of us and kind of rings us a new one, as Uncle would say.
I miss your letters, though— I miss everyone’s letters. I know you’ve been traveling with Aang all around the world, and things have gotten rather hectic within this time of rebirth, but I do miss everyone, and I do hope to see you this summer.
The anniversary of the war really snuck up on me this year. I’m usually antsy around this time, but to be honest, I’ve felt more relief this time around than I have in the past. Maybe it’s because I have kept this hope that all of us will be together again soon, even if it’s just for a short while, but it has got me reminiscing on the times we all had together. They weren’t all good, but they weren’t all entirely bad, either. At least, I didn’t seem to think so. Near the end, I really felt like I had finally found my family. I’ve always been so grateful to have all of you, but since contact has been so slim over the last couple of years, I think I’m starting to really feel the distance. I really do miss you — all of you. But— I especially miss your letters. I miss hearing your stories and everything you’ve done. Out of everyone, I feel like you have accomplished the most, but I know that isn’t saying much, considering it’s you— you overachiever. It makes me feel like I’ve been slacking, to be honest, but it has pushed me to work harder— to do more for my people.
I took your advice and started contacting the healers that you outsourced for me from the North. You were right, anyway. Building better hospitals for the lower districts will make a huge improvement for their livelihood, and will turn around so many lives, create new jobs, and overall help people rebuild what they had once lost.
We’ve already changed so much in the Fire Nation over the last few years, thanks to your advice. Especially the schools, which are easier accessible, free, and have brand new curriculums with history books that tell the truth of our Nation’s unbecoming past.
It’s a shame you haven’t gotten to see any of it yet, but like I said, I understand how time can get away and life can carry us in all different directions. I only hope you’ll be able to make an appearance at the Festival. I know you— and everyone else— will have the best time. There will be multi-cultural food from all over the world, good drinks, music and— I don’t want to give away all the little details. I’m going to just hope that you show up and see for yourself.
With best wishes and love,
Your friend,
Zuko
“What are you reading?”Katara practically jumps out of her skin at the sudden intrusion, the letter pinching together between her fingertips a little too tightly as she turns over her shoulder to see Sokka leaning against the door to her room.“Do you knock?” By the look on Sokka’s face, she could tell that he probably had already knocked, and that he has been standing there for quite a long time. “Uh, sorry? I said your name a few times,” he laments apologetically, taking another careful step into the room. He leans around her, trying to sneak a peek at the letter scrunched up in her hands to the point she has to flatten it against her chest to pry it from his probing gaze. “What is that?”Katara eyes him carefully as he steps fully around her, her chest rising and falling heavily a few times, before tearing them away to look back down at the parchment that she felt she was burning holes into with her fingertips. “It’s nothing— it’s just a letter from Zuko inviting us to the five year end of the war celebration at the end of the month,” she tells him, trying her best to even out her tone and hide the way those simple words rabbit her heart up into her throat. She tries to ignore the way that she can feel her brother staring into the top of her head as she absentmindedly traces back over the words.“Did you get the others that he sent?” At that, Katara glances back up at him, and she sees the way that he seems to hover. “There’s a whole stack of them in the den. I guess he didn’t really know where to find you, so he sent them all here. There’s gotta be at least a years worth of them.” Sokka can’t possibly know it, and she could not blame him for it, but his words strike her in the gut, twisting it up and burying another layer of guilt atop the rubble of grief that was already laying claim to her chest.“Oh, um— yeah, yeah I saw. I just— I haven’t gotten a chance to read them yet.” Katara leaves it at that, and she is grateful that he does not push it any further. But, she can see it in his eyes when she looks back up at him that he has something else that he wanted to say despite it. “Are we going to talk about why you just showed up here in the middle of the night?” Sokka’s voice is low, hesitant, and she catches the lull of worry that glints at the corners of his eyes as he watches her. She didn’t like being studied like this— watched— looked over delicately as if she were going to break at any given moment. She didn’t like the implications that go unsaid, but fall so painfully obvious from the tip of his tongue as the meaning of it all splinters her heart in two. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she tells him carefully, evening out her tone again, and she tears her gaze away from his own when the weight of it all becomes too much to bear, when she can see it across his face that he wants to ask her more. “I just wanted to come home.”There’s a poignant and demanding pause, a lingering quiet that befalls them, and the only thing she can hear after that is the way that he sighs so exhaustedly at the flattened tone of her voice. “I just, you know— I worry about you,” he says, almost sadly in a way, as he reaches behind his neck to scratch at it contemplatively. “Big brother stuff… and all that.”Katara sees it in the way that his eyes catch her own that he only yearned to protect her. He has always and hopelessly only ever strived to keep her safe; happy. Only, she could not tell him that she was not happy— that she has not been happy in such a long time; not genuinely, not truly, not belly flipping and gut wrenchingly happy to the point that she was confident in the choices she had been making. And because she cannot stand it, because she has never left her family in the dark, she swallows down her pride, her dignity, and tilts her face up at him from her spot at her desk. “I’m a bad friend.”This seems to hit Sokka unexpectedly, because his eyes slide to the letter in her hands, to the look in her eyes, his own jaded and haunted, before he opens his mouth to ask her, “Why would you think something like that?” Katara doesn’t think she has seen her brother quite so vulnerable before, so open to a more intimate and meaningful conversation. But for that, she blames herself. She has been away from her home for the better half of a year, almost two— too long to have been apart from the people that she loves. She blames herself for it all, for the time— for the distance— for the missing pieces that she feels when she thinks about how much she has missed— about how much has truly changed since she has been gone. Because when she looks up at Sokka, at the way his own face scrunches up in worry, she wants to ask herself how she allowed so much time to slip so easily from her grasp— how she allowed herself to miss how much he has grown into a man in such a short amount of time that he no longer looks down at her with a snarky, sarcastic comment, but with pure and unwavering understanding; with a love and concern that only an older brother could provide.It is enough that it prompts her to be honest, because she does not feel like she can say this aloud to anyone else. “Zuko’s letters— there’s probably hundreds of them, aren’t there?” Her voice is low, barely a whisper as it rattles out of her, and she feels the way the regret rolls of her tongue when she says, “I haven’t returned a single one. Not… not in a long time.”Sokka seems to consider this, seems to take in what she is saying so seriously, because he crosses his arms against his chest in a way that shows he is deeply considering her worries. “Well… it’s not entirely your fault, right? I mean— you’ve been all over the world in the last couple of years. You and Aang have been busy.”She doesn’t mean to, because she knows that he sees it, but she winces as Aang’s name tumbles too naturally from his mouth. “Is that what this is really about? Did something… happen? With you and Aang?”Everything inside of her runs cold, numb. Her blood, the flush to her cheeks that spreads to her neck when she thinks about it for too long. She curses the way that it flusters her, that it chokes her up until the breath inside of her lungs stills for so long that she swears she is no longer breathing. “Hey, Kat— hey.” Sokka’s voice is so soft— so uncharacteristically gentle— that when he takes those steps closer, when he kneels in front of her and forces her gaze with his thumb, she can no longer fight the way that her eyes begin to sting. “Talk to me. What’s going on?” He begs of her, his tone shifting into concern as he searches her face too intently. “We don’t see you for almost two years, and you show up out of the blue, unannounced, and then you won’t talk to us? Talk to me?”Katara’s gaze shifts to the floor. She does not want him to see the shame and humiliation that fills her to her very core because he is right; and she hates it. She has not been herself for such a long time that she had almost forgotten that there are people out there in this world who now know her better than she perhaps knows herself anymore. “I’m sorry,” she chokes, and she shakes her head to rid herself of the emotions that twist up her guts. “I’m a horrible friend and a horrible sister.”Now, with the pain too demanding to ignore, she feels his hands reach for her arms before giving her biceps a tight squeeze. Sokka’s touch alone forces her gaze, but she wishes that it hadn’t, because his eyes are so sad, so hauntingly sobering that it ticks up her heart and threatens to stop it altogether. “You are not a horrible sister,” he tells her, painfully light and lilted with a laugh that insists that he means it.“And you aren’t a terrible friend,” he adds, and she can see that he is trying to be her strength when she did not have any herself. He was always such a good brother, and she can see all the ways that he loves her so much simply by the words that so maturely come from his mouth. “Now please, Katara, tell me what’s really going on?” He pleads. “This… this isn’t like you.” Sokka’s words hit her in an unimaginable way, and the way that they sink into her skin all but sets her ablaze. How could he possibly know how she was anymore, if she did not even know that herself? How— when her life so precariously hangs in the balance of others, of destiny— how could he see who the real Katara was, when she feels like she had lost that girl a long time ago?She weighs telling him. The words so dangerously balanced on the tip of her tongue that she can already feel the way that they falter on the way out. “I… I broke up with Aang.”Sokka stills. “Oh— oh.” The shock of her words must hit him harshly, surprisingly, because his hands release their grip on her arms as his own response so eloquently rolls off of his tongue. “You— really?”Katara nods once, a single dip to her chin, before that tightness in her chest begins to return to that hollowed out precipice inside of her. “He hates me,” she rasps, and it is so quiet, so heartbreakingly chilled that even the crystals of ice above their heads in their home cannot stand up against it. “He— he hates me.”And for the first time since she has left him, for the first time in months, she lets herself fall apart. She lets Sokka pull her into his embrace, into the way his strong arms wrap around her so tightly that she thinks she cannot breathe. But at least it is in this way, and not in the way that she has been feeling: all alone and incomplete. “He doesn’t hate you— he can’t,” he whispers into her hair. “Aang doesn’t hate anyone. Least of all you,” he tells her strongly, confidently, squeezing her that much tighter before pulling away to look into her eyes. He searches her face, his own falling perceptibly when he catches the blear that glosses over her gaze. “What makes you think that he hates you?”Katara shoves her gaze to the ground once again. She can’t bring herself to look at him when she tells him, “You weren’t there, Sokka. You didn’t see the look on his face when I told him—“ But she cuts herself off. It was still so unbelievable to her what had happened, what he had asked of her, that she doesn’t know how she is supposed to repeat it. “What? Told him what?”Dragging her lip between her teeth, Katara keeps her eyes trained on the ground and tries to ignore the way that her stomach drops as the thought of it all comes rushing back. “I told him that… that I can’t marry him.”Almost too suddenly, she feels the warmth of Sokka’s grip fall away completely, and she looks back up at him, at the way his arms have now fallen to his sides, at the way his brows scrunch together a little too deeply as if her words are only now beginning to sink in. “He… he asked you to marry him?”Nodding softly, Katara swallows back the grief that is starting to creep back up into her throat. “He wanted me to go back to the Southern Air Temple with him,” she whispers quietly, afraid that if she speaks too loudly, that it will only feel more real. “There’s an acolyte settlement there now, and he said that he thought he might be ready to settle down for a little while. Make a home out of the one that had been destroyed and start teaching the acolytes the way of his people.”When she looks at him now, she sees the thoughts seep in as he considers this carefully. “And you… didn’t want that?” Her brows dip, as if he should have already known her answer to that question. “To settle down?” She asks, and when he nods, she sits up a little straighter in her seat. “Right now? I don’t want to settle down right now,” she spills too quickly, her voice tight and choked, almost shaking as badly as her hands in her lap that she has to squeeze between her legs. “Not there— not with him— not how he wants me to.”Sokka seems to consider this. “How does he want you to?”Katara’s next intake of breath is sharp and tight when she sucks it between her teeth. “He had this whole… speech prepared. He talked to me about how he had this vision for his future, how he had this feeling inside of him that he was ready to fulfill his destiny.” Now, when she drags her gaze back up to his own, she swallows hard before she says, “He told me that all this time… he’s known that he was going to have to one day bring back the air benders. That it’s been his dream for as long as he could remember. And that now… he was ready to start that… with me.”The way Sokka’s eyes widen, and then fall, hits her deep in the gut, and her chest felt as if it could cave in entirely when he looks at her like she had just smacked him across the face. “With you? Right now?”All she can do is nod before tearing her gaze away, because the weight of his own becomes too heavy for her to bear and it was suffocating her. “He really said that to you?” Sokka’s voice cracks, and it is enough to splinter her heart into tiny little pieces at how broken it sounds. “Katara— how long have you been holding this in?”When she finally looks back up at him now, when she sees the sadness and desperation lining his own eyes, it threatens to break her in half. “A few months.”Sokka’s eyes widen. “A few months?! Where have you been? You— you’ve been on your own for months?”She contemplates telling him, letting it all hover on the tip of her tongue before she decidedly makes up her mind. She was tired of running; she was tired of hiding. She needed to be able to talk about this if she were to get through it at all.“I didn’t want him to fly me home, so… I took a ship from where we were staying in the Earth Kingdom. His plan was to fly us here to celebrate before we left for the Southern Air Temple, but… I just… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave with him,” she chokes, shaking her head against the vulnerability so hardly fought against that it was hard to not get swept beneath the surface. “I don’t know if I was too weak to say yes, or if I was brave enough to say no.”This pulls Sokka closer yet again, his hands pulling her own into his chest as he kneels before her. “You were definitely brave,” he assures her, time and history and pride swimming within his eyes that it is enough to swell her own heart. She has missed so much, has missed the age and maturity that has now befallen her previously immature big brother. “You have more strength than anyone gives you credit for, Katara. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” he insists, adding to the weight atop her chest that was crushingly telling her that she did not deserve this kind of praise. “I only wish you would tell me when something like this was bothering you,” he rushes to say, the taste of his own regrets on his tongue when it rolls off and into the air between them. “You could have written me— you could have written dad— anyone,” he says. “Don’t let something like this pile onto you again. Not alone. I can’t stand knowing you were this upset and all alone and I was here— I could have been there for you.”Katara only shrugs empathetically, squeezing her fingers around his own that much tighter as she sucks in another breath, trying to ignore the pain so palpable in his voice. “I was halfway across the world. What were you going to do?”Sokka looks almost hurt, but she can see it in the way that the corner of his mouth begins to tick up that this emotion falls away into seriousness. “I would have come and gotten you.”Katara pins him with a look, pulling her hands from his own and crossing them into the crooks of her arms now held tightly against her chest. “I don’t need rescuing, Sokka.”He only puts his hands up in self defense, a softer, more humorous and so Sokka like shit-eating grin beginning to split his cheeks. “Hey, I’m not saying you’re not very capable of taking care of yourself. I’m just saying that… sometimes, it’s okay to allow a knight in shining armor to whisk you away.”Katara snorts. “Oh, and you’re my knight in shining armor? You’re going to whisk me away to where— your igloo?”“Very funny, but no,” he laments dryly, using his hands against his knees to push himself to a stand. “But, I was hoping that you would go with me to the Fire Nation. It’s been so long since we’ve all been together in the same place, and I just know that you could use some time away from everything to just… I don’t know, relax. Clear your head, get some space.”Anxiety ticks up her pulse almost instantaneously with the thought of what this might mean. “I don’t know,” she denotes, twisting her fingers back into her lap. “If everyone is going to be there, that means that Aang will be there, and I don’t… I don’t know if I can—“Sokka promptly cuts her off before she is able to finish, the rest of her words dying in the back of her throat as his arms now lift to cross over his chest. “Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my sister?” He asks, peering down at her suspiciously. “Because the sister I know wouldn’t let anything get in the way of doing something she wants.”There are no words enough to convey the way that what he has just said has made her feel. Something that was supposed to be lightheaded, teasing, now settles deep into the depths of her soul and threatens to tear it apart because he is right. His words bear such an unintentional weight, but a weight heavy enough that her lungs feel as if they could collapse at any given moment. It is blinding, scalding, burning, each breath more taut and laden with a burden that was supposed to be hers alone. Now, she feels as if she carries it everywhere, right on her sleeve for everyone to see. Now, it feels like it has settled into the inner-most workings of herself, deep into her bones, into places she will never be rid of.“Woah, hey— I wasn’t trying to upset you,” Sokka rushes to say, kneeling down before her yet again. It isn’t until he scoops her into his arms, his hands wrapping protectively around her back and pulling her into him, that she realizes that she has started crying again. “You didn’t upset me,” she avows, her breathes coming in short, but heavy, gulping in as much air as she can before hesitantly returning his embrace. “You’re right. You’re right and I— I think I forgot to worry about what I want for once,” she explains, trying to reign herself in by the time he pulls back to look at her more seriously.“You should always do what you want, Kat. What kind of life are you living if you aren’t doing what you want?”Katara nods her head slowly in agreement, already feeling that weight from before beginning to lift. “When did you get so smart and mature?”Sokka only snorts, lamenting his shrugging gesture with an eye roll. “What can I say, I’m just good like that.”Hmph. “Yeah, alright— remind me to thank Suki for that when we see her,” she jests, earning her another one of those check splitting smiles.“Does that mean you’re going with me to the Fire Nation?” Sokka’s voice, high and tight and incredibly hopeful hits her hears at the same time that his fingers wrap around her arms, giving her whole body a shake from where the both of them are still knelt before one another.“Yes, okay— fine. Fine! If I agree to go with you, will you stop shaking me?”Sokka’s eyes widen, his whole face a sputtering mess of excitement and mirth before he pulls her into him one last time, his arms encasing her in yet another one of his suffocating bear hugs. Only this time, she doesn’t complain. She missed this— missed him— missed everyone. And she was so, so ready to be home. The smell of the sea washing against the sides of the ship cuts as sharp as the ice that it breaks through. There’s a distinct shift in the air that she notices once they sail out of southern waters and into the Meridian Sea, the once cool touch of its droplets beginning to melt against the hull of the ship as the temperatures rise day by day. Katara leans against the railing as she stands at the stern of the ship, watching the ice melt away into mountains of rock as they near closer to the Fire Nation. There’s a nervous electricity that pulses beneath her skin as the better half of herself is battered with repressed memories of the things that she has felt, the things that she has seen. There was a reason that she has yet to re-visit the Fire Nation since the war, since she was just a kid. Reasons that she would not ever repeat or admit aloud, but reasons enough to cause her throat to run dry as they edge closer to the place she had sworn off for so long. The Fire Nation was the one place she has not been able to bring herself back to. Perhaps it was the nightmares that the thought of it wrought upon her in the dead of night, or the memories that it carried inside the thickest parts of her skin, just itching to crawl out and smother her when she least expects it.There was also the guilt that she carried when it came to the avoidance of it all. In turn, she felt as if she was abandoning one of her closest friends— if she could even call him a friend, anymore. After years of being dragged around the world with Aang, using that as the perfect excuse as to not return, she wasn’t so sure where they even stood anymore. If he would welcome her with open arms, or if her would look at her as if she was but a stranger. That thought alone roots itself deep inside of her and wraps knowing claws around her lungs. Katara was never one to feel as if anyone owed her anything, and yet she felt as if she owed Zuko more than what she had to offer. “I thought I’d find you out here.”Sokka’s voice penetrates her line of thought, and everything she had been thinking about begins to fall away when she turns over her shoulder to watch him approach. He’s shed his own parka too, now, in preparation for the sweltering heat that would soon be thrust upon them. When he creeps up beside her, he leans his elbows against the railing, twists his fingers together precariously, and fixates his gaze somewhere beyond the horizon. “Are you nervous?”Immediately, Katara withdraws herself and turns her line of sight towards the ocean herself, swallowing hard before nodding her assent. “A little. It’s been so long since I’ve been away.”She feels her brother shift beside her, his eyes now boring into the side of her head as she refuses to look at him. Instead, she fixes her eyes towards the oceans, towards the blades cutting through the waters as he speaks. “I’m nervous too, if it makes you feel any better,” he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. “For different reasons, probably.”Katara doesn’t respond, only intakes a deeper breath than she had before, before glancing over at him. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Suki,” he adds, and when she looks up and into his eyes, she sees a longing that had not been there before. “Almost a whole year,” he sighs. “A lot can change in a whole year. I’m… nervous that things will be different— feel different,” he corrects himself.At that, she softens her gaze and reaches for his hand that grips the railing with tight fingers. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Suki loves you, you know. I don’t think distance would be able to keep the two of you apart,” she tells him strongly, confidently, trying to gauge his reactions, trying to see if she’s saying the right things. Sokka seemed genuinely upset, more nervous than she thinks she has seen him in a very long time. Her brother was not someone who intended to fall vulnerable before anyone else, let alone his stinky little sister. But here he was, bearing his heart before her in a way he has not done so before. “Yeah, well… I don’t know. So much has changed. I’ve changed.”“I highly doubt you’ve changed that much in just a year, Sokka,” she tells him seriously, pulling her hand back into herself, now, as he looks at her a bit funny. “You’ve changed a lot in the year since I’ve seen you,” he says so fast, perhaps without even thinking, before she begins to withdraw even further, that same guilt as before beginning to curl up inside of her belly and root itself there. “Hey, I didn’t mean that in a bad way, you know? It’s just… it’s obvious. You’re different.”Oh, she thinks, different didn’t feel much better.“I just think… I don’t know. You just don’t seem like yourself. You’re all…” and when he trails off, making a dramatic circular motion towards her with his hands, he finishes by saying, “…you know, off. Sad. Kind of been a downer, actually.”Katara swallows hard, the burning inside of her chest growing stronger. “Oh, well, sorry to—““See, that— right there. You keep apologizing for feeling things. When have you ever apologized for feeling anything?”Sokka’s words pull her up short, and the way that they tumble out of his mouth leave a sour taste on her tongue. He was right, she supposes. She has felt more reserved, more isolated than she had before. She’d felt so carefree before, so strong in the way that she felt things so unapologetically that she almost feels bad for the way that she felt right now. “It’s probably good that you’re taking a break from all the work you’ve been doing. Maybe you’ve spent too much time taking care of other people that you’ve forgotten how to take care of yourself.”Sometimes, her brother could be a pain in the ass; sometimes, he was much smarter than she gives him credit for.Katara doesn’t respond to his statement, and instead tears her gaze away from his own before the weight within it all bears down with too much pressure. She was already feeling that tightness returning from before, that looming little singe of pain that pricks beneath her skin and threatens to burn her altogether. Because as right as he was, she did not think that she was ready to admit it to herself. Perhaps some things were better left underneath the surface before they were ready to come out for the world to see. “We’re here!”Katara has just finished stuffing the last of her things back into her bag when she hears Sokka’s voice shouting from above deck. It’s loud and urgent enough for her to drop what she was doing and rush over to the porthole in her room, her fingers gripping the roundness of its edges tight enough that she could push herself up and onto her toes.Sure enough, the ship jerks to a halt, the waters on the starboard side beginning to splash atop the deck as the entire vessel comes to a complete stop. By the look of the sky it was barely midday, and the sun is just barely popping above the horizon, above the shuttering waves of the Meridian Sea as they port at Harbor City; pink skies overcasting it’s memory with vulnerability.Something about the familiarity, but also the distant and futile strangeness of it all, slinks its way into her throat and closes it up entirely. She’s back. In the Fire Nation. For the first time in five years.“Katara! Hurry up! I think Zuko’s here waiting for us!”Yeah. She was going to throw up, or pass out, or both. But she knew that if she didn’t move her feet, if she didn’t grow up and face him like a woman, then she would stay aboard this ship forever and never move passed it. So reluctantly, she grabs her bag, throws it over her shoulder, takes one last look at the room she’s used to learn to be alone for the last few weeks, and lets the door slam behind her as she climbs onto the deck.Almost immediately, her senses are overwhelmed to a point that she thinks she was really was getting in over her head. She stops breathing altogether as the wind rips through her hair, splits her cheeks with its warmth and soaks too deeply into her skin as she approaches the bow.Already, the beads of sweat that form atop her head begin to drip down her face, down the length of her throat and then some. She can feel the static in the air, something so electrifying as the heat from the humidity mixes with the coolness of the winds from the seas. It raises the hairs on her arms, spikes up her heartbeat and threatens to send her into an all out panic as each step she takes brings her closer to the deck ramp.Suddenly, one last step propels her far enough that the docks come into view, and the beating of her heart ticks up all the way into her throat at the emotions that being back in this place drawls from the pits of her stomach. “Kat— you coming?” Sokka’s voice pulls her from whatever daydream had just began to suck her beneath the surface, jarringly sharp but painfully hopeful. She wished she shared his enthusiasm, his drive, his purpose. But she moved forward with fear, much like she had when she had been here for the very first time, and steps around his body in order to stand beside him.She and her brother share a look, one last longful look at each other, before facing the Fire Nation head on.Katara’s eyes search the bay, the docks, her eyes trailing from the tip of the volcano in the distance, all the way back down to—“Suki!” Sokka’s voice rips from his throat so loudly beside her that it causes her to jump. It isn’t seconds later that he rushes from her side, not even thinking twice about dropping his bag along the way before himself and Suki hurtle towards one another. That once nervous, shell shocked man of a brother that had once stood beside her on that ship was no longer, and he was quickly replaced with the embodiment of hope at the very same moment their bodies collide.Something inside of her gut twists painfully, like a knife digging deeper and deeper, until all that was left was a dull ache. Longing, she quickly realizes, for something she did not even have. For a moment she did not get to experience any longer. That once glimmer of anticipation that she used to feel when she was about to throw herself into the arms of—Before she can finish her thought, time stands alarmingly still. Jarring, loud, the blood that rushes into her ears and heats that same gaunting flush onto the skin of her neck begins to spread to the tips of her every being. Everything else falls to the wayside. Sokka and Suki’s reunion, the way that they hold each other close, their embrace, their arms and hands and fingers entangled into one another is nothing short of what she had expected. What she hadn’t expected was the way her throat begins to close up at the way the man at a distance— not so far from Suki and her brother— watches her carefully, painfully oblivious to the reunion of two people who no longer had a beginning or an ending. But it wasn’t just any man— it is Zuko. It feels as if a whole ocean stands between them, and yet only a ramp of metal truly keeps them apart. But for some reason, she cannot bring herself to move. Her feet remain glued to the deck, her eyes trained onto a pair of familiar gold that look back at her as if he were haunted. He was looking at her as if she were a ghost, and perhaps she had been, to him, after all this time. With no letters, no visits, and no correspondence between the two of them in years, she may as well have been dead.“Katara?”The sound of his voice, distant but loud and painfully wrought with an emotion she doesn’t think she can describe, sinks into her skin. It is warm and familiar and yet scarily different from before that she almost does not know how to respond to it. Its warmth pricks at her skin and demands her to move at the sound of it, at the way it seems to command the winds to push her over the edge of the ramp until she was before him as a woman, as he was to her a man. So much was different now; They were so different now. They were two different people, from two different worlds, with an ocean between them for far too long.And the longer she stands aboard the ship, the longer she lets the air bolster curses against her cheeks as it taunts her to move, to go to him, she finds herself inevitably giving into the pressure.The first step towards him feels wobbly, off-balance, and though she tries to blame the weight of her bag slung over her shoulder for the awkward hobble to her step, it is increasingly hard to deny that the weight of Zuko’s stare was much heavier. The ramp thuds below her steps, the metal meeting the leather of her boots before the creak of the dock welts beneath her gait. Suddenly, she is fifteen again. She is in the middle of a war, inevitability pulsing throughout the air as the winds of change soak into the depths of her every being. Only now, she is no longer afraid— not in the same way she had been that very first time she had stepped foot onto these very docks. No— now it was different, charged with the energy of anticipation, of shame, of everything she has felt lying beneath the surface of her skin, just waiting to pour out and over her like the burning of flames.Katara swallows hard, daring herself to look up and into those familiar amber eyes once she comes to stand only feet before him. His hair is longer now, to the point that the winds, strong and brash and punishingly harsh, whip it behind his shoulders, accentuating the sharpened planes of his cheeks. “Katara,” he breathes, the sound of her name perhaps more gentle than she’s ever heard before. It’s a mix between a sigh and a question, the meaning behind it all beginning to bubble from the tip of his tongue. “Am I imagining things, or are you really here?”His response rouses a laugh out of her, deep and light and surprising all the same, before she drops her bag off to the side as it thuds against the dock. Katara holds her arms out to her sides, letting them hang there in the precipice of uncertainty for only a moment before they smack back against her legs. “I think so,” she finally says, after many, many lingering seconds. She looks down and raises two fingers to pinch at her arm before she chances a glance back up at him, at the way his mouth is just beginning to form a smile, and tells him, “I feel real.”Zuko’s throat bobs perceptibly, his face just beginning to twist up into an expression that she can’t quite read, before he surprises them both and closes the distance between them. She is able to count two long, striding steps before he is scooping her into his arms, his hands splaying against the spans of her back before she finds herself naturally responding. Her own arms instantly link around his shoulders, her face falling into the crook of his neck as it is the only place it would fit anymore. He was so much taller now, so much broader and stronger and—“You’re choking me,” she breathes desperately, before the weight of his embrace gives way to her lungs just beginning to expand once again as he pulls away just enough to hold her at arms length. She feels his hands dance across her back, up her arms and end at her shoulders, where his fingers rest idly at the neck of her dress. “Sorry,” he whispers, awe still twinkling within his eyes as he looks down at her. The sun glints against his crown piece, casting rays of light to illuminate the flush of his cheeks before he says, “I had to see for myself that you were real.”For a moment, she does not know how to respond. They seem to keep each other’s gaze for far, far too long, their own arms entangled with one another as years of unrequited emotions explode the air between them. And that same guilt as before, tight and haunting and unforgiving, begins to settle into her lungs at the way he looks at her so heavily. There were so many things that she could say, so many things that she needed to say, but instead, her mouth moves before her brain is given a chance to think, and she spills out, “I’m real.”It’s all she has to say before she is once again at the mercy of his strength. His arms encapsulate her body, his chin falling to her shoulder before she feels herself being lifted. Instantly, her arms circle Zuko’s shoulders again as he spins her once, twice, three times until she has to bang a fist on his back to put her back down. “Put me down!” She laughs, practically shrieks, her voice lighter than she thinks she has heard it in months, yelping against the shell of his ear before he does as he’s told. Katara sways on her feet for half a second once they’re back on the dock, Zuko’s hands steadying her as they grasp her waist tentatively. She takes that second where he seems to be dazed to lift a hand and smack it against his chest. “Don’t lift me like that again,” she scolds, but there is no weight to her words as a smile ticks her mouth up against her will. “Seriously, I’ll freeze you here and let the ocean swallow you up.”That rouses a deep, hearty chuckle from the depths of his stomach, and he finally takes a step back to put some space between them. Katara hadn’t known it, until then, that she had not really been breathing. “Time away has hardened you, Master Katara. Shall I ask for your humble forgiveness?”Katara stands there, hands on her hips, head tilted to the side as she watches the God’s awful display before her. Zuko bends at the waist, humor and mirth splitting his cheeks as he presents himself in a mock bow of respect. “Okay, I’ll forgive you if you stop doing that and stand up,” she swats playfully, urgently, her cheeks already painfully tight as the emotions overtaking her begin to spread to her toes. “People are staring,” she whispers, nodding her head to the men and women already forming a circle around the port. Their arrival must have been something being eagerly awaited, and Katara finds herself becoming withdrawn again at the sudden display of attention.“Alright, alright— enough of whatever the hell that is.” Sokka’s voice pulls her attention away from the crowd, and back at himself as he approaches with one of his arms slung around Suki’s shoulders. Almost immediately, Sokka releases her, and Katara finds herself in yet another familiar embrace.“Suki,” she breathes, the relief that pours over her becoming stiflingly obvious. She’d missed Suki more than she perhaps realized, and as her arms move to encircle her back to hold her that much closer, everything she had been worried about before begins to fall away. The worst of it was over, she thinks, before Suki is pulling away all too soon, putting distance between them once again. They hover there, holding each other at arms length, studying the other closely before the tilts to their mouths melt into matching smiles. “You have no idea how good it is to see you again,” Katara sighs, pulling Suki into her arms one last time, hesitating for only a moment to let her go again. When Katara pulls away this time, her attention is immediately drawn to Sokka and Zuko beside them, who are also in each other’s embrace. They pat each other’s back furiously, thudding palms against one another with a heart-warming emotional display. “Missed you buddy,” she hears Sokka tell him, pulling away to hold him at arms length. “Missed you too,” Zuko returns, his eyes holding Sokka’s for only a second before they almost instinctively flit back over to her own. Again, air refuses to seep into her lungs and she is left practically gasping for air by the time he tells her, from that scant distance between them, “Missed you too.”Katara smiles at the sound of his voice, at the softness of his tone that tells her everything that she needed to know, and by the time the four of them are back together again, she is able to breathe.“Well, uh— welcome back to the Fire Nation,” Zuko says, almost breathlessly as he addresses both herself and Sokka, before turning back towards the volcano that she remembers holds the capitol city of Caldera. Zuko holds a hand out, motioning towards a hooded wagon that lies just beyond the docks, and says, “Shall we?”