A/N: I seem to have a bizarre predilection for 11 chapters... my first ever multichapter fic (which was for Death Note xD) was 11 chapters, and so was time crawls on, now this one too. It's such a weird number; I don't know why they all just happened to be this many chapters.

SOKKA

Sokka likes his beauty sleep just as well as any guy, but tonight, there are more important things than a solid eight hours on his mind. If everything goes according to plan, no one will be getting more than three hours tonight, but it will be worth it.

Katara makes her exit about two hours after they collectively retire for the night. Zuko extricates himself from Aang (oogies, Sokka thinks on principle, but okay, he admits they're rather cute) and follows her not five minutes later. Their destination: the factory.

The young moon is still high in the sky, which is just about to turn that liminal mother-of-pearl shade that precedes dawn, when he hears the signal to battle. The factory is now a moldering wreck lining the river, and the Fire Nation soldiers garrisoned nearby will be looking for someone to blame.

He wakes Toph and Aang. "It's go time, sleepyheads."

"Time to go where?" Aang asks, bewildered. Sokka hadn't briefed him on the plan because he would hate having to keep secrets from Zuko.

"Katara and Zuko just destroyed the factory: they're going to need backup when the Fire Department gets there!"

"Couldn't you have planned this to take place during the day?" Toph complains groggily, getting up nonetheless.

"Waterbenders rise with the moon, remember? Anyways, it's more dramatic at night."

"Right, because that's our priority: a dramatic backdrop."

SSS

Appa's still not over whatever bug Katara bit him with, so they make do with Aang's glider, which Sokka immediately regrets as they soar over stomach-dropping heights with the river below. They touch down on one of the small islands protruding from the middle of the river. In the distance, a fleet of about twelve motorboats races towards them, headed for the village.

"Toph, don't think, just wreak havoc when and where I tell you to!" The first of the motorboats is barreling towards them, and he aligns himself with Toph's line of fire. "Twenty degrees north-northwest, forty feet out!"

She reacts immediately, hauling the metal keel of the hapless motorboat belly up from afar and depositing its two occupants in the water. "Awesome! Coming up, two cruisers straight ahead, thirty and thirty-five feet, thirty degrees west—"

"Just point me in the right direction, I don't have time to do math right now!"

He grabs her by the shoulders and spins her around until she's facing the two motorboats that almost got away—too late for them.

The others have noticed their offense, and the ones within hailing distance of the shore begin to return fire. He instinctively goes to shield Toph and get out of range, but Aang beats him to it. Propelling himself aloft, his glider spins faster like a whirlpool and redirects the incoming fire with relentless blasts of air, adding to the Fire Department's confusion. Excellent, that's just what we need: to cripple their morale before they arrive on the scene, Sokka thinks. Let them know loud and clear that they don't have the upper hand here.

They take out six motorboats in this fashion, though four more get by, until one last straggler comes along. "Let's hitch a ride on this one!"

"Got it!"

Two seconds and a multitude of bruises later, he wishes he had been more specific.

"If you meant 'bring the cruiser to land so I can daintily step in,' you should have said so," Toph says testily after catapulting herself and Sokka into the motorboat from the shore, bodily displacing its occupants.

"Guys, let's focus." Aang follows on his glider. Straight ahead lies the village, whose residents are gathered on the largest dock, fearfully staring down the Fire Department and their leader, a towering man with vibrant sideburns and a cruelly stitched scar that runs through one eyebrow.

He speaks, his voice a loathsome drawl that makes it evident what he thinks of the cowering townspeople before him. "I thought we could live as neighbors, in peace. But I guess I was wrong. You steal our food, our medicine ... and then you destroy our factory."

"Uh, actually, that was the Painted Lady." It's Dock (or Xu? Sokka's forgotten who wears which hat). "She did it for us, and she's going to run you all out of this river!"

"No." The man sneers down at him, disdainful. "You're the ones who will be eradicated from this world, and there is no Painted Lady coming to save you."

"Are you sure she isn't here?" Sokka calls as they draw near to the dock. They must make a strange picture, one gliding and two on a hijacked motorboat, but to the man's credit, he gives no sign of being surprised. They disembark; Sokka does a quick scan of the assembled villagers, and yep, there's a tall figure inconspicuously cloaked in black at the edge of the crowd.

"And what would a lot of ragtag foreigners know of the whereabouts of a long-gone spirit?" he sneers.

"Oh, I don't know, but I know someone who knows," Sokka says jauntily. "Hey Zuko! Can you summon the Painted Lady here for us?"

The figure in black sighs, not this again evident in his demeanor, and throws off his hood to reveal—

"The Avatar!" At last, Mr. Overcompensating Sideburns looks shocked, and then like a cat with free reign of a koi pond. "It's my lucky day."

Zuko steps forward, and the villagers look at him in amazement, too overwhelmed by a second celebrity visitation. "General, we don't have to come to blows," he says grimly. "Leave this village alone, and the Painted Lady will spare you. If you choose not to, then you must be prepared to accept defeat."

"Hmph." He turns to his lackeys, who are rethinking their decision to serve under him. "Are you going to listen to this traitor, or are you going to do what's right and bring this place down?"

The battle is over for them, but they at least make an effort, directing their fire at Zuko and into the crowd, only to be pushed back with a long stream of water that broadens into a wall between them and the villagers. On the dock, Aang itches to leap into the fray as well, but Sokka tugs him back.

"Wait, wait, it's getting exciting now. Look!"

The air begins to change, a palpable tension streaming through it, and the soldiers gaze around uneasily for its source. Sokka smiles as mist forms rapidly, rolling along the surface of the river and filling the whole canyon, masking everything in an impenetrable fog. He was right about the dramatics, though Aang should get the credit for suggesting cloudbending.

"What's happening?" one soldier wonders. "Maybe it really is her."

"Stand your ground!" their leader barks, even as the fog parts slowly to make way for the Painted Lady.

KATARA

The first flash of fire on the docks far away is her signal, and as she steps onto the river, she lets the water start to mist and rise, freeing it from its liquid form and covering the surface in fog. She takes her time gliding across the water, knowing that Zuko has the situation under control, and by the sound of it, Sokka and the rest as well.

She looms into view, towering high above the dock on a water spout even as several fire blasts greet her, their flames falling far short. With the spout still revolving under her feet, she directs several branches of water out from its stem to snake their way around the remaining soldiers, encircling them in tight rings of water that keep them from firebending. They hardly struggle against their bonds, paralyzed with fright. Their morale is lower than she expected, and for a moment, she wonders how the Fire Nation is even winning the war presently. With one decisive stroke of her right hand, she pushes their watery prisons right off the dock, knocking them into the water with ease, save for one person. Their leader remains, having evaded her trap, and he stands defiantly in front of the crowd, uncowed.

The face of her mother's executioner swims to mind, his cruel, twisted expression as he struck her down, and under the lightening dawn sky, she can see the one before her now clearly. It is no different from all those years ago. To her, the face does not matter; the soul is the same, ashen-gray with malice and spite. She raises her hands in judgment, staring down at him just like that monster looked down on her mother before striking the final blow. She wants to want this, but she cannot.

"Leave this place and never come back," she intones with as much spiritual authority as she can.

To her dismay, he is not remotely phased by her threat. "Nice try, but you're not the real deal." He laughs mockingly. "Unless the Painted Lady has a colonial accent and listens to the beck and call of a half-baked Avatar. You fools," he addresses the villagers, "you can put your faith in a so-called spirit who throws her lot in with traitors and filthy peasants, but I won't stand for it."

Fuming internally, Katara watches as he takes a stance and traces the air with two fingers, grounded and deliberate in spite of the tension that starts to fill the air. Puzzled, she brings up a second ring of water to hover around her arms in preparation to retaliate if necessary, but in the span of just a few seconds, it becomes clear to her.

The energy crackling between his fingertips is lightning, fueled by the cold fury in his eyes. The sky seems to darken against its dazzling glow, and with damning finality, he directs the lightning straight towards her.

.

.

she throws up her arms, everything falls silent

.

.

water won't save you here, if anything, water will kill you

.

.

it's too bright it's too bright too bright—

.

.

And then it fades, and she is still whole, the spout collapsing from under her trembling body, dumping her unkindly in the water where she treads, almost too tired to stay afloat. She thinks she must be hallucinating because even as she looks up towards the dock, she sees the silhouette of a woman hovering in midair just above her, just where the lightning would have struck. Then that, too, fades, and she can hear again, an overwhelming babble of everything flooding into her ears.

A smug thump of bone on bone. "Sokka: 1; Overcompensating Sideburns: 0. I knew I could trust you, boomerang!"

"Katara?!" It's Zuko, leaning over the edge of the dock. She takes his hand and struggles onto the dock, feeling much more tired than the ordeal warranted. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she murmurs. "What… what happened?"

"What happened," Sokka loves telling stories, after all, "is that Mr. Sideburns here tried to shoot lightning at you, but he missed—excellent dodging skills, by the way—and then I knocked him out with my boomerang."

"But it was so… bright?" She looks at Zuko. "I saw someone, in that moment."

"I think that was the real Painted Lady," he says quietly.

"What? I didn't see her," Sokka says. "Did you see her, Toph?"

"…no."

"Oh, right. Did you see her, Aang?"

He frowns, looking conflicted. "I… I don't know what I saw."

"Not to interrupt here, but someone has to say it," Dock interjects. "…I don't know how to put this politely, but she's not the Painted Lady." He points at Katara.

The village behind them murmurs in varying degrees of outrage; indeed, she is not their beloved Painted Lady. She is a wandering stranger, a waterbender who had the audacity to impersonate their guardian spirit, the nerve—

"Uh, just to clarify some things real quick." Sokka lets silence descend before continuing, with the air of a prosecutor going to town. "Are you all alive and well?"

"Well, yes—"

"And is the factory polluting the river completely destroyed?"

"Well, yes—"

"And are those Fire Nation soldiers ever going to come back to this village?"

"…no? But—"

"Then everything's fine!" Sokka's voice brooks no argument. Katara sighs and straightens her back, gently pushing her belligerent brother aside to address the people.

"People of Jang Hui: I'm sorry that I deceived you all. You may revile me for my differences, but at the end of the day, what I want and what she wanted are the same: to help and to heal. It doesn't matter who the real Painted Lady is. Your problems are real, and this river is real. You can't wait around for someone to help you. You have to help yourself."

"You know, that's true! And I can help by giving these poor soldiers a ride out of here." Dock offers a hand to one of the soldiers groaning and clambering out of the water, utterly uninterested in anything related to terrorizing poor villagers. "At a competitive price, of course! Dock claims the fairest fares, that's why it's called 'fare!'"

Katara frowns. Something's not right here. "Dock, aren't you supposed to be Bushi right now?"

One hand flies to his head, which is indeed wearing Bushi's straw hat and not Dock's bright red one. "Well, will you look at that? My brother and I switched hats by accident! How embarrassing!"

They've seen stranger things, she reflects. And they will see stranger things yet.

After a long day of laboriously washing the river of its toxins, all Katara wants to do is sleep, but for some reason, the river calls her in, promising secrets that have yet to be divulged to her. She takes the long steep trail down from their camp to the near shore, a few lights still burning in the village across the river to guide her steps, but she stops a few feet away from where the water kisses the land.

A lone figure crouches at the water's edge, peering into the shallows, and of course it would be Zuko at this time of night. He's never been one for daylight conversations or mundane things like sleep.

"If you're looking to drown yourself, try putting your face in instead of just staring." Perhaps dark humor will always be the buffer between their uneasy equilibrium. Bitter grief and acidic hatred were all they represented to each other initially, but now…

"You know, I've nearly drowned three times in my life. The first time, I was a child playing at the beach, and my father saved me." He can't see her eyebrows raised in surprise, but he can intuit it. "Don't look like that, he did have some morals. The second time, Aang saved me. The third time, you saved me. If I had a death wish, I wouldn't waste my time crying out to the merciless seas."

He finally rises from the riverside to walk towards her, and there's something about the stiff formality in his gait and the hard edge of determination in his jawline that clues her in to a conversation between them that is long overdue.

"Back when we first met, I promised you two things. One, that I would you find a waterbending teacher, though that didn't turn out quite as well as I would have hoped."

"Still counts," she says lightly, though her insides churn at the thought of owing her expertise to Hama's tutelage.

"And two, that I would find the man who killed your mother, so that you could have your revenge." He looks at her, a question, not quite a challenge, in his eyes. She finds herself quite unable to answer and lowers her eyes.

"Do you still want to find him and bring him to justice?"

Even if she could clear the fog that suddenly clouds her mind at Zuko's question and twist her tongue into a coherent answer, she doesn't get the chance. Out on the river, a faint glow approaches, and Katara gasps as it coalesces into a familiar figure. She stops short of the shore, the spirit aura around her obscuring her feet which hover well above the surface, an unearthly being. Like the statues made in her image, she wears a broad hat with a veil, her form draped in a long white shroud. She is fair and haunting, the red stripes down her face and arms like wheals from the caustic river water.

"Painted Lady Spirit," Zuko greets her awkwardly. "Er…do you have a…a human name?"

"Once." Her voice is deep and full of quiet murmurs like the river she inhabits. "But I have long forgotten it."

"You forgot your own name?"

"I was here when the moon faded from the sky and reappeared, a young, new spirit. One day she will forget too. We all do, but names are worth forgetting, as long as we remember what we stand for."

"But you didn't," Zuko counters, looking up into the halo of her presence. "You left this place; you forgot its people."

"Zuko…" Katara bristles, unwilling to hear this slander. "Would you stay here either if you were a spirit and humans so willfully destroyed their natural surroundings?"

He frowns, still stubborn and unyielding. It is the Painted Lady who shakes her head, smiling benevolently but without mirth. "That is not why I left."

"But…the river was so polluted, you couldn't have stayed," Katara protests.

"I am a spirit, child; no water, however toxic, can harm my form. What drove me away was the energy surrounding Jang Hui."

At their confused looks, she continues. "The spirit world and the human world overlap closely here. That is why my spirit was able to leave my body behind and persist in this form. But the realm of spirits is most different from that of humans. In the spirit world, your emotions become your reality. Here in this village, where human emotions predominate, I was able to remain for many years of peace and tranquility until upheaval arrived.

"The desecration of the river plunged the people's lives into blackness, and their emotions threatened to overcome me. So much negativity, so much pain and despair—you have experienced these things as humans, but you cannot know how much your emotions become magnified into spiritual energy. If I had acted upon the emotional currents stirring me up, the village might not have lived to see today, but instead been washed downstream in a furious flood. I did the only thing I could do: I hid myself in the farthest reaches of the spirit world, away from this place, and I struggled to encase my emotions in ice."

"That generally doesn't work; I've tried," Zuko says.

"No, it does not. But do you know why I returned, in the end?"

"You got bored of hiding and decided to come back to play?" he guesses. "My sister always used to do that."

"The two of you gave Jang Hui hope. You gave the people a reason to believe that their lives can change for the better, and you washed away the fear and ennui that would poison any spirit within miles of the village on the water."

"You saved them, and you saved me."

"Thank you."

"Hey sis."

She looks up as Sokka walks over to sit beside her, setting down a bag of something that rattles hollowly. "What's up, Sokka?" He takes out his knife. "What's in the bag?"

He shoots her a toothy smile and reaches inside to remove—

"Oysters?" she says dubiously. "We've only just finished purging the river this afternoon. Any shellfish you collect will still be stunted. I don't think you'll find any pearls."

"No, I actually got these from the beach on the other side of the main island. I mean, we came all the way here just for this and stayed so long; it wouldn't be worth it if we walked away empty-handed."

He splits one open to reveal only the pale flesh of the oyster; no pearl.

"It's alright, Sokka." So that's where he disappeared off to while the rest of them cleaned up the river. She considers chastising him, but… he's still her brother, always the pessimist except oddly in this rare flight of fancy. She can let him have this. "The real value in this trip was getting to help these villagers and changing their minds about the Avatar and the other nations. You're lucky that somehow your fanciful side trip turned into a serendipitously worthwhile life lesson."

He snorts. "Glad to know you think so highly of me." He cracks open another shell; the same result. "To be honest with you, this is what I intended all along."

"What?"

He nods smugly. "When Master Piandao mentioned the village of Jang Hui to me in my studies, what he actually told me was that their historical pearl harvest had dwindled to nil in the past decade because of the pollution. I knew we wouldn't find anything. Instead, I brought us here precisely because I knew you needed the break after everything that happened with Hama."

His expression is more somber now. "You were hurting, from the guilt of losing Hama, plus the pain of her betrayal, and I hated to see you like that. I knew you'd never admit it, though. you needed the time to recuperate; training with Zuko, healing the people, clearing out the soldiers, saving the village from its path to decay—it did you more good than I could have hoped for. That's why I didn't say anything when you made Appa 'sick.'"

"You knew?" she says disbelievingly.

"Why are you surprised? You should have accepted by now that your big brother knows everything."

She snorts, unsurprised in the least by his purported arrogance. There's a pile of cracked oysters in his lap now. You'd better be planning on eating all of them instead of letting them go to waste, she thinks mildly.

"Seriously, though, are you okay?" He meets her eyes levelly, full of concern and sympathy. "You've always wanted to learn waterbending from a true master. I worried that Hama would have put you off it."

Oh, Sokka. He really does have a heart after all. "I'm not one to hold grudges. Hama's actions won't influence my decisions and my future."

"You haven't always been this mellow," he says, half teasing, half curious. "I distinctly remember you used to hate the very shadow of a firebender. I always wondered what would happen if you ever met the man who killed our mother."

She greets with this with silence, remembering how she had felt when Hama asked her to think of a firebender who deserved the punishment of bloodbending, when Zuko asked her the same thing. In that moment, she hadn't given it a second thought.

"You know, after Master Piandao figured out I was Water Tribe, he pieced together some things that might be of interest to you," Sokka says casually.

"Oh? Do tell." Katara can't help but feel curious about this enigmatic master who seems to know everything.

"Mm. He has some ex-Fire Navy colleagues who recognized the symbol of the soldiers who attacked our village: the sea ravens, symbol of the Southern Raiders. Their leader was a man named Yon Rha, who retired four years ago. With Piandao's information, it wouldn't be difficult to track him down."

She considers this quietly, with less spite and vitriol than she thought she still had.

"Zuko asked me about that too," she says thoughtfully. "And I can truthfully say that I don't want to kill that man anymore. I've seen what revenge can do to a person. It's nothing but murder badly disguised as justice, that's all it is. The only thing I would accomplish by seeking revenge would be killing one man, and what good does that do me? Killing Yon Rha doesn't change the fact that Mom's dead. I want her alive; I really don't care about him either way."

"Aw, look at my little sister, so grown up and mature now," he says, partly out of reflex to dodge the serious moment.

Katara presses on, undeterred by his teasing. "Besides, who's to say I'm not just as much to blame for Mom's death? Yon Rha killed her because he thought she was the last waterbenders. She lied; it was me."

He stares at her, dumbfounded, mindlessly continuing to crack his oysters open, and his knife slices into the last one, clean through its shell and into the palm of his unprotected hand. A blossom of blood stains his palm as he gapes, still unable to process her words.

"You can't seriously think that…" He shakes his head mutely, totally oblivious to his self-inflicted gash.

"Sokka, your hand." She reaches out for him, bending a swift stream of water to swirl around it. "I never told you because… I was afraid you might blame me, however irrational that sounds. For being selfish, for surviving."

He sweeps her into a hug, uninjured hand cradling the back of her head, wishing this heartfelt touch could heal her of years of solitude, a task far more difficult than the simple knitting of split skin back together. "You have to know: I'd never blame you for something like that."

"I know. I know…"

"Neither would Dad, or Gran-Gran, or anyone. It's thanks to you that our people will be able to survive at all. You know I didn't want to leave the South Pole at first, but when you insisted… I had to follow. I will never turn my back on you, Katara."

She stifles a lump of tears in her throat.

"And now, with the Avatar on our side, we won't have to live in constant fear of attack. Things are changing for us. Things are looking up."

"You're unrecognizable now, you know? Master Piandao really did a number on you. You're always such a pessimist." She pulls away from him, smiling slightly despite her red eyes.

He rolls his eyes at the truth in her words. "Would a pessimist bother to crack open this many oyster shells on the off chance that one of them will have a tiny pearl worth salvaging?"

"True."

ZUKO

"I don't want to kill him anymore. My mother's murderer," Katara says. There is no waver in her words, no lack of confidence at all. "Hurting him just because he hurt me, killing him just because he killed someone I loved… that would accomplish nothing. I would only become like him: making the world a darker place just because I have the power."

She's clearly given considerable thought to the matter. Even if Zuko knew who the man was, this information would no longer interest her. It's her choice, and he will support it.

It is only when she asks him this question, that he wonders what his choice will be, and who will support it, whatever it is:

"What are you going to do when you face your father?"

A/N: Here's a short summary just to recap the series chronology, and to give you a peek at the future :0

1. save some face: Zuko and Azula's childhood until the former's banishment.

2. time crawls on: Zuko earthbending, Azula trying to earthbend.

3. too cold to shiver: Zuko waterbending, Azula trying to escape her abusive father.

4. brave enough to die: Going back in time to the war and Lu Ten, until he dies (~3 years)

5. blood in the breeze: Zuko airbending, Azula trying to find Zuko, Lu Ten reappears.

Originally I wasn't going to reintroduce Lu Ten until the very end, but now I want to bring him back to the main plot earlier because 1) readers seem to like him a lot (incidentally I do too), 2) then it won't be as random as if he had just turned up in the very end, like wtf was he doing all this time? and 3) it's just more convenient for all the plot lines to be in one place.

I guess you don't really have to read brave enough to die before blood in the breeze. It's very long (just broke 70k, why do I do this to myself), though I know you all read fast. So it's definitely a commitment of sorts, to read. But if you do, I think you'll like it: a heartfelt tale of growing pains, unshakeable loyalty, and tragic love on the battlefield. Guaranteed heartbreak =) but eventual happy ending.

If you choose to skip it (which is fine!), blood in the breeze will include a condensed summary of what went on with Lu Ten in the war, just before he reenters the plot. You just may lose a little of the context of some things that happened, though there should be sufficient detail/explanation within the content of the story itself.

The chapter notes about spirits and stuff are here: I really enjoyed planning this chapter.

Archiveofourown dot org/works/7019827/chapters/32786058