Title: The Usual Suspects: The Imagined Years

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or other places and things that anyone recognises.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: In The Usual Suspects I said Katara and Zuko were brainwashed into believing their lives had gone quite differently. This is that story.

Notes: I think I have a bunny warren in my brain now. All inconsistencies between this and The Usual Suspects are, naturally, my fault. I will ask you to go along with them, however, unless something really makes you crazy.

One little mistake. That was all it was, and it cost her so dearly.

"Go find your Dad, sweetie. I'll handle this." She had to find her dad, but she was a waterbender. She couldn't leave her mom alone with him. He was a firebender, and they were very bad. How could she not try to save her?

"Leave my mom alone!" she shouted. Her hands moved and the ice of the igloo melted enough to give her water. It hit him hard in the chest, but it wasn't enough.

Her mother's eyes were wide and scared. "Katara! No!" Her mother dove for the man, grabbing at him, screaming and clawing. Trying to pry Katara loose from the hands that had grabbed her faster than a striking snake hawk. "She's just a child!" One hand managed to grab a pot by the handle, bringing it around to strike at the man, but his helmet took the blow and he didn't seem to feel it at all.

His hand came up and an orange glow erupted around his fist. It all seemed to happen so slowly that she saw every second of it, and so fast she could do nothing but watch from where she dangled, kicking and struggling, from his other arm. The nimbus of fire sharpened into focus, leaping from that gloved fist into the air. It flew straight, hitting her mother in the chest with so much more force than what Katara had struck him with.

Her mother flew backwards, slammed hard against the ground and didn't move. Where there had been smooth blue-dyed seal leather, decorated with white fur, there was just charred black, like the fire pit after a bonfire died out. Around the edges, red began to seep over the blue, changing it to match the red of the armour of the firebender who'd killed her.

She was dead. There was no doubt of that. Katara screamed, shrill and desperate. That was the last thing she remembered before something came down on her head and everything went black.

When she woke up, she was in a small room, all made of metal. It smelled weird and there were loud clanking noises everywhere. She was lying on a cot, and for a moment she didn't know where she was or what was going on.

Then she remembered the attack, her mother and the soldier that killed her. She'd been taken by Fire Nation soldiers and she didn't know why. She just knew that she was scared and alone and there was a good chance her dad wouldn't be able to save her. With that last thought, she curled into a ball and started crying.

Time passed very slowly for her. The first time one of the soldiers came in he was all in his armour and he had on a terrifying helmet that made it look like he had a skull for a face. He dropped a tray to the ground with a clang and walked back out without a second thought. She had been pressed to the wall, terrified he was going to do to her what had been done to her mother. The next time the door had opened, another one with a scary helmet had had to practically carry her out of the room. She'd been scared and he'd loomed over her, and her knees had been shaking so hard she could barely stand. All he'd done was take her to a washroom and back to her cell, but she'd still been frightened.

Over time, things had settled into a routine. She got to know the soldiers who would smile a little at her, sometimes slipping her a small sweet, and the ones that acted like she had some kind of disease. She even got to know the names of a few of them. There was Lee, who sometimes came in and told her bedtime stories and Shin who would get her cups of water to play with. Jizu was the last one whose name she knew, and he would tell her things about the Fire Nation that made it sound kind of pretty.

But it was a long trip, she never saw the sun, and in the end, none of them would ever help her escape.

When she finally saw the sun again, she was standing on the deck of the ship, surrounded by soldiers with the scary skull helmets again. Instead of the snow and ice of her homeland, there was a dock full of people dressed in reds, browns and blacks, the air so hot she could see a sort of wobbly effect on the streets, like the way the air wobbled over the fires back home. There were also more people on the docks than were in her village, and the city itself seemed to stretch on farther than the eye could see.

Katara was marched down the gangplank, and to a covered wagon. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was in it. There was no chance of escape and she didn't want to see any more of the Fire Nation. It was too big, too strange, too different and too scary. The trip passed in silence. Eventually they reached their destination and Katara was led out of the wagon, down several hallways, and finally found herself in a huge room with lots of people in very elegant clothes. At the far end there was a raised area with a curtain of fire in front of part of it.

There was someone behind that curtain and beside it were a boy and girl about her own age. She found herself flung to her knees and a voice spoke. "What have you brought before the Fire Lord, Yon Rha?"

"I bring you the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, my lord."

Katara gasped. She was in front of the Fire Lord?

Zuko wanted to be anywhere but in the throne room. Not only was it boring on a good day, but his sister always made sure to whisper things to him to make him angry enough to get tossed out, then punished by their father. His mother wasn't there anymore either, so he couldn't look to her for a smile or a kind word. All he wanted to do was go back to his room where he could lock the door and Azula out along with the rest of the world.

He wasn't even interested in anything going on at court, until the soldiers came marching in and practically threw the girl to the floor in front of them. A part of him wanted to shout at the men for their rough treatment, but he knew that would not only get him in trouble, but he didn't know who she was. Perhaps a hostage from a royal family in the Earth Kingdom. Someone they could use to gain a bloodless surrender from some city-state or other.

"What have you brought before the Fire Lord, Yon Rha?" asked the Fire Lord.

The man, Yon Rha presumably, bowed and declared, "I bring you the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, my lord."

His sister perked up, but Zuko stayed slumped where he was. What did he care about some girl, waterbender or not? "She doesn't look like much," his sister commented quietly. He didn't bother responding. Sometimes if he kept it up long enough, she'd go off and torment some puppies instead of him. "Nothing to say, Zuzu?" she asked, the hated nickname sliding easily off her tongue. He chose again to simply ignore her.

"What are you going to do with me?" the girl on the floor asked.

Zuko could feel his father's glare at her insolence at addressing him as an equal. The fact that it was a completely valid question would hold no weight with the Fire Lord. Zuko felt his interest piqued, however. Who was this girl that she would speak to the Fire Lord himself in such a familiar manner? Peering carefully through his eyelashes so his sister wouldn't see his interest, he took his first real look.

She was about his age, maybe younger, wearing a blue dress with darker blue leggings underneath. It looked awfully hot to wear, but he supposed if she was from one of the savage places where things got so cold the water turned to ice all the time, perhaps they were necessary. There were some decorations around the hemline, at the arms and around her neck. Stylized waves and some other things he was too far away to decipher. Her hair was brown and her skin was a dark shade he'd never seen on a person before.

She looked . . . different. He wanted to see more, to ask her about the South Pole and how cold it really was there. He wanted to find out what a waterbender could do.

Beside him, Azula got a happy, malicious, grin on her face. Zuko tensed in spite of himself and knew she'd noticed. She looked like that frequently and it meant bad news for someone, usually him. The last time she'd looked like that, she'd managed to burn his hand while they were eating dinner, without anyone noticing. It had made him look clumsy and put him in public disgrace with his father who never cared that it was Azula's fault.

"May I have permission to speak, my lord?" she asked.

Their father turned his head a little and said, "You are acknowledged, Princess Azula."

The grin widened. "As this peasant has been so disrespectful of you as you address you without first receiving permission, I would suggest that she be whipped before you execute her as an enemy of our nation."

The girl gasped, which only made Azula happier.

Taking great care to sound as bored as he could be, Zuko asked, "May I have permission to speak, my lord?"

"You are acknowledged, Prince Zuko," his father sounded as irritated with him, as he had sounded fondly indulgent of Azula.

Bracing himself to keep sounding as though he could care less, Zuko said, "I would suggest you place her with our palace slaves. It would be a strong statement to our enemies that we would enslave and keep one of their own."

There was a pause as the Fire Lord considered the matter. Suddenly he chuckled, darkly. "I have heard some delightful tales of what a waterbender can do for a man," he mused aloud. "Yes. Let us keep her. She may well grow into a perfect curiosity for my personal . . . entertainment." He looked out into the throne room and said, "It shall be as my son recommends. The girl shall be a slave to the Fire Nation. Let her know the greatness of our nation so that she will know her people can never repel our power."

Zuko deliberately made himself continue to look bored at the proceedings. When it was finally possible for him to leave, he rose, only to be interrupted by his father. "Zuko."

"Yes, my lord?"

"I am most appreciative of your suggestion my son."

The flush of happiness at his father's words felt tainted somehow, and he didn't know why. Zuko simply retreated to his room.

Katara was there for a week before it happened. She was put to all sorts of menial tasks, like scrubbing pots and pulling out thorny weeds from the gardens. Anything stinky, gross or really hard, but uncomplicated, was what she was delegated. Everyone there seemed to look down on her, even the other slaves. Night after night she cried herself to sleep, wanting her brother and father to come and rescue her from the nightmare that was her life now.

One day, though, she was sent up to the royal wing. She was told she had to go into the prince's room, change his bedsheets and collect the dirty clothes from the day before. Katara had no idea why she was being delegated the job, which was for servants much more highly ranked than she could ever be as a slave, until she overheard a few of them cheerily declaring they were so happy they had the ugly Water Tribe girl to get scarred up by the prince's tantrums when his privacy was invaded.

Trembling in sheer terror, she'd approached his door, carrying her basket of laundered clothes and fresh bedclothes. Shaking, she'd knocked on the door, hesitantly calling out to let the prince know she was coming in. She waited as long as she dared for some kind of acknowledgement, but there was no sound from inside. Eventually she had to go in or risk a beating. So Katara took a deep breath and opened the door, slipping quietly inside. The room was dark except for a small altar with some lit candles on it. Unable to see, she pulled the small stub of candle she'd managed to filch for herself out of her apron and used the altar candles to light her stub so she could find her way around to the windows or to some lamps.

Just as she'd lit the candle, a hand clamped around her wrist, making her drop her stub, which luckily went out as it fell. "Who are you and what are you doing in my rooms?" demanded the hand's owner. It sounded like a boy.

"I . . ." It just came out. She hadn't intended to say it, but between the fright and her bitterness at these people who thought she was just a sacrifice on the altar of their own convenience the words spilled forth. "I was sent because the maids are scared the prince will hurt them and it was okay to send the 'ugly Water Tribe girl' to get scarred."

Suddenly the hand let go. She could just make out the figure as he walked across the room and yanked open the curtains over the windows that had been keeping the room dark. She blinked in the sudden light, and saw the boy who had been on the platform that day with the Fire Lord. Katara abruptly remembered that she was supposed to kneel before anyone of noble rank or higher until they told her to get up.

A moment after she had fallen to her knees, he said, sounding amused, "Why would you kneel now? It's a little late, don't you think?"

Not so amused herself at the mockery, Katara sat back on her heels and snapped, "Well, first I couldn't see anything in here, so I thought there wasn't anyone in. Why should I bother kneeling to nobody? Anyhow, I wasn't going to kneel until I knew what was down there." She looked around in dismay. "You have stuff all over the floor. You're worse than my brother . . ." She trailed off as both her homesickness threatened to overwhelm her and she realised being a smart aleck at the prince wasn't that smart.

He frowned at her and said, "What were you saying before, though? About the maids sending you here?"

"I shouldn't say," Katara said. "If I tell and then they find out I told, they'll punish me."

"I order you to tell me," he said. "What did they say?"

She'd been ordered. She couldn't disobey an order by the prince. So Katara told him. She wasn't of a high enough rank to be in his rooms, but they all thought he was going to have a fit of some kind, so they'd sent her here because scarring an ugly girl was no loss.

The first thing he said when she finished was, "You're not ugly."

She just stared. That was what he had to say?

"You say they really think I'm going to hurt them?" he asked her.

Katara nodded.

"Good," he growled. "They're always coming in here and picking up things and looking through my things and then they go and start rumours and tell my father. I'm sick of getting in trouble because the servants have big mouths." He looked at her, then said, "I'm going to have you made into my personal slave," he declared. "So far you aren't doing all the stupid things the others do."

Shooting him a sideways look, she said, "I still have to clean up your rooms and change your sheets. If I don't I'll be in trouble."

Zuko frowned at the girl. He knew what it was like to get in trouble for something that was totally not your fault. He also knew that there would be other servants sent to his room at some point, so she wouldn't be able to lie about it. Thinking very hard, he came up with a solution. "I'll help," he declared. "If you touch something I don't want you to, I'll make you stop."

More than that, though, he wanted her to like him. None of the servants liked him much because he wanted to be left alone and they were always poking and prodding and touching his things and acting like he should like it when they did it. It hadn't mattered so much before his mother left, but they kept taking his mother's things away from his room and airing out things. The scent of her perfume was already gone from the scarf he'd taken from her wardrobe.

He'd always heard his father talking about training the servants young and early. Maybe if he took this one away from the others, he could get her trained to do things the way he wanted them done. Also, he'd be able to maybe hear more about all the savages in the Water Tribes. It had to be more interesting than his stupid lessons with their stupid scrolls of boring stuff about how many tribesmen had been killed since the war started. Anything interesting, like the igloos they lived in or their funny rituals, were never talked about.

If having to help with his rooms was the price he paid for getting something interesting and a servant who wouldn't mess everything up then tell on him, he'd do it.

So when she tremulously smiled at him, and started for his bed, carrying her basket of linens and things, he trailed after her. He'd never actually watched the servants do their work. He'd always been too busy being angry that they were messing up his things. "So I'm gonna do your bed first," she told him. "Do you have anything in there that you don't want me to touch or see or something?"

Zuko thought a moment, then realised that the handkerchief of his mother's he'd scrounged up was in the sheets. "Turn around," he directed her. He hastily climbed onto the bed and collected it, balling it up and stuffing it into a corner of his wardrobe. He kept looking at her the whole time, but she stayed facing the wall. When he'd gotten the handkerchief hidden properly, he declared, "Okay, you can turn around." Then he looked helplessly at the big mattress with its sheets and pillows and said, "Now what?"

The girl sighed, and started to collect the pillows, piling them high on a chair by the window. Zuko watched her and decided that was simple enough and joined her. It was interesting, all this taking the layers of sheets and things off the bed. Then she took the clean ones and started putting them on. "Can you make sure that side stays straight while I do this one?" she asked, absently. As if he wasn't a prince.

It was a little like when Azula ordered him around, but instead of her being mean about it and having mean plans, the girl was just . . . asking. Like how Mai and Ty Lee just asked each other stuff. Not that he wanted to be around Azula's friends or anything, but this was . . . nice.

They finished with the bed, and then she wandered around his room, putting things away, and always asking where he wanted them and soon he realised it would be faster if he just put them away himself where he wanted. She watched for a minute, then started rubbing at things with a rag and stuff. "What are you doing?" he asked when the last of his toys was ordered the way he wanted them ordered.

"Dusting," she answered. Zuko frowned and came closer, watching as she rubbed the cloth against one of the decorative sculptures in his room. If he looked really closely, he could see that it seemed a little brighter after she rubbed it. Before she could do the next one, he poked at it with a finger, intrigued to discover that a bit of stuff came off it.

The sheer novelty of the experience meant that he followed her through the whole cleaning process, helping when it looked easy, watching the rest of the time. "You've never done any of this, have you?" she asked, curiously, when he joined her at scrubbing his bathtub. Normally he was firebending at the servants by now, aggravated with them for talking to him like he was dumb, sticking all his stuff where he didn't want it and invading all the corners of his rooms.

"No," he replied, concentrating on making his scrubbing as good as hers. "This is servant's work."

"So why are you doing it?" she asked, pausing to look at him.

Why was he doing it? "Because it's interesting," he replied.

"Scrubbing the bathtub is interesting?" she asked, sceptically.

He glared at her. "I'm a prince. I don't have to be doing any of this," he snapped at her. "Why are you questioning me?"

Then, to emphasise his point, as he'd seen his father do so often, he bent a little fireball at her. It wasn't big enough to really hurt her or anything, and he hadn't even been aiming at her. She still shrieked, then scrambled back from him, trembling.

Katara suddenly understood why the other servants were so frightened. She had almost forgotten that he was the prince. She'd been treating him like she would any other boy. Then he'd shot fire at her. Like the fire that killed her mom.

After that first day, when he'd suggested she become a slave instead of being whipped and killed, she'd thought he might be nice under his spoiled exterior. Now she understood he was just as bad as the others. Suppressing tears, she just focussed on doing her job, limiting her answers to his questions as much as possible. She hurried through the rest of her job, and scurried out the door as soon as he dismissed her, rushing herself and her things back to the servants wing.

"Oh, look at that," said the woman who'd assigned her the job. "The little Water wench had a bad time with the prince."

Katara just kept her head down and tried not to burst into tears.

Another voice behind her snickered and said, "Nothing to say? I'd've thought your mommy would have taught you better than that."

It was too much to be borne. "My mom's dead!" she yelled at them. "She's dead because you people came to our village for no reason and then he shot fire at her and there was a big hole in her chest! She's dead because your stupid army killed her just 'cause she was protecting me!"

Someone grabbed her from behind, and said, "I don't think I care for your attitude, savage." It was Huzin, one of the butlers who seemed to really enjoy tormenting her. One of his hands came up, and before Katara even realised what was happening, he'd hit her, hard, across the face.

"Huzin, enough," said the slave mistress. Before Katara could be left with the impression she might have an ally in this horrible place, the woman continued. "She won't be able to do any work if you beat her." Then she turned to Katara. "Get to the kitchen and start scrubbing pots, girl. They won't clean themselves."

She scurried off to the kitchen and wept as she scrubbed. Between the sweat and the way she was able to keep her back to the room no one would notice.

True to his statement the day before, however, the prince had demanded the servants make her his personal slave to clean his room. This time, however, she just kept silent. Staring at the floor, not wanting to set him off, the memory of her mother hovering in the back of her mind the whole time. He helped again, making snooty comments the whole time about what she was doing, but she didn't say anything back unless she absolutely had to.

It went on like this for two more days before he said something.

Zuko couldn't understand it. She'd been talking to him when she first got there. She'd answered his questions and he'd liked her being there. But something happened, and he wasn't sure what, after he'd bended while they were doing his tub. It was like she'd just sort of curled up into a shell like a snail.

He still wanted her to be his personal servant though, so he'd contacted the major-domo to make sure she was permanently detailed to do his room. She'd been respectful, she'd listened to him and she hadn't been stupid either. So he was really looking forward to talking to her the next day. He'd gotten a whole list of questions ready to ask her about the Water Tribes, too.

Something was wrong, though. She'd come in and just stared at the floor, a bruise on the side of her face. Instead of talking to him, or asking him to help, she'd just scurried about, letting him get his stuff moved before she did things, but otherwise silent. He hadn't pushed. Maybe something had happened after she left and she'd been punished for some misconduct. Maybe she'd be better the next day.

But she wasn't better the next day, or the day after. Finally, he couldn't stand it any more. "I asked you to be here because I wanted to talk to you," he said imperiously. "You're barely responding to me at all. I demand to know why."

She looked up at him, and Zuko suddenly realised she was scared of him. Scared of him like the servants were scared of his father and Azula. It was, as he understood it, the way things were supposed to be, but it didn't feel right. Like she wasn't supposed to be afraid at all. He didn't want her afraid. "I'm sorry, your highness," she said softly.

"Why are you scared?" he asked, curiously. The only thing he'd done was a little bit of bending. But anyone could have blocked it, and he'd deliberately totally missed her, anyhow.

That got a reaction. She glared at him. "You threw a fireball at me," she said. "I just wanted to know why you thought cleaning a bathtub was that interesting and you . . . you . . ." She stopped abruptly, pressing her lips tightly closed and flinching.

"It was a little fireball, and I wasn't even aiming at you," he said. "Anyone could have stopped it," Zuko added, annoyed.

"Any firebender, maybe," she muttered.

"I . . ." That stopped him. She wasn't a firebender. She was a waterbender, but firebenders were the best, everyone knew that. And he was the prince. So maybe she really should have been scared of him. He paused, then tried to explain. "My father does that all the time. I was just . . . making sure you knew I was serious about not questioning me."

"By trying to set me on fire?" she demanded.

He looked at her, annoyed. "No. I didn't even aim at you. You're being dumb about nothing."

She glared, but that was better than the scared floor-staring. "I'm being dumb because a prince everybody is scared of threw fire at me?"

He hmphed, and changed the topic. He was the prince, he didn't have to explain anything to some stupid waterbending peasant. "Anyhow, I had some questions I wanted you to answer," he told her.

"About what?" she asked, frowning.

Zuko got up from where he'd been helping her dust the lower shelves in his room, and collected his scroll of questions. She shot him an incredulous look as he dragged a stool over and opened up the scroll. "First . . . my tutor said you live in houses made of snow. How come?" he asked.

Her jaw dropped for a second, and she said, "You wrote a list?"

"Answer the question, servant," he said warningly.

"What else are we supposed to make them out of?" she asked.

Was she stupid? "Uh . . . wood? Stone? Stuff normal people make houses out of?"

"We live on an iceberg," she said. "How much wood and stone do you think we have lying around?" Dummy. The word was implicit.

H hadn't thought of that. "Why don't you buy some?"

"And waste good money we could use for food, firewood and coal on that, when we have perfectly good snow lying around?" She asked, placing things back on the shelf and moving on to dust the next one.

"Oh," Zuko thought about that for a while. His tutor had always made it sound like they didn't build with wood and stone because they were too stupid to think of it. Next question then. "How do you make a house out of snow?" he asked. He'd always wanted to know. "Isn't it really cold in them?"

She started explaining, but it was really complicated. He'd had to get a scroll out to take notes, and she'd sat down next to him, drawing little diagrams and things to make the explanation clearer. When she was finished, he was really impressed. Especially about how all the snow in a dome managed to hold itself up.

"Why are you asking me all these questions?" she asked him. "Why not your tutor?"

"Well," Zuko started, "He won't answer when I ask him, for one." He sighed. "He gives me all these really boring history and geography scrolls to read, and he doesn't care about any of the interesting stuff, just how many battle names I can memorise and things like that." Then he shot her a small smile. "Also because I think he doesn't know. I don't think he knows anything but battle names and dates."

"Oh," she said. "Okay."

Zuko went back to his list. "Do you really eat raw meat?" he asked.

"Well, there are some things we eat raw," she said. "Can you go through your pockets before I collect the dirty clothes?" she asked.

"Like what?" Zuko asked, fascinated.

She thought a moment, "Well when we have the Midnight Sun festival, we serve fresh seal liver," she said. "And the warriors have competitions to see who gets the heart."

"Midnight sun festival?" Zuko asked. "What's that?"

She stared at him a moment. "You don't celebrate it here? I thought Fire Nation people were all about the sun . . . stuff."

Zuko shook his head. "I've never even heard of it."

"That's when the sun just stays up for days and never goes down," the girl explained. Which was crazy. The sun always went down. That was what it did.

So he responded the only way he could. "You're lying."

"About what?" she sounded affronted.

"About that thing with the sun not going down," he said. "It always goes down. You're just making things up now." He glared at her. "I could make crazy things up too, if I wanted."

She stared. "There's no Midnight Sun here?" she asked, looking confused.

"Are you finished?" he demanded impatiently. "If you are, I want you to leave. And when you come next time, I want you to answer my questions truthfully!"

"I'm not lying!" she shouted back. "Maybe if your fancy tutor were smarter you'd know that!" She collected the linens, dirty clothes and her cleaning supplies and stomped out the door in high dudgeon. Right after she left though, Zuko began to wonder. His new servant wasn't Azula. Maybe she wasn't lying. Maybe at the South Pole the sun did all kinds of crazy things.

So later that day, he asked his tutor about it. The man told him that, not only was there a time of year the sun didn't set for days at the South Pole, but there was a time when the sun didn't rise for days. Not only that, but that it was like that at both poles. Zuko immediately felt bad for yelling at the girl. She had been telling him the truth, and it was a really interesting true thing, and he'd called her a liar.

When she came by the next day, he stiffly apologised, explaining that, while the days got longer or shorter in the Fire Nation, dependent on the time of year, the sun rose and set every day always.

Katara had been very offended when the prince had called her a liar. She'd become a lot more scared after, that he was going to order her punished. She went through her day, very nervous, and was trembling a little when she arrived at the prince's rooms the next morning.

"I must apologise," he said, bowing a little. "I accused you of lying, and you were not."

Her eyes must have been bugging out of her head. "You just apologised."

"Are you going to accept? I want to ask more questions," he told her warningly.

"Um. . . yes? Apology accepted," she said hesitantly. He nodded sharply and went on to ask her questions about the food they ate, the animals they hunted, how the chief ran the tribe, there were so many questions.

He looked up, startled, when she told him she was the chief's daughter. "You're the only people living there, right?" he asked. "There isn't anyone higher than your father?"

"No," she replied. They were sitting by the window, since with his help they were finished fast enough he could sit and focus on nothing but asking her about her village. She shrugged. "Dad is the one who makes the decisions about the whole village."

He wasn't interested in that, any more. "So then he's like the king," he declared. "He's in charge of everyone at the South Pole, so that makes you a princess." He frowned. "There are rules about how captive royalty is supposed to be treated." He looked at her earnestly. "I should tell my father you're the princess. You'd get a nice room and servants."

It was a nice thought, but there was one problem with it. "There's only our village there, your highness," Katara said. "It's not enough for Dad to be a king of anything. I'm not a princess, I grew up in an igloo. It would be a lie."

"But-"

"No," she said. "Anyhow, I'm scared of your dad. I'd rather be a servant and not have him notice me." Then she looked up and saw where the sun had moved since she'd arrived in his room to clean. "It's late, your highness. May I have leave to go?" she asked.

He looked up and noticed the same thing she had and made a face. "Okay. I mean, yes. You have leave to go."

That night, right before bed, Zuko realised he'd have a lot more time with the girl tomorrow to ask hear to tell him interesting stories about the South Pole if his room was already clean. So once his servants were gone, he ran all over putting things away and used his shirt from that day to do dusting. When she arrived the next morning, she looked around with wide eyes, and asked, "Am I late?"

"No," Zuko told her with a proud smile. "You take so much time cleaning, I don't get to ask all my questions. So I cleaned last night."

She still insisted on going everywhere, and did a lot of stuff over again, telling him it wasn't good enough, but it took a lot less time and he got to ask her about the sky lights she'd mentioned the day before. "Well, they don't always come, but most nights, if you go out after sunset, these blue and green lights appear in the sky. Like a glowing ocean just flew up and landed overtop the stars. I miss them."

It all sounded so exotic and different, Zuko decided right then to demand that she be permanently assigned, not just to cleaning his room, but to being his personal attendant. He wanted it badly enough, that he didn't risk his father's refusal, and bypassed the Fire Lord entirely. Instead he went straight to the major-domo, the man in charge of such assignments, and declared that he was simply taking the new slavegirl as his personal body servant. She was to be moved to the tiny adjoining room to his where his was supposed to sleep, so that his nursemaids could begin training her during their last year caring for him.

He was the prince, and no orders had been made regarding the Water Tribe girl. So the man was forced to do as his prince demanded. Mere hours later, Zuko was called into his father's office.

"Huo-Jin has informed me you demanded the Water girl as your body servant, Zuko. Might I ask why?" The question was deceptively mild, and Zuko knew he was going to have to prove, somehow, that she should be his. In desperation he asked himself what would Azula, the favoured child, do?

He raised his chin, looked his father in the eye, and said. "I wished her to be my body servant, and it is my right as the crown prince to demand the servant I wish to have. Unless you have an objection, father?"

There was a long pause, and Zuko felt his heart lift as his father smiled, and said, "I am glad to see you finally showing promise, Zuko. You may indeed keep the girl." His face became serious again as he added, "But I expect you to apply appropriate discipline to the savage. Do you understand?"

"Yes, father," said Zuko, and bowed deeply. He felt a flush of triumph. She was all his!

When he got back to his rooms, she had been installed in the servant's bedroom attached to his. It was there, because it was to allow the noble owner of the room to have constant access to the services of his or her body servant. He ordered everyone out and she asked, looking quite bewildered, "What do they mean you've made me into your body servant?"

Zuko smiled, proudly. "You're different. Interesting. So I don't want to have to wait to ask you about the South Pole or anything else. That's why I asked that my nurses and the other servants teach you everything about being my body servant." He waited for her to tell him how grateful she was for the chance. It was a great promotion in rank, especially for a slave like her, and she got to have her own room, right next to his.

Instead she looked confused. "What does a body servant do?"

"You keep my things in order, help me with dressing and bathing-"

She interrupted, looking positively scandalised. "Help with dressing? With bathing?"

He blinked, confused. "Of course."

"Why do you need help with taking a bath?" she asked, looking at him oddly.

He was suddenly very angry. "I have done you a great favour," he yelled. "You now have a very high rank for a servant and you'll have a room next to mine. You could try being grateful!"

"I . . . I do?" she asked. "I . . ."

When she didn't seem about to say any more, Zuko said, hesitantly, "You didn't know?"

She shook her head. "I thought I was gonna have to do that stuff and not get anything except the . . . the chance to see you naked in a bath tub." When she put it that way, Zuko thought maybe it wasn't quite the favour he'd thought it was. Suddenly, he had a thought.

"I should know," he told her. "What's your name?"

She stared at him for a moment, then said, "My name is Katara."

"Katara," Zuko said, trying it out. An exotic name for an exotic girl.

Katara discovered there was rather a lot to being Zuko's body servant. She had to know all the intricacies of his clothing, she had to know how to pick out the right clothes for every occasion, she had to do his hair and help him bathe and keep track of all his clothes, and toys and scrolls and decorations. She had to be there to serve food for him, in the way of pouring tea, serving him from the dishes and generally waiting on him hand and foot.

She still preferred his company over that of the other servants. They were truly horrible to her, acting as though her birth to a nation other than Fire was some sort of horrible sin against them personally. Zuko meanwhile thought that her being from another nation was just the most interesting thing he'd ever heard of and he constantly questioned her about everything from home.

It was her first day serving him, after a two-day crash course in what and what not to do, and he'd annoyed her by insisting that she put things on his plate for him as though he were one of the little babies back home. Still, she'd rather not push his temper. He was spoiled, but he also had a lot of power over her, and she'd rather be in the little cubby room next to his, than in with the other servants and their sneers.

"So they said that you're the last waterbender at the South Pole," he declared.

She glared at him, mutinously, even as she stood there, pouring his tea carefully. She'd seen another servant being whipped her first day at the palace two weeks before and she hadn't wanted to experience that herself. "So what?" she demanded.

Tact was a little further out of her grasp than usual.

"Well, I wanted you to come spar with me," he explained. "When I get older, if father puts me in charge of the army, we're not gonna be fighting firebenders, we'll be fighting earthbenders and waterbenders." He nodded decisively. "So I wanna be prepared for what a different kind of bender can do." He hastily added, "Not that you can beat me. Firebenders are the best!"

She would have been angry with him for saying something so stupid like that, but remembering made her sad. "I . . . I don't have any training," she explained. "I've been the first one in forever. Mom . . . she tried to tell them it was her, not me, but they . . . that man he . . . k- killed . . ." She'd sobbed then.

Through her tears, she'd seen his eyes go wide and he'd looked panicked before getting a look rather like he was about to stick his hand into a bucket of something really icky. Then he hugged her and said, "My mom's . . . gone. Too."

It was sympathy. Real sympathy, not just the sort-of-nice men on the ship that brought her. Zuko wasn't scared of being punished for hugging her, and she couldn't keep herself from curling into him, and clinging too tightly to this boy that confused her so much, but was still the nicest person in the whole crazy Fire Nation.

Zuko felt really awful. His mother had died so recently, he knew just how that felt. Worse though, Katara's mom had died at the hands of Fire Nation troops. He certainly couldn't imagine how terrible it would feel to know that he had been kidnapped by the same people who killed his mother. So he patted her on the back while she cried herself out.

When the sobs had died down and she was just sniffling a little, he asked, "Are you . . . um . . . done?"

That made her mad. "Well I'm so sorry that my feeling bad about my mom is so inconvenient," she snapped.

"I just wanted to know if you were done crying or not!" he protested. "I wasn't trying to say it was inconvenient."

She gave him a suspicious look, but seemed to decide she wasn't going to be mad any more. Which was good, because Zuko wanted to ask another question. Before he could, she exclaimed, "Oh no!"

"What is it?"

She pointed at him. "Your robe! It's silk! Your nurses said that even water would stain them," she said miserably. "I'm going to be in trouble. What if they don't come out?"

"Then they don't," he informed her haughtily. "Anyhow, if I don't want you in trouble, you won't be."

"Really?" she asked, looking doubtful. "I have lessons and things with your nurses and other people teaching me ettiquette. You're not gonna be there all the time."

"If I say so, they won't punish you," he told her. "That doesn't mean I'm going to interfere, just that I don't want punishments to interfere with what I want."

"Oh," she said, nodding.

Now he could ask his latest question. "I wanted to know something, though," he informed her.

"What?" she asked. She also sighed after, looking put-upon.

"You don't have any training for your bending?" he asked. "But wouldn't your father send away for someone to train you if there weren't any benders to teach you at the South Pole?" He'd really wanted to spar with a waterbender.

She looked miserable. "I asked once, and he said the Northern Tribe wasn't talking to us any more."

Zuko frowned. That didn't sound right. "Why not?"

Katara shrugged. "I dunno. He just said that they thought we weren't good enough for them or something. Like the fact that we didn't have any more benders made us not as good."

Well, that stank, Zuko thought. "So no one ever taught you anything?"

"No," she said, pouting. "I mean, Gran-gran had one scroll with a few things on it, but it was really hard and Sokka always laughed at me."

Zuko grumbled. "I know what that's like. Azula's always laughing at me when I'm bending. Like it's funny that I'm not as good as her. Everything just comes so easy to her."

"Why is she so mean and scary?" Katara asked him. "She wanted to have me flogged and executed for asking what the Fire Lord was going to do to me."

"I don't know," Zuko said. "Except that Dad thinks it's good that she's like that and he doesn't like it when I'm not."

Katara got a look on her face that was a little like the look his mother had that time Azula tried to set the turtle ducks ablaze. She didn't say anything, though.

They were separated again, more lessons for both of them. So while she was learning whatever it was body servants learned to be proper body servants, Zuko was learning the really boring history of the Fire Nation's glorious victory over the Southern Water Tribe.

". . . so when the great general Zotan had melted their primitve dwellings to the ground, he demanded they turn over all their benders as a sign of goodwill to the mighty Fire Nation-"

"What's that mean?" Zuko asked, curiously.

"What does what mean, your highness?" asked his much put-upon tutor. Zuko had been asking lots of questions lately. Talking to Katara had told him there were stories his tutor wasn't telling right. So he'd been asking to try to figure out the problems. He wanted the right facts, after all.

"Giving the benders to us as good will," Zuko said. "Isn't good will when you do someone a sort of favour so they'll like you and do you a favour back later?"

"It is," his tutor said through gritted teeth. He didn't like the questions.

"Then how is that good will? They're not going to get anything back, are they? What are they getting back for it later?"

It was the last straw for his tutor. "The favour is the Fire Nation choosing not to sweep down on them and wipe them off that miserable ice berg." Before Zuko could express his surprise at that particularly blunt assessment, his tutor said, "If you are so interested in the savages at the South Pole, you can go to the library and research in the scrolls there on them. I expect a two-scroll essay on why the Fire Nation had to remove the threat of the Southern Water Tribe in three days."

The man stormed out and Zuko was left to his own devices for the rest of his normal tutoring time. With nothing else to do, he headed to the library and started digging around in the scrolls to find something for his essay. "Water Tribes . . . Water Tribes . . ." he muttered as he looked up and down the shelves. He found the scrolls eventually and picked a bunch at random, since he was only nine and the librarian was giving him snooty looks and not helping with his research at all.

He was looking through the scrolls, when he found a really neat-looking picture. It was a waterbender, making some arcane gestures, and big sharp pieces of ice were flying through the air, clearly under his command. At the other side of the picture, a Fire Nation soldier was cowering away from them, clearly frightened.

Zuko suddenly recalled Katara saying that her Gran-gran had some scrolls of waterbending moves. That gave him an idea. He went poking around in the library, and discovered, far in the back, dusty and disused scrolls of bending techniques. Not just firebending, but water, earth and even some airbending techniques. Casually, Zuko sauntered back out, collected a bunch of notes about why the Fire Nation had to wipe out the Water Tribes, and waited until the librarian was gone on a break somewhere.

He scurried into the back, yanking off his outer robe, and collected as many of the scrolls as he could fit into the robe if he used it as a bag, stuffed some extras into the bag he'd brought for his essay research, and scampered off back to his rooms before the librarian got back.

Katara was looking disgruntled and practicing formal bows in front of his mirror when he came bursting in the door. She went off-balance, and fell over with a shriek.

"What's wrong with you?" he demanded as he dumped his haul out onto the bed.

Katara glared at his royal jerkiness. "You scared me," she groused.

He didn't even have the grace to pretend to be repentant. "It's just bows," he said. "They're easy."

"Maybe for you," she said. "But those scary ladies came in and stood there and they were mean and horrible and they said I had to practice until I get them right." The two elderly women had stormed into her etiquette lessons and had dismissed her normal teachers. They had proceeded to poke and prod at her and say awful things until she'd wanted to cry.

"Were they twins?" Zuko asked, looking a little interested. "If they were two old lady twins, then it was Li and Lo. They're Azula's nurses."

"They're creepy," Katara declared.

Zuko nodded. "They are. I think Azula likes them creepy, though." Then his patience clearly wore out. "C'mere," he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her to his bed. "Look at this!"

Katara knew this wasn't what was important, but when she saw it, "Look at the dust all over your bed!" she shrieked. "It's gonna take me forever to deal with that!"

"I'll help you," he said impatiently. "Look at the scrolls!"

Hesitantly, they really were very dusty and there was a dead spider on one, Katara unrolled a scroll. Before her wondering eyes, a picture of a waterbender moving water around and changing it into a pair of sharp knives was revealed. "Waterbending scrolls!" she breathed.

"Yes!" Zuko exclaimed happily. "There are some earth, fire and air ones too. I thought maybe you could learn waterbending from the scrolls, and I could learn something from the fire ones that I could use to finally beat Azula!" He was going to say more, but suddenly he was tackled by a happy and hugging waterbending girl who was babbling in her excitement.

"!" she squealed in her joy. She'd finally be able to learn waterbending.

It took some time for Zuko to find them a place where they could both practice out of sight of prying eyes, but when he did, Katara started spending every spare moment she could there, even sneaking out in the middle of the night to practice. It was only a few weeks, but it turned out to be just in time for her.

The height of a Fire Nation summer hit. If she hadn't been able to make herself ice cubes and cold drinks instantly, Katara was sure she would have melted. Zuko declared her the best servant in the whole palace when she was able to stick a giant block of ice under the big fan in his room to make the breeze on him even cooler.

He poked his head into her room where she was practicing her bending by making a bucket of cold water coat her whole body while she lay on her bed in nothing but her underwear. "Katara!"

"Yes?" she asked, sitting up a little.

"Would- What are you doing?" Zuko asked.

"Keeping cool."

He looked at her a little enviously, then shook himself. "I need you to serve tea for me and Uncle."

Katara sighed and got up, sending the water back to its bucket and getting dressed. She'd stopped even thinking about modesty once the heat had hit. All those times she'd wondered about all those Fire Nation people wearing almost nothing were forgotten when she'd realised wearing almost nothing was the thing to do when the heat was likely to make you melt. However, there was a certain bare modicum that was needed to be decent if you were serving tea to the Fire Lord's brother.

She arrived in the room to find the other servants had already laid out the various serving dishes for the food, and that there was a piping hot pot of tea waiting. She went out and started serving, trying not to pay attention to the conversation between the prince and his uncle. She'd been told that good servants didn't hear anything but what was addressed directly to them, so she tried very hard not to notice.

Katara did, however, knowing how much Zuko disliked tea on a cold day, nevermind a hot one, chill her master's tea to ice cold as she poured for him. Zuko picked it up, sipped delicately and shot her a startled look. She just smiled at him. "Thank you, Katara," he said.

"I do not suppose you would do me a similar favour, young waterbender?" the general asked.

A chill that had nothing to do with her bending slipped down Katara's spine. "I- I beg your pardon?" she asked, hoping he meant something else. She didn't want to be noticed by the Fire Lord, and if his brother noticed her . . .

When she froze, Zuko covered for her. She never knew whether he was doing things for himself or because he was nice – although he was sort of nice sometimes, he was also pretty spoiled and she wasn't sure which was prompting him half the time – but she was grateful anyhow. "What favour, Uncle?" he asked.

"Why, of cooling my tea similarly to how she cooled yours, nephew," came the reply.

Zuko knew he had to hide Katara's waterbending from everyone. His father wouldn't be happy one of the enemy was learning how to use her bending against them (even though he knew he could beat her, so what was the problem?) and his uncle was nice, but really weird. And really weird was a dangerous unknown. So he bit his lip a moment and then faked taking a sip while he hastily breathed heat back into the tea. He was sorry, because the cold tea had been really nice.

He handed his now-hot cup to his uncle and said, "I don't think that's all that cooled, but if you want, we can trade, Uncle."

Uncle Iroh's eyebrows shot up, and he said, "My mistake," as he felt the hot teacup.

For the rest of the meal, Katara was nervous and didn't cool anything else. Which was a pity, because Zuko liked frozen melon, but it really wasn't a good idea for anyone to know she'd been practicing. When his uncle left, she collapsed, shaking, into the chair the man had vacated. "Spirits," she said. "I was so scared."

"It's okay," he said, trying to soothe her. "Even if Uncle had found out, he's really nice. He probably wouldn't have told anyone if I'd asked."

"You think?" she said, looking at him hopefully.

Zuko nodded. "Uh-huh." Then he grinned. "There's some time now. Do you have anything you need to do? 'Cause we could go practice."

Katara grinned back at him. "Yeah!"

As they raced through the halls, slipping behind columns and hiding in doorways to avoid being detected, Zuko grinned happily himself. He liked training with Katara. She'd finally learned enough to start sparring a little, and it was so different how water worked from fire. It made the sparring really interesting. Also, when he was practicing with her, she'd say nice things and wouldn't laugh at him when he messed up the way Azula did. Sometimes she even made some really interesting suggestions. They didn't always work, but it was fun for a change.

In fact, as the weeks passed, Zuko found himself improving rapidly. Having the chance to practice without someone either breathing down his neck because he wasn't good enough yet, or laughing at him because he wasn't a genius, but just a normal kid, did wonders.

It had been six months since Katara came to the palace when Zuko found himself called in front of his father to spar with Azula. He'd been avoiding it because he hated seeing the disappointment on his father's face, and worse, hearing that infuriating giggle that would erupt from Azula no matter what he did. It didn't matter if he was simply taking his position at the far end of the arena or if he made some mistake, she'd laugh at him, then her friends would laugh at him. It always made him so mad. He'd never laughed at her when she'd first started, making her own dumb mistakes. He never laughed at her when something embarrassing happened to her. He tried to be a good big brother.

He didn't want to go, but he had to. Right before he went in, Katara told him, "I know you said you hate this lots. Don't let her annoy you."

"How'm I supposed to do that?" he grumbled at her.

She gently bonked him on the head with a fist. "Remember what I told you? She's not laughing 'cause she thinks anything's funny. She's laughing to get to you mess up. So assume that any time she's laughing it doesn't mean anything. 'Cause it doesn't."

"But-"

"No 'buts'," she said sternly wagging a finger at him. She looked ridiculous. An eight-year-old girl, trying to look like a stern, nagging fishwife. It made him feel better. "Don't forget that thing you worked out with the torches."

Then he was being called in, and she was racing off to 'get a good seat'. Zuko marched into the arena and saw his sister there. She spotted him and started giggling. He just wanted to throttle her. Then he remembered what Katara said. Azula wasn't finding anything funny. So he ignored her. For the first time, too, it really didn't bother him, once he refused to let it bother him. He marched forward, bowed to his father and just set himself in his ready position. He didn't bother asking Azula if she was ready. He just watched his father out of the corner of his eye and waited for the nod that indicated they were to start.

Azula's giggles were suddenly sounding strained. She actually sounded like she was faking all of a sudden, and she looked upset. Like he was supposed to be doing something and wasn't. Zuko felt a grin stretch over his lips. Katara was a genius. When his father gave the nod, he followed Katara's other bit of advice. He'd told her he always waited until Azula was ready and did the honourable thing. It meant she always wound up getting the first strike in. Katara had said, "Look. If the fight starts when the Fire Lord nods or whatever, then just start when he nods. If he's anything like how you describe him, he'll think it's a good thing that you just go after her."

So while Azula had both hands over her mouth at the far end of the arena, Zuko watched his father out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the nod. When he saw it, he didn't wait, didn't broadcast a move, he just leapt forward blasting at Azula. She managed to block him, but it was just barely. It stopped all the giggling too.

They fought, and she was outmatching him, but it was a lot closer than before and Zuko grinned happily. It felt good to give a good showing. Suddenly she brought her arms around in a new move. He hadn't seen it before. It was one of those stupid advanced moves no one would show him because he wasn't as good as Azula. His stupid sister knew it too. He saw her winding up to giggle.

Then he saw the torch and remembered Katara's words as he walked in. "Don't forget that thing you worked out with the torches."

Moving the fluid way he'd seen Katara move while she was practicing her waterbending, he twisted, reaching out and catching Azula's fire. Swinging around, he felt his inner flame rising fast to meet the other fire. Before he could be scorched from the inside out, he released it all in a wave at Azula.

The giant ball of flame hit her and sent her flying backwards, slamming the princess into the wall behind her.

"Azula!" came Ty-Lee's voice.

Zuko felt so happy he could burst. He won. He beat her. He turned to his father and bowed, then looked up.

"I am most pleased, Prince Zuko," his father said with a slow smile. "Perhaps you are worthy of our family after all."

Keeping a tight lid on his joy, such displays would be unseemly, Zuko bowed again. "I thank you father, for your gracious words."

Azula was on her feet by then, screeching, "He cheated!"

"How?" Zuko asked, affronted that she, of all people, would accuse him of cheating.

Fire Lord Ozai looked at his youngest. "Yes, Princess, how?" he asked, with deceptive mildness.

"I've never seen that move before," she said, pouting. "I'm more advanced than he is. Obviously he must have cheated by using some bending technique from one of the inferior benders of air, earth or water."

His father raised an eyebrow. "Is this true, Prince Zuko?"

Off to the side, Zuko saw Katara, saw her mouthing something. He didn't have to read her lips, though, to know what she was saying. "Don't let 'em scare you."

"I invented a firebending technique, borrowing from techniques I learned from scrolls in the library," Zuko declared. "Although the Fire Nation is superior, I don't see why we can't use the skills of the other nations for our own gain if one should be useful." He looked his father in the eye, trying to balance between challenging him, and being respectful enough. "I have not been given the advanced tutelage Azula has, so I have made a way to even the playing field. Without cheating."

For the first time in longer than Zuko could recall, his father took his side and proudly had his son sit at his right hand at dinner. Azula was forced into Zuko's usual place further down the table. It was a great day, and when he was finally able to make it back to his room, Zuko ran in and practically tackled Katara in a hug.

"Thank you!" he exclaimed. He grinned at her. She smiled back, and helped him get ready for bed.

The next four years were good years. With Katara as his personal servant, Zuko never had to worry about his personal affairs being told to anyone else, and with Zuko as Katara's master, she was able to learn waterbending.

However, it was also a time during which Zuko learned a lot about the world outside the palace, and about what the war his father was waging against the rest of the world was doing to people outside the Fire Nation. He kept his opinions to himself in public, but the sheer unfairness of how Katara's people had been treated made him cringe.

Katara learned how to manoeuvre in the bed of snakes that was the Fire Nation court. Her position as Zuko's personal body servant made her unassailable by many of the higher servants, but caution was still warranted. Zuko knew this, and had been looking for a way to help out his best friend, since she had become his best friend. He wanted her to be free, but it had to be done cautiously.

When he was thirteen, he was called to his father's office after one of his still-infrequent training victories over Azula.

"You wished to see me, father?" he inquired, kneeling.

His father told him, "Rise, Prince Zuko. You have, in recent years, begun to live up to the expectations I had of you when you were younger. Perhaps you will never equal your sister's competence and skill, but you are no longer an embarrassment to the royal family."

"My Lord is very kind," Zuko murmured, bowing his head and peeking up through his eyelashes at his father. He had no other choice. Being told he was inadequate rankled, but there was nothing else to be done.

His father smiled slightly and said, "You have reached a significant age, my son. There are . . . certain needs you will wish to fulfil as you begin your path to manhood." Zuko waited. He had no idea where this was going, but it seemed his father had some sort of plan for him. "I have asked the youngest of my concubines to assist you in your education on these matters," his father declared.

Zuko's head snapped up. His uncle had spoken to him about the interactions between men and women, and Katara had told him of the extremely blunt summation she had received with the other servant girls on the matters of contraception and sex. He swallowed as he saw the scantily-clad young woman come in. "I . . ." don't want this. I don't need this. Uncle said what I needed to know. Isn't she your concubine? A million responses were on his lips, but all he dared say was the expected reply. "Thank you, My Lord."

"You are most welcome, Prince Zuko," said the Fire Lord. "I expect you are quite eager to begin this education. You may both leave." They were dismissed and Zuko found himself blindly following the young lady up to his rooms.

When they walked in, Katara was waiting. Zuko felt quite horrified at the thought of Katara seeing or listening to . . . things. "Katara, you . . ." he tried to show her with his eyes that he was putting on a show. "Will leave us now. I will expect you to return for your duties in . . ." he glanced at the young lady he was supposed to do . . . stuff with. "Four hours."

Katara shot him an indecipherable look as she passed him, but she left without protesting or commenting. Then he was alone with the woman. She smiled, comfortingly, and told him, "Allow me, your highness."

She took his hand and led him to the bed. Then she helped him out of his clothes and touched him a lot. It felt pretty good, but it also felt weird. The not-good sort of weird. Like his body liked it a lot, but his head thought it didn't feel right. When he'd tired, she picked up her things, dressed, and left him. Zuko fell asleep and found himself being poked awake by a worried looking Katara. "What's going on?" she demanded. "You don't look right."

He sat up, still feeling pretty weird. "Father insisted that I . . . um . . . use one of his concubines. He said some stuff about needs and just . . ." he gestured vaguely around him. Then suddenly he reached out and pulled Katara onto the bed with him. Wrapping his arms around her, Zuko clung to her. "I don't feel right," he muttered into her shoulder. "It feels like I did something wrong."

She hugged him back. "It's okay," she told him. "I . . . it'll be okay."

Details spilled out of him that he hadn't even thought he'd noticed. Everything about the whole tryst had felt off. She'd touched him and made him peak and all that stuff, but even when she'd had him panting and aggressively taking a position on top, he'd felt like he wasn't in control. Like she was doing something wrong to him.

Katara had stayed with him night after night while he had night terrors about it. About this woman coming and turning into his father then the man growing to a million feet tall and finally opening his mouth wider and wider until he ate Zuko and the whole world with him. Worse, his father had thrown open the palace concubinage for Zuko and expected him to partake. It meant he had to, because he didn't want to lose what little approval he got from his father. Not so much any more for the sake of the approval, just that if he lost his privileges, be might lose Katara.

He got past his distaste for using the concubines by one simple expedient. One month after the first one, Zuko had started dreaming about Katara. She'd been next to him, doing the things the first concubine had done to him. The funny thing was, when it was Katara, it felt good, and it felt right. At least, in his dreams it did. Waking up hard and reaching for her was really weird, though, and he didn't tell her. He didn't want her to think he was going to make her do anything.

The thought wouldn't leave him, though, and it only intensified when he realised that his father's personal concubines had a rank at least equal to that of the lowest noblemen within the court. If he made Katara his concubine when she turned thirteen, the legal age for such things, she would cease to be a slave. She'd be a freewoman with rank and the ability to own property and everything. There were retired concubines who lived within the Fire Nation capital doing quite well for themselves, running businesses or just living off the gifts they'd received from former masters.

Finally, he proposed the idea to Katara so that she could either accept or reject it. "What do you think?" he asked when he'd finished explaining the advantages.

"I don't know," she said. "I mean . . . I'm only twelve. It's hard to think of doing . . . that . . . especially with you." He didn't smooth his face fast enough and she caught his disappointed expression. "You've been thinking about . . . it . . . with me. Haven't you?" she asked.

"I don't want to make you do anything," Zuko said, hastily. "I can't help what my head does when I'm sleeping, either."

Katara nodded. "I know."

When Zuko had proposed he have his father make her into the Prince's first personal concubine, her first reaction had been to slap him. When he'd started explaining about freed slaves and business opportunities, she realised this was more than him being a jerk. When she said it felt odd to think of being intimate with him, the look on his face had been weird. A bit of disappointment, yes. But he'd had another look that she couldn't quite place. It was a little like the look he had when he talked about his mother.

So that look decided her. She agreed because he was her friend, he'd saved her and helped her learn to bend and she trusted him. If he said he was doing this to help her, she would believe him. It was a very good thing she trusted him, because a few weeks after he made his decision there was an incident that exposed her waterbending. An Earth Kingdom assassin had made it into the palace and tried to kill the royal family. Katara didn't care in the slightest if anything happened to Azula or the Fire Lord, but she spotted the man with his crossbow aiming at Zuko. She'd reacted on instinct to protect her friend, every pitcher and cup of water-based liquid on the table exploding up into a shield of ice that stopped the bolt from hurting him. Another fluid motion and she had the man frozen inside a block of ice on his perch.

That was when she realised what she'd done.

"Zuko," said the Fire Lord, even as he signalled his guards to dispose of the interloper. "I thought, when you first asked for the waterbender, that I told you to keep her under control. It would seem you failed, as she has clearly learned how to use her bending."

"My Lord," Zuko said, dropping into a deep bow. "I had intended to surprise you with the success of my plan."

"Your . . . plan?" The Fire Lord seemed intrigued enough that he would give Zuko the rope to hang himself with. It was better than nothing.

"Yes, my Lord. I wished to . . . educate the girl in the superiority of the Fire Nation's ways," Zuko said. Katara could tell he was improvising, and hoped desperately that she was the only one. "Think of how demoralising to our enemies it will be when they realise one of their own is so dedicated to our cause as to save the very life of the Fire Lord with the bending they would say should be dedicated to his destruction."

The smile on that evil man's face was terrifying. He turned to her, and said, "Waterbender, come here and answer my questions."

"Yes, my Lord," she said, hastily abasing herself.

"Would you say the Fire Nation is superior to all others?" he asked.

Katara swallowed and spat out the company line she'd learned from observing Zuko's own lessons. "The Fire Nation is the greatest and most progressive of all our elemental nations," she said.

"Would you return to the Water Tribes if given the opportunity?" he asked, sounding casual.

In a heartbeat. "Never." She lied firmly. "I would never wish to return to those savages. I am now more of the Fire Nation than the Water Tribe."

"Will you swear me an oath to this effect?" he asked.

"I swear, upon the power of Agni, and the wisdom and might this Nation has shown this humble slave, that I wish to be nowhere but in this nation and subject to the will of its great Fire Lord. I will breathe my last breath in service to the Islands of Fire." Hidden from the Fire Lord's view by the angle of her bow, Katara crossed her fingers. She was lying as she said the oath, and at least this way she could say she wasn't forsworn if it came up. It was the best she could do on short notice.

The Fire Lord laughed with delight. "Zuko! This is the greatest achievement of yours yet! Come. Speak to me of your waterbender."

Katara was dismissed and waited in Zuko's rooms, fiddling with things and trying not to have a complete nervous breakdown. When he came back, he looked at her and then nodded. "You're going to have to put in some appearances as the Fire Nation's token waterbender, but it's okay."

"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, flinging herself at him in a hug. "I just saw the man and he was aiming the crossbow at you and I thought he was gonna kill you and I was scared and I just reacted and I'm so sorry for putting you in that position, thank you so much-"

Zuko couldn't help himself. He kissed her. He'd been terrified his father would have her executed, and he'd only managed to keep his father from claiming her as a concubine by stating his own intentions of keeping her. As time passed, his dreams about her had gotten more intense, and she was getting prettier by the day. The tight red servant's uniform she wore, the golden chains that were a symbol of her slavery, all of it made her look so very pretty.

There was a startled pause, then Katara pulled slowly away. "Zuko?" she asked.

"Sorry," he said, breathing heavily. "I . . . I just really wanted to kiss you."

"Oh," she said, sounding surprised.

Then he explained what he'd had to do to her. She agreed, understanding how things worked in the Fire Nation court and that he was just protecting her as best he could.

The following months leading up to her thirteenth birthday were some of the longest of Zuko's life. After Katara told him that she'd be checked, regularly, by a doctor who would know whether or not she was still a maiden, Zuko took to visiting the harem in the hopes of garnering skill in bed. He did it on the sly, but he wanted to make sure that, if he was going to have to take Katara without her particularly wanting it, that he could at least make it pleasant for her. That said, the anticipation was killing him. He came back from tutoring one afternoon to find her in full formal dress with Li and Lo insisting that they begin to make public appearances together, since she was to be his formal escort at all occasions if he had no noblewoman to accompany him.

Katara was wearing makeup which emphasised her exotic blue eyes, her hair was in a beautiful pile of curls on top of her head, letting him see the sweep of her shoulders and neck without obstruction. She looked so lovely, he'd wanted to start using all those things he'd learned with his father's concubines right then.

Finally, the night came and Zuko was careful and cautious and delicate and Katara told him it had been good, but weird and she didn't want to again. She kept her old room, he had to train a new body servant, this one male, and Katara was finally able to train with him in public. That was an amazing day. Especially since he got to watch her defeat his sister handily. That made him really happy.

It was after the training 'accident' with Azula that they found out Katara could heal. He'd been sparring with Azula, and had clearly told her he was stopping. He'd lowered his hands and stepped away. So naturally, she sent a fistful of fire straight at his face. Zuko staggered away, unable to keep a scream from escaping his lips. He was dimly aware that Katara was in front of him, and felt a brief sense of added pain from a touch on his face, then wonderfully numbing cold. The pain began to fade and his eyesight began to slowly clear.

There was a blue sort of haze in front of his eyes, and through it he could see Katara's surprised, but concentrating face. Suddenly someone or something yanked her away from him, hard, and the pain came back. It was much less than before, but the suddenness of the return of the pain again was too much for his traumatised system and Zuko passed out. When he woke, he was in his room, on his bed, and Katara was curled up next to him, her head on his chest.

Something felt odd about his face, though. Zuko carefully lifted a hand and began to feel his face. One side was normal. The other . . .

"I'm sorry," Katara said miserably.

He sat up and stared at her. Her voice sounded odd, somehow. Not like there was something wrong with her voice, but that there was something wrong with his ears. "For what? What happened?"

She swallowed. "Azula . . . Azula set your face on fire," she said. "I was trying to bend cold water over you. I was trying to help."

Zuko smiled, a little hesitantly. "I'm sure you did."

"I was able to heal you," she said, wonderingly. "Somehow the water started glowing and fixing the burns. They just . . . vanished." Then her face changed and her lips pursed briefly in anger. "I wasn't able to finish. They pulled me away, and by the time I was able to get back, it was too late to fix the rest of the scarring."

"Scarring?" Zuko gasped. "What . . . I need a mirror," he said, trying to get out of the bed.

"Wait," she grabbed his hand, trying to keep him on the bed. "You . . . the doctor said you had a severe trauma . . . you shouldn't be getting up-"

Zuko pulled away and rushed to the bathroom. Stretching up over the left side of his face, from just over his eyebrow to just below his cheekbone, covering everything as it tapered off, including his ear, was scar tissue, dark, shiny and oddly wrinkled. "My face," he said. Katara was standing in the door, tears in her eyes.

"I tried. They held me back, and I kept saying they should let me finish healing you, it worked on everything else, but I couldn't get away-"

What she was saying penetrated. "I remember. My whole face was burned. You healed the rest of the burns?"

"Everything I could until they stopped me," she told him. "I . . . I should have known. I saw a reference in a scroll a few weeks ago about healing. I should have looked into it." Katara was losing herself in self-recrimination.

He couldn't stand that. This was no one's fault but Azula's and he wasn't going to let Katara, who'd saved most of his face where no one else could have saved anything, blame herself for other people holding her back. "It's not your fault. You healed me. You healed everything you could. I'm not . . . I'm not totally disfigured because of you, Katara."

"But I-"

"Don't," he told her. Then something unexpected happened. They kissed.

Soon Zuko was pulling her back to his bed, feeling her respond to him with all the enthusiasm that had been lacking their first, fairly enforced, time. She undulated against him, like the water she bended so well, and tugged frantically at his sleeping clothes, thrusting her hands inside and under them to touch his bare skin.

He'd just gotten her out of her things when the door opened with a bang. No knocking, no calling through, the person just slammed into the room. "Oh Zuzu!" said Azula. "What's-"

She stopped dead at the sight of her brother's naked backside as he straddled Katara. "Do you mind, Azula?" Zuko asked her. "I'm in the middle of something. Is this important?"

"Father wanted to see you," she said.

"We'll finish this later," he told Katara.

She smiled up at him and pressed a kiss to the inside of a wrist. "We will. I'll see you later."

It turned out, contrary to Azula's expectations, his father was put out with his daughter and had offered his son a favour to make up for Azula's, "Careless actions creating a flaw in the appearances of our family."

Zuko had come back and curled up in bed with Katara, no longer in any sort of mood for bedroom gymnastics. "I hate it. I hate that he only cares because Azula aimed to make me ugly, so he's upset the family portraits won't be pretty enough anymore."

"I've been thinking," Katara said. "We need to get out. Both of us. I don't want to be faithful to the people that killed my mother, and he's just . . . you know he's stringing you along. Azula will get the throne, we both know it. You don't want to wind up like your uncle, do you?"

Zuko sat up, frowning at her. "What do you mean?"

"He's a great general, yes, but he's got no power, no influence, he's just . . . here. Running around at his younger brother's beck and call. Do you want to wind up like that with Azula?" Katara laid a hand over his. "You don't need to decide today, but I want to leave. I will leave."

She was right, of course. About all of it. "We will leave," he told her, wrapping his fingers around her hand. "We just need to plan. I don't want to leave only to get picked up and dragged back for treachery."

Katara smiled, cupping her other hand around his cheek. "Thank you."

"No, thank you," he corrected her. "If it weren't for you, I don't know where I'd be now." He leaned down, gently pressing his lips to hers. She responded rather ardently, and they wound up finishing what they'd started hours before.

When they were curled up together in the bed, Katara asked, "What were you going to tell me before? You said you'd asked your father for a favour on my behalf."

Zuko nodded. "I told him about your healing, and he agreed it would be very good if you were available for 'miraculous' healing. You have free access to the library and the doctors to see what you can learn."

"Oh, Zuko!" she kissed him, which led to other fun activities.

From then on, they were able to train, publicly, Katara was able to hone her skills, and as long as she made enough statements about how much she loved the Fire Nation, people came to trust her. They plotted off and on to find a way to escape, but no good, feasible opportunities presented themselves until Azula was sent off on a mission to capture the Avatar, who had recently resurfaced after a century of being missing, and General Iroh, who had left the Fire Nation and stood accused of treachery at the siege of the Northern Water Tribe. She sent Zuko a letter, demanding that he come join her at Ba Sing Se to take the city, Avatar and General all at once.

"This is it!" he told Katara excitedly. "Think about it. We'll be away from the Fire Nation and we can start running from there."

Reading over his shoulder, Katara pointed at a line in the letter. "There are Water Tribesmen nearby," she told him. "I should be able to get help. Maybe I'd even know some of them. We can say that you're a nobleman or something. You helped me escape from the 'Evil Prince Zuko', and then we can leave with them."

The plan was set. All they had to do was get to Ba Sing Se and work out the details.

With freedom so suddenly close at hand, Zuko hastily scrambled to a drawer he'd been guarding zealously for days. "Katara?" he asked.

"Yes?"

"When we're out. When . . . when I stop being the prince . . ." He had them clutched tightly in his hands.

"What do you want to ask, Zuko?" she inquired. She was sitting on his bed, and she just looked so right there. Wearing his clothes, so comfortable in his space. In their space.

"Marry me?" he blurted. He held out the combs that had belonged to his mother out. "I mean . . . we'll just be people and there won't be any rank to cause prob- Mmmmph!"

She was kissing him. Then she stopped to pepper kisses all over his face, saying between each one, "Yes, yes, yes, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!"

He was rather disgruntled, many weeks later, to discover that his mother's engagement combs had actually been missing for six years and that he had to buy Katara a new set because they'd only imagined the proposal.