Chapter One

"Is he okay?" Yue asked softly, peering down at Aang as his tattoos began to glow.

"He's crossing into the Spirit World," Katara said. "He'll be fine as long as we don't move his body. That's his way back." She took a deep breath, surprised again at the lush, earthy scent of the Spirit Oasis. They'd arrived in the Northern Water tribe three weeks ago, and Katara had since grown used to the salty air. It hadn't taken long after Pakku had agreed to take her on as a student for her to begin thinking of this place as a second home. It must be the sea, she thought with a pang of yearning. Even all the way across the world, the ocean smells the same.

"Maybe we should get some help," Yue whispered, moving toward the tunnel they'd crawled through to enter the oasis.

Katara caught the other girl's hand before she could stray more than a few paces, shaking her head. "No. Aang is my friend. I'm perfectly capable of protecting him." Especially now that I've had a chance to learn waterbending.

"Well," said a new voice. A terribly familiar voice that sent a thrill of fear through her chest despite her newfound skill. "Aren't you a big girl now?"

Katara spun to see Zuko sneering at her, dressed in an off-white snow-suit which dripped water even as the air around him rippled with heat. "No . . ." she whispered. Not now. Not with Aang stuck in the Spirit World. Zuko can't be here now.

But he is, whispered a colder, more logical part of her brain. And you're the only one who might be able to stop him. Her body slid into a mist-stance—a versatile stance that favored quick attacks and solid blocks. Hands raised, she pulled a stream of water from the oasis, feeling the push and pull of it, the surging power.

Across from her, Zuko took a fighting stance, heat creeping through the air like poison. "Hand him over and I won't have to hurt you."

"A waterbender has more raw power when fueled by great emotion, but a master waterbender channels those emotions into controlled strikes," Pakku said, guiding a thick stream of water from a hole in the ice. Katara studied the angle of his wrists, the motion of his arms. He had broken his people's customs by teaching her, so she would be the best student he'd ever trained.

"It's not wrong to feel passionate when you fight," Pakku went on, moving the stream in a winding spiral around him, "but you must be as rigid as a glacier in your control." Suddenly, he shifted his feet, arms jerking hardly an inch. The minimal movement didn't seem to matter; the water whipped around, shooting straight toward Katara. Instinctively, she raised her hands, falling into one of the stances Pakku had gone over her first day. As the stream shattered into a dozen shards of ice, Katara brought her arms back in a circle, breathing out and willing the ice to melt. It did, the ribbons of water holding their form for an instant before reforming as she caught the water whip and let it twist around her body.

"Very good," Pakku said, his lips quirking up in a smile that was part pride and part challenge. "But your feet are too close together." He raised his arm, ripping the water whip from Katara's grasp and bringing it back to circle around him. "Control. If you want to win a fight, you must always remain in control of your element. The moment you lose control of it, you hand over any advantage you may have had." He let the stream slide back into the hole. "Now, let's practice our mist-stance, shall we?"

"Yue, run," Katara whispered, tamping down on the fury surging through her veins, turning it to ice. Behind her, she heard the princess retreating through the tunnel connecting the oasis to the city. Now to deal with him, she thought, eyes narrowing as she met Zuko's eyes. "I'm not giving you Aang."

Something flickered in Zuko's eyes. Not anger. Not fear, though with what he'd seen of her waterbending before today, he had no reason to feel afraid. No, the look there seemed almost . . . pleased? Excited?

She didn't get a chance to find out. Zuko's leg shot up, an arc of fire flying from his foot. She moved her arms sharply downward, then up and around, pulling a globe of water from the Spirit Oasis and throwing it between her and her enemy. The flames crashed against her malleable barrier, steam exploding outward with a hiss.

Distantly, Katara hoped that the spirits wouldn't mind if she used up some of their water, considering she was protecting the bridge between their world and hers. She flung the water in Zuko's direction, hands slicing through the air as she shaped it into an arc. Surprise flickered in her opponent's eyes as the water crashed into him hard enough to send him toppling over.

Her blast of water knocked her opponent to the ice hard enough to make his jaw crack.

"Good," Pakku said, circling around as the sparring match escalated. "Press your advantage. Pin him while he's down."

A part of her shied away from the suggestion—hitting her opponent while he was down seemed wrong, especially considering that this wasn't a real fight, but a sparring match. Pakku had outright told them not to injure each other.

She hesitated an instant too long, and her partner regained his footing, drawing water from the puddle left by her attack and using it to blast her before she could counterattack. She hit the ground hard, ears ringing from the impact.

"Enough," Pakku said, standing over her. His disappointed expression made her wilt, and he didn't even have to make any disparaging comments about how he shouldn't have taken a girl on as a student for Katara to know that was what he was thinking. Shame washed through her. "Get up, then," Pakku said. "Unless you need to go to Yugoda to have those bruises healed."

The comment stung worse than the impact. Blushing furiously, Katara got to her feet. "I'm fine."

Pakku made a sound of disdain, but jerked his chin toward the cluster of students he hadn't yet paired up to spar. Shamefaced, Katara sat.

She wouldn't hesitate again.

Katara hesitated. Just for an instant as Zuko hit the ground. The old part of her—the part that had grown up in a village where every set of hands was needed, where harming one another was strictly forbidden—wanted to hold back, wanted this one strike to be enough to show her opponent that she couldn't be easily overcome.

That part of her, she thought as a wave of fire rolled toward her, was far too merciful. Annoyed with herself, she moved to defend, bringing up a wall of ice that cracked and fizzled as the fire hit it. Heat rolled over her shoulders. "I see you've learned some new tricks," Zuko called, back on his feet. "But I didn't come this far to lose to you."

"Well, I didn't come this far to lose to you," she said, arms moving in rapid circles as she pulled several narrow water whips from the oasis and sent them shooting toward Zuko from different directions. He blocked the first few almost contemptuously, but as they swarmed around him, one got through his defenses, striking hard at his side. This time, Katara pressed her advantage, pulling more water from the pond, coaxing it to wrap around Zuko and freeze solid. The end result was a cocoon of overlapping pieces of ice, imprisoning the very person who had worked so hard to capture Aang.

Let's see you try to break out of that one, Katara thought, then froze as she saw an orange glow from inside the shell of ice. Desperately, she slid back into mist-stance, imagining the rapidly-melting ice solidifying. But even as she pushed back against the invading heat—heat she could feel within the water itself, the same way she could feel the way water flowed even when she wasn't actively controlling it—seeping outward, toward the outside of the prison she'd made. Steam started pouring from gaps in the top of the shell. Can't . . . hold it, she thought, gritting her teeth.

An instant later, the ice shattered, flying outward in every direction as her opponent broke free. He tilted his head up toward the sky, and Katara glanced up automatically. Horror dawned as she saw the sun creeping across the gap in the ice where the oasis was nestled.

"You rise with the moon," Zuko said, fire blooming above his hands. "I rise with the sun."

"The legends say the moon was the first waterbender," Yue said. "Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves."

Awed, Katara looked up at the waxing moon. "I've always noticed my waterbending was stronger at night."

The sun. Katara stared at it, her breath ripped from her lungs. Of course. If I gain power from the moon, firebenders must gain power from the sun. Her eyes snapped to Zuko as he lunged forward, and she instinctively drew water from her water skin, sending it toward him in a jet. He dodged, moving nimbly across the lush grass and sending a plume of fire in her direction.

Katara dove to the side, coaxing the water from the pond into a protective wave, but the fire burst through her feeble defense, scorching her arms as she threw them in front of her face. Her body flew backwards, tumbling as it hit the ground. Pain wiped away all coherent thought, like ink smearing across a scroll dropped in the river. Katara fell, black dots dancing in her vision. "Aang . . ." she whispered, raising one arm. Red streaks on her hands marked the places where she'd been burned by the blast, and if it hadn't been for the hard landing, that pain might have held her attention. As it was, she was too disoriented to focus on any one thing until she saw Zuko—just a vague outline to her blurred vision—grabbing Aang by the collar and dragging him away, toward the other end of the oasis.

No, she thought, crawling forward. The searing pain in her hands made her gasp whenever she used her arms to pull herself along, and ahead of her, she saw Zuko glance back. Hesitating. Just as she'd hesitated after knocking him down. She froze, a sudden paranoia gripping her. Would he strike her down? Burn her to death so she couldn't follow him? He was a firebender, and a particularly evil one at that. Surely he'd take the chance to finish her off. Surely he was not capable of mercy.

He stared at her for several seconds. Not at her face, but at her arms, where she'd been burned. She remained absolutely still, as if she could make herself disappear. He stared, and she stared back, and Aang hung limp in Zuko's grip, tattoos still aglow as his spirit quested out in a world Katara couldn't see.

At last, Zuko turned away, leaving her alive and unbound as he dragged her best friend into the icy tundra.

Author's Notes:

Hello, everyone! Wow, it's been a long time since I've been in this fandom (long enough for me to be sufficiently embarrassed by my earlier works and advise you all to pretend they don't exist). I have to say, I forgot how much I loved this series. I was recently able to rewatch the whole thing, and it just astounds me that something I loved so much a few years ago is even more relevant and fascinating to me today. More surprising still, I think, is the fact that despite all the other stuff on my to-do list, I'm still eking out time to write a fic that will probably turn out to be absurdly long and make me remember why I need to finish some of my older stories before I get invested in any new ones.

Anyway, I like to start out every fic with a rough explanation of what sort of story I'm planning to tell, as well as give any content warnings that may make said story unsuitable for certain readers. This fic starts out mirroring the events of "The Siege of the North," but it will diverge almost immediately in terms of plot (and in fact does so starting in the next chapter). I understand that the fact that I stuck closely to canon events here may be off-putting to readers who are looking for something more original, which is why I added in a couple flashbacks to Katara's waterbending training (well, that, and bending the elements is probably the most awesome aspect of the show, at least in my eyes). I may occasionally do mini-flashback scenes like these if it's relevant to the story, but I don't plan on making it a regular thing (that said, I'm what you might call a "discovery writer," so for all I know, it might happen a lot. Who can say?).

Other things of note: I do plan on adding explicit sex scenes later in the story, and I promise I've gotten a lot better at that sort of thing since I last attempted A:tLA fanfiction. There will also very likely be some intense violence, possible character death, and a more cynical tone than the show contains (of course, A:tLA is still a kid's show, despite it's mature handling of war and death, so this is somewhat of a given). The primary romance is going to be Zutara, but there will probably be other romance subplots in here, none of which I've even begun to plan yet, so . . . yeah. But mainly Zutara.

That's pretty much it for now. Thanks to everyone who's read this far, and I look forward to hearing what everybody thinks.