Katara splashed her face with cold water. Had last night been a dream within a dream?
First, Zuko's kiss left Katara parched and dizzy. It had not taken much play-acting for her to swoon into his arms as the heroines from the romance novels and ballads in Iroh's library did. She fell asleep, consumed by him the way flames consume kindling. Laying beside Zuko, his arms encircling her, was like being too close to the fire. Katara's cheeks had burned since she was woken up that afternoon.
That dream had ended with Iroh's amused and indulgent smile and Zhao's insolent and suggestive smirk.
The second dream overlapped with the first. A trembling and tongue-tied Lieutenant Jee tip-toed into Zuko's chambers to tell Zuko that his father was dead and he was now Fire Lord. This was when Iroh and Zhao came in to pay their respects to the young man who was now the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.
The gravity of the situation hit Katara like a snowball to the face.
Now, there was no turning back.
Zuko stepped out from behind a screen, where he had been changing into a fresh set of clothes. Katara stepped aside so he could join her at the dressing table. He pulled his hair back into a ceremonial topknot.
"Are you going somewhere?" Katara asked him.
Zuko slid in the pin that held his topknot in place. "I have a meeting with the crew," he replied. "Then I'm going to speak with Uncle about coronation speech."
Katara lowered her eyes."Are you planning on leaving?"
Would Zuko give the orders to return to the Fire Nation at the crew meeting so he could take his throne, hence the coronation speech?
"Not yet," Zuko said. Katara breathed a sigh of relief. She was not yet ready to leave the South Pole and start her new life as the Fire Lord's consort. She probably never would be. "I need to finish up things here."  Around his topknot, Zuko tied a decorative ribbon. "Once that's over, then the real work begins."
"The real work?"
Zuko chuckled a little. "Where to begin? My father and his forbears have laid waste to the world for a century.  Now its up to me to sort through the reckage and try to rebuild."
He splashed his face with cold water from the washbasin. The unscarred half of his face, smooth, boyish, and handsome, appeared in the looking glass above Katara. He looked much too young for the burdens he now had to carry.
Katara raised her eyes to meet his. "And how do you plan on rebuilding, My Lord?"
Zuko smiled. His eyes twinkled with the excitement of someone anxious to get started on a new project.
"Tax and civil-service reforms," he said. "In centuries of Fire Nation history, it's never occurred to anyone that we should tax those who can afford to pay and that those who get government jobs should at least be qualified for their positions. But first, I'm going to start withdrawing troops from the front."
So he would not be a war-monger like his father? Did they even share the same blood?
Zuko walked over to where his ceremonial robes hung on a rack. "Who's been profiting from this war?" He slid the robe over one arm but struggled with the other. Katara stepped in and helped him. "Thank you... not some rice farmer who's bled dry from taxes while his wife and children starve, who has to watch his sons go off to die in battle and his home and fields be destroyed. No, it's the greedy merchants and idle lords who grow fat behind their palace walls and wring every coin and grain of wheat they can get out of the peasants."
Katara giggled. "I'm surprised to hear this coming from you."
This man of the people speech was laughable when said by a prince of the Fire Nation.
"I know." Zuko blushed. It was a little bit endearing. "All my life, I was told that the Fire Nation was the greatest nation in history and the war was just our way of sharing that greatness with the world. But once you've gotten out and seen the reality of what the war's actually like, it gives you a different perspective on everything." Zuko touched the burnt part of his face, the mark of the banished prince, cursed to travel through a war-torn world on a futile quest. "Surely, you'd understand, Katara?"
On the night when Zuko first kissed her, Katara said that he was a terrible person who had no idea what this war had put her through as if she were its only victim. What a stupid, self-centered, narrow-minded girl she had been.
Katara picked up her ivory hair comb and ran it through her tangled tresses. "I doubt the Fire Nation ruling class will share your perspective."

Zuko had good intentions, but good intentions were often the paving stones on the road to disaster.
"I'm not so naive as to think so," Zuko replied. "I know I'll have to fight like a dragon, with fang, with claw, and with flame, to get anything done, but I'll do whatever I can to make sure that our children live in a better world than we do."
Katara bit her lip. Our Children? She fingered her phoenix pendant. Did Zuko see her as the phoenix, that the next generation of his family line would spring forth from her?
"How's the future Fire Nation broodmare?" Sokka had taunted her the day before.
What a laugh it would be if her child one day sat on the Fire Lord's throne.
Zuko adjusted his robes so that the folds fell precisely as they should. "I'll see you at dinner this evening," he said. He bowed to Katara before turning to quit the room.
Before he could get away, she grabbed his hand a pressed a kiss into his palm. The flush in Zuko's cheeks reflected the heat she felt in her own.
The face that looked back at her did not belong to the Fire Lord's son, with war, and violence, and hatred in his blood, but someone she could respect, feel compassion for, and maybe even love. Someone who lit a flame inside her and made her yearn for something she could not understand.

At tea time, Katara went to Iroh's study to return his copy of Love Amongst the Dragons.
"How many times have you borrowed that one?" Iroh said. He poured a cup of steaming oolong tea and handed it to Katara.
The old general had said she could borrow any scroll from his library whenever she wanted. More often than not, she re-read Love Amongst the Dragons. The story had everything: action, adventure, magic, intrigue, and, of course, romance.
Katara accepted the offered cup of tea. "I've lost count already."
"If you enjoy it so much, you can have."
"Thank you." She had borrowed the scroll so many times that it was practically hers already.
The chair creaked and groaned under Iroh's weight as he rose to his feet. "I have something to show you." He pointed to the wall behind Katara. "Do you see the mask hanging above the tsungi horn?"
Katara turned her head to see what he was talking about. The mask depicted a blue-faced demon with white markings. It was so gruesome and unnatural look that Katara shuttered a little. "What is it?" she said.
"Don't you recognize it?" Iroh smiled. His eyes narrowed and creased into their rising-sun shape. "It's the Dark Water Spirit from Love Amongst the Dragons. When the story is performed live, the actors wear masks representing the different characters. Maybe when we return to the Fire Nation, my nephew can take you to see a performance."
Katara had never seen a play before. The closest she ever came was the ritual dances that enacting various myths and legends during religious festivals. The prospect of watching a live play made Katara's heart race.
"I would like that very much," she said.
Iroh sat back down at the table. "Our family have long been patrons of the arts. My late sister-in-law, Lady Ursa, was a great lover of the theater, and she passed that love on to her son." Lady Ursa was Zuko's mother, who had died when Zuko was ten. "That mask belonged to her. She left it to Zuko when she died and we display it in here."
Katara fingered her mother's necklace. That's something we have in common, Zuko had said when Katara cried about losing her mother. Maybe her mother's necklace and Lady Ursa's mask served the same purpose?
"Does royal life in the Fire Nation only involve going to the theater?" Katara said. 
"Hardly, my dear. The women of the royal family typically handle the softer areas of power." The way Iroh furrowed his brow at the word "typically" hinted that these royal ladies did not always live up to that expectation, his niece, Princess Azula being a notable example of this.
Katara raised an eyebrow. "The softer areas of power?"
"Hosting court functions, building hospitals, schools, and orphanages, endowing charitable endeavors, and tempering the Fire Lord's justice with mercy. You showed a knack for that when you plead with my niece to spare your village."
"Thank you." Katara blushed. Maybe being a royal consort would not be so hard?
"The softer areas of powers are a way to gain much respect and honor for yourself,  and in your case, you're the thread that ties the Fire Nation and the Southern Water Tribe together, a weaver of peace."
If Katara had never met Zuko, she probably would have been married off to some neighboring chief and lived out the rest of as a village head-woman, a chieftess, like her mother and grandmother before her. Supervise women's work, healing wounds, and illnesses, and helping bring the next generations into this world- far from a bad life. Katara would likely be happy with her lot, live to a ripe old age, and die beloved and respected. But Zuko offered her a chance at a grander future.
Instead of helping to join two chiefdoms through marriage, Katara was playing a part, however humble, in ending a century's long war and saving her people from destruction and slavery. As the first lady of the most powerful nation on earth, she had ample means to heal wounds and help those in need.
Who would be a chieftess when they could be a queen?

https://youtu.be/g1pEGV9OBoc

"Good evening, Uncle," Zuko said. He leaned against the door frame and gazed up at his mother's Dark Water Spirit Mask. "What are we having for dinner?"

Zuko was in a stormy mood over the next couple of days. Messengers came to him with reports of a flying bison being seen in the skies over nearby villages.
At first, Zuko responded by raising an eyebrow and dismissing them, but as these reports persisted, his fuse grew shorter.
"You're mocking me," he shouted one evening when his fuse reached its end. Katara nearly jumped out of her seat and dropped her sewing. "Get out!"
The trembling messenger scurried away.
This had to be a prank. Flying bison were believed to have gone extinct during the Air Nomad genocide. Iroh told Katara that villages in the Southern Earth Kingdom had vague memories of seeing the last Avatar, a young Air Nomad monk named Aang, travel through on a flying bison. In this detail lay the insult to Zuko, who had been on a wild peasant-goose chase for the past three years trying to find the Avatar.
The flying bison sightings often came with strange weather: strong winds and rough seas. Like a baby in a cradle, the ship rocked about. No one was allowed on deck for fear that they might be blown overboard. At least a third of the crew was incapacitated by seasickness. Katara tried to ease the tense atmosphere on board by insisting that such weather was typical for the South Pole this time of year.
"Maybe an Airbender is behind all these gails," Azula said. Despite grabbing onto a railing to steady herself, she still managed to smirk at her brother.
Azula and Zhao seemed to enjoy Zuko's pain the most. They got a sick glee out of twisting the knife in further.
Zhao's smirk matched the Princess's. "Maybe I could bring some of my men to investagate these reports?" he said. "That way Your Grace doesn't have to trouble yourself with such trivial matters."
"You could jump off an iceberg for all I care," Zuko grumbled.
After Zhao made this generous offer, the seas and winds calmed down, like a child tired after a tantrum. The weather was fair and balmy. Katara did not need to wear her thick parka when she went out onto the deck. A caressing breeze ruffled some hair into her face. She brushed it out of her eyes so she could get a better look at the outline of her village off in the distance.
What was everyone there doing at that very moment? Maybe they were all getting ready for Sokka's wedding?
Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe, Sokka's betrothed, had arrived at the South Pole. Due to the high winds and rough seas, the Fire Nation blockade became lax, assuming no one would risk sailing in these conditions. Yue's escort managed to slip through disguised as a fishing vessel with the slender Princess hidden in a bundle of sails. According to the reports, she and Sokka had been inseparable since her arrival. It all sounded like the beginnings of an epic romance.
Though Sokka had given Katara plenty of reasons to be angry with him, she wished her brother and his bride every possible happiness. The happy news did not go over so well among Katara's Fire Nation companions.
Zuko roared like a tiger-lion whose slumber had been disturbed. He kicked a ball of flame over the side of the ship, startling a group of penguin-seals perched upon an iceberg. The poor creatures jumped into the ocean for dear life.
"Zhao is many things," he said. "Insolent, arrogant, and untrustworthy...but I never thought to put incompetent on the list."
Zhao had been the one in charge of the blockade, and on his watch, Princess Yue managed to slip through.
Iroh put a hand on his nephew's shoulder. "It was an easy enough mistake to make. We should give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even our worst enemies."
Zuko grumbled.
"Lucky for us, it was only Chief Sokka's bride..."
"A bride with an armada for a dowry."
As much personal happiness as the union between Sokka and Yue might bring them, their marriage was meant to secure a military and political alliance.
"I don't see why we should care if some water savage is shacking up with another water savage," Azula added. She stretched out her arms to enjoy the sun and heat, like a cat in front of the hearth. "Especially since we're leaving soon?"
Katara stifled a gasp. Hadn't Zuko said that they wouldn't be leaving yet? Things hadn't settled yet with the Southern Water Tribe. Azula must be wrong.
Zuko furrowed his brow. "Leaving soon?"
"Of course, Zhao captured the Avatar." Azula rolled her eyes and huffed as if to say, How could you not know this?
This must be another prank. Zuko often said, "Azula always lies."  And besides, the Avatar was just a fairytale, a bedtime story to give children false hope.
Zuko seemed to agree with Katara. "You're making this up," he said, scowling at Azula.
"Why would I make any of this up?" Azula shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't believe any of this either, that is until Zhao took me onto his ship and showed me the little Air Nomad boy and his flying bison that he has chained up there."
"An Air Nomad?"
"Yes, Zuzu. Yellow and orange robes, bald head, arrow-shaped tatoos, everything."
"Where did he come from?"
"Zhao says that he and his men found him and his bison in a village a few miles down the coast."
"But the Air Nomads and their flying bisons have been extinct for a century and now one of them suddenly show up here in the South Pole."
Those were Katara's thoughts exactly.
Azula rolled her eyes again. "I don't know. Maybe they've been frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years and were only just thawed out now."
"Why am I am only just now finding out about this?"
"Because Zhao went to go investigate the reports of a flying bison so you wouldn't have to worry yourself with something so trivial. He planned on presenting you with the Avatar as a way of making amends for the recent lapse in security."
Zhao intended no such thing. He probably wanted to steal all the glory of capturing the Avatar for himself.
At this point, Zuko finally reached the end of his fuse. Smoke came out of his ears and nostrils.
"Don't be so cross, Zuzu," Azula cooed. "Now you'll finally be able to return home with your honor restored."

A full moon hung outside Katara's porthole. Katara fidgeted in her seat and stared at it. Chi ebbed and flowed through her body like the tide and made focusing on her sewing practically impossible. Every time she tried to pick her sewing up, she put it down again and continued staring at the full moon.
Katara wanted to finish her latest project, a loose wrap tunic and a split skirt made from the blue silk Iroh gave her by that night, but her head throbbed, and she couldn't sit still or concentrate on anything besides the window.

Alright, that's enough of that. Katara put down her sewing and rose from her seat. Maybe a walk on the deck and some water bending, if no one was looking, would help her settle down.
The deck was empty, but across the way, Zhao's ship glowed like a bonfire. Brightly-colored paper lanterns stood out against the ship's metal sides like butterflies dancing around the trunk of an old tree. Zhao's crew, drunk on sake and singing lewd ditties, were celebrating the capture of the Avatar.
Perhaps giving them a show of water bending wasn't such a good idea.
The crew's singing was so crude and obscene that Katara couldn't bear to listen, so she tried to cover it up with her own voice.
                    Leaves from the vine,
                               Falling so slow,
                  Like fragile, tiny shells,
                      Drifting in the foam."
Iroh was the one who had taught Katara this song. It was his son, Lu Ten's favorite. Every night when Lu Ten was put to bed, Iroh would sing it for him.
                     "Little soldier boy,
                    come marching home.
                      Brave, little soldier boy
                     comes marching home."
Lu Ten grew up to be the golden boy of the Sozin dynasty: famously handsome, a military hero, and the darling of both the court and the ordinary people. Iroh could not have been prouder of his son, especially when Lu Ten joined Iroh during his siege of Ba Sing Se. But Iroh's brave, little soldier boy never did come marching home.
Somewhere on Zhao's ship, another brave little soldier boy was shivering in a dungeon. A well-placed ear here and there, and Katara had learned that the captured Air Nomad boy, the supposed Avatar, surrendered himself into Fire Nation custody to protect the village that had sheltered him. Such selfless behavior was worthy of an Avatar.
All Katara's life, Gran-Gran had told her and Sokka stories about how he would one day return to bring peace and harmony to the world. Now that Katara was too old to believe these fairytales, it turned out they weren't just fairytales, after all.
Was it the pull of the moon, the flow of chi in her body, or simply her own curiosity drawing Katara towards Zhao's ship? She just had to see the Avatar for herself.
Draped in a dark cloak, with a sheer silk veil covering half her face, Katara made her way towards the stern of the ship, where a ladder would allow her to climb down to the ice flows that encaged the keel and hull. She would then freeze herself a path across to Zhao's ship.
Something rustled in the shadows behind Katara when she reached the stern. She turned around to see what was going on when a blur of black, blue, and white grabbed her shoulder. Before she could scream or call for help, a hand covered her mouth. The world slowed down, and her heartbeat ringing in her ears.
Her hands were free. From a puddle of melted ice, she bent a water whip to defend herself.
The figure wore black. Behind mask painted to look like a demon's blue and white face, the Dark Water Spirit from Iroh's study, there was a faint panting. Instead of rough and careless, their touch was warm and gentle. Her heart pounded against her chest as one hand caressed her cheek, and the other ran a thumb across her lips.

"Shhhh..." they whispered.
Katara's heart pounded harder. She would recognize that raspy voice anywhere. "Zuko?" she said. She dropped her water whip, soaking both their shoes.
Zuko withdrew his hands from her face, leaving the areas he had touched cold and empty. "Come with me." He took her hand.
They flew towards the ladder. Zuko's objective must be similar to her own.
He was the first to climb over. The ladder only went halfway down the stern of the ship.  Zuko had to jump the rest of the way down. A thick layer of snow cushioned what might have been a nasty fall.
"Are you alright?" Katara called down to him.
Zuko rose to his feet and brushed snow off his clothes. "Fine, just fine," he grumbled.
Katara took a deep breath and put a foot on the ladder. She wasn't looking forward to that jump.
"I'll catch you," Zuko shouted when she made it over the stern's ledge.
Did she trust him to catch her before she hit the ground? Did she have any other choice?
When her foot reached the bottom of the ladder, she took another deep breath.
"Don't be scared." Zuko's voice was the only means Katara had of pinpointing his location in the vast darkness below.
"I'm not," Katara's voice quavered.
'Close your eyes. It'll be over in a second."
The wind whipped at Katara's hair and clothing like hands trying to push her off the ladder. She looked around one last time to find Zuko.
"Don't worry," he called. "I'll be there to catch you."
A final deep breath, and Katara closed her eyes and let go of the ladder. Hopefully, her shrieking wouldn't give her away.
For a split second, Katara's soul left her body. It drifted, light as a feather, before rejoining her corporeal form, plummeting like a stone fishing weight and plopping into Zuko's arms.

https://youtu.be/pbT3uvOl3Dk

"You can open your eyes now," Zuko said.
Katara's eyes flickered open. The face of her Blue Spirit hung over her. "Now how do we get back up there again," she said.
"Good question." Zuko set her feet on the ground. "But first, we have to figure out how we're going to get on board Zhao's ship."
Katara froze the ice beneath their feet into a solid path to get them where they needed to go. Zuko used his flames to melt the lock on an escape latch so they could sneak on board. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the dark corridor they found themselves in. "These battleships all have the same layout," he said. "Prisoners are usually locked up in the lowest part of the ship."
A labyrinth of narrow passageways led to the brig. Its entrance was guarded by a single soldier, exhausted due to the late hour and irritated because he had to miss the celebrations.
"Too easy," Zuko sneered. He drew his swords and ran in for the attack.

"You there," the guard shouted. "What are you doing?"
The sound of clashing metal filled the air as Zuko swung his swords. One sliced through the fabric of the guard's tunic. The guard ducked from the other blade, which just about missed grazing his shoulder. Zuko then aimed for the guard's legs to incapacitate him, but the guard somehow managed to jump over his blades.
"Bastard!" The guard kicked Zuko in the chest, knocking the air out of his lungs and sending him flying to the ground. He drew his dagger and stabbed Zuko in his shoulder.
Katara ran in to help Zuko. She snuck up behind the guard, pulled some of the moisture out of the air, and bent it into a water whip. Hooking the guard around his ankle, Katara tripped him, causing him to fall back against the wall and drop his dagger. Katara froze his wrists together to prevent him from regaining his weapon.
The guard spat at her. "Water-bending witch."
"Witch...that's right," Katara giggled. "And I summoned this demon from the deepest pits of Hell." Zuko rose to his feet, picked up his swords, and pinned the guard against the wall, one blade at each side of his neck. Katara whispered into the guard's ear. "I'll know if you anything about this and if you don't keep your mouth shut, I send any ever nastier demon to finish you off."
The guard's face went pale.

They released the captured Air Nomad, a mere boy, barely in his teens, and his flying bison. Katara had dozens of questions for the young Avatar but knew they didn't have the time. The sun was just starting to rise, and they only had a few hours of darkness left at most.
"Thank you," Aang said before he climbed into the saddle of his flying bison and flew away with a "yip yip."
When they returned to the ship, Katara brought Zuko back to their room to heal his shoulder wound with her bending. Energy flowed from her body into his. The muscle tissue in Zuko's wound fused back together; the skin stitched its self up, leaving just a tiny scar. Zuko rose from the bed as good as new.
Now alone, Katara could finally do something about the fire in her belly, an unknown and frightening sensation.
Tracing a finger down her abdomen, she stopped at the ties of her pants. She pictured Zuko's rough, warm hands caressing her cheek as she untied her pants and pulled them down. Then, she pushed up the skirt of her under robe and spread her thighs.

Slipping a finger into her slick womanhood, Katara imagined it was Zuko's hand doing this. His face looked down at her as she was being pierced to the core by his flaming touch. A moan escaped her lips, and she covered her mouth with the other hand.

Katara writhed in delight when a second finger slid into her. These two fingers brushed against the swollen red cock's comb between her legs, causing her hips to buck as she continued her stroking and flicking with more urgency. Her back arched, her vision went spotted, her inner muscles clenched, and her body spasmed.
The hand covering her mouth did little to muffle her moans.
Collapsed and gasping, Katara wiped the sweat from her brow.

https://youtu.be/47zs9qepCsU