Chapter Text
Ozai’s son is silently, blessedly, gone.
Ozai’s daughter returns to her mission.
They lose the battle on the eclipse, but they don’t lose a single soul. Katara listens to Sokka talk through whether having too many backup plans cost them a forward plan, but their relief at remaining together overshadows the lingering fear of what may come, at least for now.
The team breaks into pieces to return to hiding. Katara stays with her family: the men of the Southern Water Tribe, her brother, Aang, and Toph. They flee long and hard, the children on Appa and the men on the sea, and then build camp while Sokka comes up with yet more plans.
“Don’t ever tell him I said this,” Katara says to Toph late one night, while Sokka is ranting to Dad and pointing to various places on maps, “but I think we’d be lost in a forest somewhere if it wasn’t for Sokka’s neverending map supply.”
Toph snorts in delight.
And then she freezes.
Katara knows Toph well enough to read it in every line of her body: danger is oncoming.
“What is it?” Katara whispers, reaching for her skin of water.
Toph turns her face away from the glow of the fire.
“We’re not alone,” she explains, loudly enough for the camp to hear. Everything seems to hush down as they wait. “You can come out, you know. You’re obviously not waiting to attack.”
A tree rustles, and then a body in dark reds lands far too close to Katara for her liking.
“Relax,” says an oddly familiar voice. “This is a parley.”
Princess Azula inspects her fingernails in demonstration of how unthreatened she feels, surrounded by enemy warriors.
Katara really wishes she found it less impressive.
“She’ll only talk to you,” Dad says, utterly bewildered as he exits the tent.
“Uh.” Sokka looks back at Katara, Toph, and Aang. “I guess I should…?”
“Why would she only want to talk to you?” Katara asks, and then she looks over Sokka’s shoulder at the closed tent and gnaws at her lip.
Sokka’s pretty sure he knows why. “Only one way to find out,” he says, and then pushes the flap open and walks into what should be home territory, but feels like it’s Fire Nation ground all over again. “Hi! Hello. I’m Sokka. We’ve met.”
Princess Azula gives him a withering look. Her hands are encased in stone thanks to Toph, but she doesn’t seem overly worried about it.
“Yes, about that,” Azula responds. “I wanted to ask you about your little vision in the swamp.”
“If this is a trap, it’s a really weird trap,” Sokka points out.
Azula rolls her eyes. “Swamp. Vision. Go.”
“Aang and Katara had visions there, too,” Sokka states, because he sees no reason to hide it. “Katara saw our– someone from our past. Aang saw someone from our future. It’s a weird swamp. What about it?”
“You said you’d seen my brother before. You also said he was dead.”
“What is your angle here, Azula?” Sokka asks. He leans forward, peering into her face. She looks a lot like Zuko, actually; if he’d been given long enough, Sokka thinks he would have made the connection. “I told you this already. I met Zuko in the Spirit World, and then again in a spirit oasis. I actually saw him one more time - also in a place filled with spirit mumbo-jumbo.”
Azula shifts. It’s the first time she’s looked uncomfortable in front of Sokka, maybe ever. The small human movement makes her seem more human, somehow.
“So let me get this straight: my brother was dead.”
“Is dead,” Sokka corrects.
Azula’s eyes narrow. “And he was just… what? Hanging around you? Enough that you had a sweet little vision of him in the swamp, because you were just missing him that much?”
Sokka shrugs. “I assumed I was looking at a past version of him. A living version. Is it any weirder than Aang seeing his earthbending teacher before we met her?”
Azula stares at him for a long moment. “Hm,” she says eventually, and then adds nothing.
“What?” Sokka insists.
“When you saw him, what did he look like to you?” Azula asks.
“This is– Why are we doing this, Princess Azula? Shouldn’t you get back to chasing us around the world? If this is a stalling tactic, you must know we’re ready for–”
“You thought he looked like a past version of himself, which means he didn’t normally look like that to you.”
“No, he– he normally looked…” Sokka thinks of how to describe this, but his mind can’t catch on anything that isn’t frightening. He shrugs. “He normally looked awful. He had this material wrapped around his face, and he looked, just… not okay.” Sokka swallows. “One time, Katara saw his face, and she won’t tell anyone what it looked like.”
Azula’s eyes slide away from Sokka’s, and it occurs to him that underneath it all, this is a girl asking about her dead brother.
“I believe my father saw him, too,” Azula says after a moment. Then she shakes herself. “That’s dealt with, though.”
“Dealt with?” Sokka asks.
Azula lifts her hands, like she’s ready to take the stone cuffs off herself and will do so at any moment. Sokka reaches for his sword.
“Yes,” Azula says, her tone casual in a way that doesn’t sound casual at all. “Father took care of the haunting problem, it seems.”
She does blast the stone off her fists at that, and Katara and Toph burst into the room to stop her.
“The parley is over,” Azula declares. “I’ll leave in peace or by fighting. You can decide.”
The princess walks out of their camp without a fight.
They arrive at the White Lotus camp.
Aang thinks it’s kind of nice that so many adults they’ve met were actually looking out for them. Sokka is very loud in his distaste that one of those people is Aunt Wu.
“I see you got rid of your vengeful spirit problem,” Aunt Wu comments, and Aang watches as Sokka’s face falls.
“What?” Aang asks. “What’s wrong?”
“Azula said Fire Lord Ozai ‘took care of’ the haunting problem,” Sokka responds, watching as Aunt Wu catches up with Katara. “What do you… think that means?”
Late that night, Toph’s head snaps up from her actual honest-to-spirits pillow, and she declares:
“We’re not alone.”
Katara reaches for her water. Sokka crouches by the edge of their tent, boomerang in one hand, and opens it slowly.
Katara can’t see anything in the darkness. One by one, they climb out silently, looking for the intruder.
“Is it Azula?” Aang answers, as if the princess of the Fire Nation has been delegated to their regular (very irregular) guest.
Toph shakes her head. “No, I think it’s–”
The clouds shift across the moon, and light spills into the clearing. Two golden eyes stare back at them.
It takes Katara a beat to recognise that face. The last time she had seen it unveiled, it had been…
It takes another moment for Katara to realise: there are two golden eyes looking back at them.