Chapter Text
It begins the night before the full moon.
And had Katara not been so impulsive and foolish, it never would have happened at all.
She knows the risks that she’s taking, sneaking back to the sleeping little river village of Jang Hui in the middle of the night, when she’d already pressed her luck to begin with.
But there’s no telling how many more days her little stunt with Appa and the berries would buy her time to act, and if she wants to help the village, then she’ll have to make the best of it.
If she had more time to formulate a plan, Katara might have figured out a way to sneak inside of the factory upriver and steal what food and medicine she could find to take down to Jang Hui.
For tonight, she’ll have to settle for healing the sickest villagers and hope that will be enough.
Katara waits until the others have drifted off to sleep before slipping away to change into her disguise and paints her face to resemble the spirit who once guarded the river and its people.
Then she splays out her fingers to call forth water to form a barrier of cold mist, before silently gliding across the river towards the sleeping village.
No one is awake to notice her approach.
Or so she thinks.
~*~*~
Katara doesn’t notice his presence at first, which is no small feat given that her senses are on high alert, watching for the first sign to retreat back into the safety of the water.
It’s not until she has left the fourth hut or so that her skin starts to prickle in warning.
And though all is still and silent, something in her gut whispered that she was being watched.
She ducks into the shadows of the nearest building, crouching down behind a few stacked barrels as her eyes scan for any signs of movement in the darkness. There’s only the sound of the water murmuring beneath the docks, the faint rustle of the tarps flapping in the wind.
And yet, something lurks out there.
Or even worse, someone.
Katara waits in absolute silence, keeping the sleeve of her shroud pressed against her painted scarlet lips, stifling any sounds of breathing, no doubt smearing the lipstick in the process.
Five minutes pass, then ten.
The stars whirl slowly in the heavens above in their eternal celestial dance, and yet she refuses to leave her hiding spot.
Her limbs are growing stiff, and she knows that she can’t wait out here all night.
With her teeth clenched she climbs unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the prickling in her legs that feels like the jabs of a hundred needles, and she waits until she’s capable of moving without wincing.
And then she runs.
No noise follows her soft footsteps on the wooden boardwalk and yet, she knows that someone is in silent pursuit. Her retreat will have to be temporary – she can’t be seen sprinting back to the camp and lead whatever threat is following straight to her brother and friends.
Assuming there is one to begin with, and paranoia hasn’t simply gotten the better of her.
Katara reaches the end of the outermost pier, and with a hasty gulp of air steps out into the inky black lake, letting her element absorb her completely with little more than a faint splash.
Then she propels herself underwater to surface just beneath the edge of the dock, peering up through the openings between the wooden boards to the starry night sky.
A minute passes.
All is silent.
She’s tempted to scoff out loud.
There was nothing there, after all, just her imagination –
– the wooden board creaks right above her head.
It takes everything within her not to gasp out in shock.
A dark figure now stands almost directly above her on the docks, blocking out the faint starlight, as though it knows of her hiding spot and is now daring her to make a move.
Katara watches as her pursuer takes another step, then another, before stopping at the edge of the dock, exactly where she had stepped off into the water.
Just a restless villager, she tells herself, chewing on her bottom lip.
Except whoever just stood inches above her head is completely silent.
She can’t even make out the sound of breathing.
For what seems like long time, the figure remains motionless.
Then before she can blink, it’s crouching down on the wood in near perfect silence, having spotted something in the water, bobbing against one of the wooden support beams, as though tangled around –
Her hat and veil.
Katara’s blood runs cold as she watches the figure scoop it carefully out of the current, holding it up to examine it curiously, water splattering on the wooden boards and dripping down through the cracks onto her head.
How could she have been so careless?
It is only the sudden instinctive need to hide that she creates an air bubble around her nose and mouth at the last millisecond to sink beneath the water, just as the figure crouches low and leans its head over the edge, peering underneath the dock.
With trembling fingers she guides herself through the water, careful not to create even the tiniest ripple up on the surface. The dark water keeps her hidden as she swims, coming to a stop at the edge of the dock where the figure remains hunched over the side.
She’s unable to make out any of its features, of course, as lurking a few feet beneath the river’s surface in the middle of the night does distort one’s view after all. The darkness shields her from its view but also shields it from hers.
The glimpse she’d gotten of its face before submerging had looked strangely nothing like any human’s, that much she could tell.
A mask, perhaps, one carved into a permanent sneer with jutting fangs and white horns curling from the temples.
Or at least, she would much prefer to think of it as a masked figure than an actual spirit.
Katara watches from beneath the water as the figure eventually stands, carelessly tossing the hat back into the water and creating ripples above her head.
Curiosity gets the better of her, and she allows her face to breach the surface of the water, just enough to get a better glimpse of her visitor before it disappears back into the shadows.
Whoever it was, they’ve already sprinted away in absolute silence, though what she had seen of the figure’s body had been distinctly human, carrying what appeared to be a sheath and swords strapped to his back.
Not a spirit, then, or even a monster.
Just a man, one hidden behind a mask, not unlike her.
She allows herself to exhale a shaky breath, then guides herself towards her discarded hat and veil floating nearby before the current carries them away.
Katara decides then that she’s had enough excitement for one night and sinks down to the bottom of the river, bending an air bubble around her as she sets off in the direction of the shoreline.
But tomorrow night, if her group happens to still be in Jang Hui and their paths were to cross again, she’ll be ready to face him…
… whoever he is.
~*~*~
The next day, their group cautiously ventures into the heart of Jang Hui once more.
Several Fire Nation soldiers are now patrolling the area, and there’s rumors that the weapons factory up the river had its supply closet raided in the night, not that anyone in the village has any idea who could be behind the theft.
All anyone can confirm is that there is supposed to be an inspection in the next few days by some higher ups from the Caldera, and that the break-in happened right under their noses with no one being the wiser until after the fact.
“We were already scheduled for the inspection,” spat one of the Fire Nation soldiers, shaking his head in dismay. “Everyone’s been hush-hush about who’s coming the visit, but it’s going to be hell to pay when they find out we’ve been robbed.”
The villagers, on the other hand, seem to be smothering a cautious optimism.
Katara and her companions listen to the villagers’ delighted whispers outside of the soldiers’ earshot that their beloved river spirit the Painted Lady must have returned, as several of their sickest have miraculously made a full recovery in the middle of the night.
She manages to keep her expression neutral, agreeing with her brother and friends that it truly did sound like a miracle had occurred.
But what she is not expecting is to hear whispers of a second visitor under the cover of darkness, one who had delivered parcels of food and medicine on several doorsteps not too far from where she had been last night.
That piques her interest, and she makes no attempt to hide her surprise hearing the villagers talk reverently of a figure dressed in black, silently leaping from rooftop to rooftop, though no one had managed to get a good look at this other visitor.
They don’t say it aloud, but the general consensus is that this second vigilante must have been behind the factory break-in.
Later that afternoon, she’s careful to feed the berries to Appa again without being caught.
Aang inspects his loyal companion’s tongue and frowns as he determines that it still shows no signs of returning to its normal color anytime soon.
They decide to spend another night camped on the shores of the Jang Hui River, packed and ready to go just in case they need to make a run for it.
And once Katara deems the coast is finally clear and she’s absolutely certain that her companions are all fast asleep, she slips away for one last late-night visit to Jang Hui…
… only to come face to face with demon of the village himself waiting for her on the docks.
~*~*~
There’s no time to react, or even time to gasp at this unforeseen turn of events, because he’s already grabbed her wrists and is leading her through the walkways, away from the water.
His grip is like a vice, and even as she struggles silently against his efforts, he’s pulling her into the shadows between a pair of buildings and pressing a gloved finger over her mouth.
It’s only then that she sees the flickering firelight of a torch being carried by a group of grumbling Fire Nation soldiers patrolling near the docks where she had just emerged from the river only moments ago.
She allows herself to stop struggling against the masked man holding her captive, instinctively moving closer to him.
Once the guards have crossed over to a different set of docks and their light twinkles out of view, the Blue Spirit lowers his gloved hand from her mouth and lets her go.
“… I guess I should be thanking you,” she whispers, squinting up at his mask in the darkness. “For a moment, I thought you were trying to…”
Katara trails off, watching as the figure shakes his head vehemently, pointedly stepping back and folding his arms over his chest. She notices too that he tilts his head down at her, as though studying her face from behind the mask, and she wonders what he could be thinking.
Well, at least her unlikely companion does have a sense of honor, unlike other people she can think of.
She’s heard of the Blue Spirit before, of course, from his wanted posters throughout the Earth Kingdom, to the worser areas of Ba Sing Se, and more recently, from the villagers’ whispers.
Which is all the more curious why she’s encountered him here tonight, in the sleeping village of Jang Hui in the heart of the Fire Nation.
Who is this criminal who traveled halfway across the world, just as they have?
She’s shaken from her musing as he gestures silently for her to follow him.
Katara knows better than to trust a stranger, yet she tiptoes quietly after the masked man all the same.
They quickly develop a strange, wordless partnership, sneaking through the village beneath the moonlight and dodging the patrols still wandering about.
She helps him retrieve small parcels and vials of medicine from various hiding places below the docks that he leaves for the villagers in the sick hut, and she nods silently in approval.
But when she kneels down beside the sickest of the children and calls forth her element from the waterskin strapped to her side, the most curious change comes over her companion.
He visibly startles, nearly knocking over a table before catching it at the last moment, as her hands glow blue. She ignores his strange reaction for now, instead focusing her efforts on healing the sleeping child lying before her.
Katara can just barely make out the sound of heavy breathing and the faintest whiffs of smoke now, and she realizes immediately that both seem to originate from the masked man.
Firebender, she guesses, and she frowns at him, shaking her head.
He composes himself for now, standing guard and watching for any soldiers as she finishes her work.
~*~*~
After, he cautiously takes her by the hand and leads her through various walkways and docks.
They eventually come across a small boat hidden beneath one of the ramps on the outskirts of the village.
The Blue Spirit gestures for her to get in, and though she knows better than to be following masked men in the middle of the night, she obeys.
He starts to row them toward the shoreline opposite of the one where her brother and friends are camped, and she makes a mental note of the direction she’d need to travel to get back to the village in case she needs to make a hasty escape.
“Here, let me,” she whispers, and uses her bending to guide them silently through the river.
Her companion allows her to take charge and sits back with folded arms, staring at her beneath the mask, studying her intently.
They reach the shore, and he carefully helps her climb out of the boat, the village a distant glow out on the river in the darkness.
The masked figure then turns and stares pointedly at her once more, though she sees nothing but the soulless black eyes of the mask burning down into her very soul.
“I’m a waterbender, obviously,” is what she finally says, now that they’re no longer in danger of being overheard. “You probably think I’m stupid, sneaking around a Fire Nation village and wandering off with a complete stranger…”
He nods emphatically, and she rolls her eyes.
“However, there’s a full moon tonight and I’m literally surrounded by my element,” she adds, gesturing to her celestial body glowing brightly in the heavens and then down to the river rushing by behind her. “So if you try to hurt me, you won’t live long enough to regret it before I drown you. Understand?”
She hears a faint scoff, then watches as he promptly nods in agreement.
Silence falls between them.
“I was passing through, and I wanted to help the villagers,” she continues, since she will receive no verbal response. “But you can see why I had to wait until the middle of the night to act.”
The figure nods once again.
“Can you speak?” Katara asks, squinting up at him.
He nods, after the briefest of hesitations.
“Will you speak?”
The Blue Spirit shakes his head this time.
“Even though we’re alone, and no one else is around to hear us?”
He shakes his head again.
Several moments of more uncomfortable silence hang heavy between them.
“I traveled in the Earth Kingdom a year or so ago and spent some time in Ba Sing Se for a while,” she says, fidgeting. “I recognize you from the wanted posters. It seems like everywhere my friends and I went, we’d see warrants for your arrest, hanging right next to ours.”
Her companion says nothing, tilting his head down at her.
Katara knows instinctively that she is in the presence of a brutal criminal at worst; a masked vigilante whose intentions are still unknown at best.
She knows this, and yet…
There’s something strangely familiar about him, something she can’t quite put her finger on.
Maybe it’s the mask.
She’s tempted to ask it’s significance, since it seems to be known throughout various corners of the world…
Then Katara remembers a fleeting moment from a few weeks ago, when she and her companions had visited a market in disguise. She and Aang had wandered off, and he had stopped suddenly upon seeing a poster advertising an upcoming Fire Nation play.
One featuring a character advertised as the Dark Water Spirit, wearing a demonic blue mask not unlike the one staring down at her now.
She had asked Aang at first if he’d encountered that particular spirit before, and he’d nodded.
When she’d pressed, asking if he had met this blue spirit in the Spirit World, he’d remained strangely silent before quickly changing the subject, and she’d forgotten about that experience until now.
… a dark, ugly suspicion starts to form inside of Katara’s mind.
No.
It couldn’t be.
But the coincidences are too many, too contrived.
The Blue Spirit is secretly a firebender, that much she’s discovered, and he’s entirely too calm now in the presence of a waterbender, hidden in plain sight in the one place in the world someone like her shouldn’t be.
Her gut feeling is almost never wrong, and if the man hiding behind the Blue Spirit mask is who she almost suspects he is… that changes everything.
Because if he were to discover that Aang had survived his evil sister’s attack after all and was currently sleeping right under his nose, just down the river…
“Who are you?” she asks pointedly, making no attempt to hide the snarl now rising in her voice. “Do we know each other? Do you recognize me?”
He seems to hesitate, then finally nods.
Katara opens her mouth to ask him another question, to speak his name into existence.
Only to find herself weightless and the grassy banks of the river rushing up to meet her.
~*~*~
She lands hard with a grunt, pushing herself up off of the ground to see the masked figure already running away towards a wooded area.
He’s fast, she’ll give him that.
Katara scrambles to her feet, calling forth a stream of water from the river as she does, and bends it to form a sphere around the Blue Spirit’s entire body, effectively freezing him in place.
If the Blue Spirit was an ordinary man, he would be trapped until she released him.
Were he any other firebender, he might be confused at first, but he would eventually be able to melt and thaw away her world of ice.
But her companion is none of those things, and ordinary man he most certainly is not.
He’s already managed to break free by the time she catches up to him, and in the split second it takes to glance at her destroyed ice trap she’s able to see it partially melted away.
There is only one firebender who’s experienced and escaped from this specific trap of hers before, and when she finally catches up to him, she’s going to drown him.
Yet he manages to stay just out of reach, always slipping and dodging away from her frozen attacks by slithering through the trees like the snake that he is.
Anger simmers deep in her stomach, and she can feel herself losing patience, which will not help her if she needs to stay focused and capture this miserable son of a bitch.
She’s finally able to freeze him to a tree, and she’s upon him before he can break loose.
“You monster!” she seethes, reaching out to grasp at that stupid blue mask that he of all people has no business wearing, a firebender disguised as a water spirit, never mind that she is doing the exact same.
All of her worst suspicions are confirmed when the ice holding him trapped quickly evaporates, and she hears the sounds of water sizzling and spattering on the ground over the blood roaring in her ears.
And Katara finds herself in a very familiar predicament as her wrists are grasped tightly in front of her chest, keeping her in place, while the figure glares down at her from behind the mask.
“What, are you going to save me from the pirates again?” Katara snaps before she can stop herself.
She finally hears the Blue Spirit make a sound, and it’s the most damning one of all.
He growls loudly in annoyance, and she’s entirely too familiar with that particular sound to mistake its owner as anything but the banished Fire Prince, now restored to glory after helping his sister conquer Ba Sing Se.
The one she reached out to in a moment of weakness, only to be burned in the end for her efforts, nearly losing the world’s last hope for salvation because of his treachery.
And now he’s here, holding her captive, and her companions are just on the other side of the riverbank…
She struggles, futilely, to escape his clutches, but his fingers are wrapped like chains around her wrists, unyielding no matter how hard she fights against them.
“Let me go, Zuko,” she seethes.
“Not until you tell me why you’re here,” he bites back, speaking for the first time that night, his voice muffled behind the mask. “Where are the rest of your friends?”
“I’m on my own. We went our separate ways after your sister killed the Avatar.”
“Right. I’m guessing that vial of healing water from the Spirit Oasis wasn’t enough to bring him back then?”
An inhuman snarl is all she’s able to conjure up, and she moves to knee him, anything to escape from his grasp.
It’s only the need for self-preservation and a second attempt that comes much too close to hitting its mark that he finally lets go of her wrists, pushing her roughly away with a snarl.
She manages to wrap her fingers around the edge of the Blue Spirit mask as they separate, ripping it away from his head before he can stop her.
And for the first time since the night that the Earth Kingdom fell by his hand, Katara finds herself staring face to face with the Fire Prince.
~*~*~
His features have filled out and lost most the gauntness from his days scraping by in the Lower Ring, save for the dark circles under his eyes and the overall sense of exhaustion in his demeanor …
… and those eyes, those damned golden eyes, burning down into her very soul once more.
“What are you doing here?” she seethes.
“I could ask you the same thing, Katara,” is his retort.
Gloved hands dart out to reclaim the mask, only for her to slip away, just out of his reach.
“I’m helping save the village that you and your family condemned when you ordered that weapons factory to be built and destroy their lives.”
His lone eyebrow rises.
“By playing dress up?”
It’s a miracle she manages not to slap him.
“At least I’m trying to help them!”
“And what do you think I’m doing?”
Katara scoffs, darting out of his reach again, keeping the mask behind her back.
“As if you would ever do anything to help others that didn’t serve your own interests first,” she snaps. “We both know you wouldn’t hesitate to stomp over everyone else as long as you got to bask in the glory.”
His glare darkens, and she could see wisps of smoke now in his breath when he spoke.
“That’s not true – ” he starts to protest.
“You can’t sacrifice your own people like this!” Katara cuts him off, furious and nearly beyond reasoning. “These villagers are loyal to the Fire Nation, and this is how you repay them? By poisoning their water and destroying their way of life?!”
Something in his gaze softens, just long enough for her to notice.
Before she can open her mouth, though, his features have hardened once more.
“You’re right.”
She nearly drops the mask in shock.
“You’re right,” he repeats, his voice low. “I’m stationed nearby and supposed to inspect the factory in the next day or so, as an official visit from the palace – ”
Katara remembers the soldier’s grumbling from earlier that day, about the inspection to the factory, and she wonders if even they knew just who would be visiting them.
“I – I wanted to see for myself how bad things were,” he’s saying, raking his fingers through his messy hair. “I’d read the reports and noticed how they all skimmed over how the villagers would be affected.”
“And here I thought you were just enjoying a scenic visit to gloat at your triumph. Let me guess, you have fans and your choice of women back in the capital who must be so proud of you. But as long as your father’s happy with you – ”
The prince snarls at her, shaking his head.
“I don’t have a… you know what, forget it. I don’t have to explain myself to you. I’m here tonight because I’m not happy with what I’ve seen of the village. I don’t like to see my people suffering, especially not by the people who are supposed to be protecting them.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Zuko huffs.
“Fine, believe whatever you want. I don’t care if you believe me or not. But I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. I had to make it right somehow – ”
“How nice of you to finally develop a conscience,” Katara snaps. “It would have been useful, oh I don’t know, maybe back in Ba Sing Se, before you helped your sister kill the Avatar!”
He studies her silently, his good eye narrowed.
“So you weren’t able to revive him with the Spirit Oasis water, is that right?”
“I already told you, Aang’s dead, no thanks to your sister.”
The prince shakes his head, frowning.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” she replies, echoing his words from earlier. “He’s gone. The world’s last hope for peace is dead, because of you.”
Katara raises her chin, refusing to flinch under his harsh glare, and glares right back.
They examine each other in silence, the rushing of the river and whispering of wind in the grass the only sounds between them.
And then he suggests something truly unexpected.
“Do you want to help me sabotage the factory?”
Katara can only gawk at him, her jaw dropping and her eyes opening wide in disbelief.
It’s the opportune moment for him to finally snatch the Blue Spirit mask from her grasp, and she’s too stunned to try to grab it back.
“Why should I trust you?”
She expects him to start on some tirade, insisting that he’s not a monster, certainly not what comes out of his mouth next.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t want to be outed as a waterbender traveling alone in the Fire Nation – or so you claim – and I’d rather not get caught and let this get back to my father. If I go down, I’m taking you with me, and we both know that you’d do the same.”
She starts to open her mouth, but he cuts her off.
“Do you really think I’d be running around out here in disguise, stealing from a prominent weapons factory and talking about destroying it because I want to get caught? Until I can help these people as their prince, I’m willing to break the law.”
“So you had a moment of weakness where you actually cared about someone other than yourself. How noble of you, Prince Zuko.”
He scoffs.
“The next time you see the Avatar, ask that airbending brat who rescued him from Zhao’s clutches when he got captured at the Pohaui Stronghold.”
She bristles at the insult on her dear friend’s behalf.
“I would love to, but Aang’s dead.”
Katara meets the Fire Prince’s impressive glare with her own once more.
“I’m sure he is,” Zuko drawls, sounding entirely unconvinced. “Look, we can fight later, but right now I’m running out of time. I was busy before you showed up and nearly got yourself captured, until I saved you.”
“And you’d know all about capturing me, wouldn’t you?” Katara retorts. “At least you were polite enough not to tie me to a tree again.”
“The night is still young,” he shrugs.
It’s impressive how he’s able to completely dodge her water whip, and if she wasn’t going to kill him before, she most certainly is now after hearing his smug little tsk of disappointment.
“Thought you’d finally gotten your forward attacks under control, Waterbender.”
She’s too busy seething to offer a retort, settling for punching his arm instead, and the bastard has the audacity to shrug it off, looking entirely unimpressed.
“You call that a punch?”
“I have an older brother; I think I should know how to throw a punch.”
“Well, his punches were never that impressive to begin with – ”
He’s unable to dodge her water whip this time, and she’s a little too pleased with herself to see him knocked flat on his back from the force of the blow.
For a long moment all is still, and she prepares herself to call forth the entire river if she has to if it means freezing him solid permanently.
Zuko wordlessly climbs back to his feet and exhales smoke, then turns to glare down at her.
“Feel better?”
“I’m starting to, yes.”
“How long have you been waiting to do that? Since Ba Sing Se?”
“Since the day you first stormed into my village and attacked us, actually.”
He uses the edge of his sleeve to wipe the water droplets away from his face, and she notices how he’s careful not to openly flinch in front of her. She hadn’t held back, and he’s sure to have a bruise or two later.
“Like I said, your stupid brother never could throw a punch to save his life. You on the other hand…”
Zuko taunts her with an all too familiar smirk.
“That actually hurt. A lot. Maybe your brother should be taking lessons from you.”
Katara glares up at him. He keeps trying to bait her, to get her to slip up, and she will not let him succeed. She watches as he then pulls the hood back up over his hair and ties the mask securely back in place.
“Anyways, you never answered my question,” Zuko continues, his words now muffled by the carved wood. “Are you coming with me or not?”
~*~*~
Her unlikely partner in crime turns out to be surprisingly skilled not just at infiltrating a sleeping village, but also at breaking into heavily guarded places.
They don’t speak once he’s led them into the factory through a secret entrance, and they both move in near silence as he guides them towards the machinery.
He also knows a surprisingly decent amount about the equipment and how to sabotage the machines in a way that won’t become apparent until several hours into the next day, long after they’ve made their escape and under the watch of the soldiers, who won’t be able to pin it on the villagers.
Their partnership is strangely easy, and even though she knows that the son of the devil himself hides behind the mask, she finds herself starting to trust him.
Which is why she doesn’t fight back when he suddenly grabs her hand and yanks her into a darkened closet, barely large enough to accommodate one person standing comfortably, much less two.
“Guards,” he hisses, and she nods silently.
Through the crack in the closed door they watch as the guards pass before them illuminated by the lamplight, muttering and grumbling amongst themselves, unaware that their crown prince and the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe are watching them from the shadows.
After they’re gone Katara starts to slowly, carefully push the door open – only to find herself yanked back inside before she can yelp, a gloved hand pressed over her mouth to stifle any sounds of surprise.
Once again, she owes a debt to her partner for spotting the danger before she did.
The door is pulled shut and locked from the inside just in time for more soldiers to appear, chatting in low voices amongst themselves.
And unlike the guards from moments ago, they seem in no hurry to leave.
Which does make her current situation much more awkward than before, as there was no time to fit both of them more comfortably into their hiding spot.
Katara is now pressed face first against a cold metal wall, with Zuko’s chest firmly against her back, with no room to separate to the point where they’re not touching each other, at least not without bumping against the door and alerting the soldiers to their presence.
For several long moments they remain frozen in place, his gloved hand still covering her mouth as they listen to the soldiers chatting and fretting about their upcoming inspection.
“They should be,” he breathes, his voice barely audible even to her. “I’m going to hit them with so many citations that they’ll be drowning in paperwork for the rest of their lives.”
Katara should not let herself find that amusing, but she allows herself a soft giggle all the same.
Zuko hmphs quietly behind her, finally dropping his gloved hand from her mouth.
“What’s so funny?” he whispers.
“I didn’t think you actually had a sense of humor,” is her whispered reply.
“I’m being serious. Their incompetence is unbelievable, letting both of us sneak in without even realizing it.”
“Now that sounds more like the Prince of All Jerkbenders we all know and loathe.”
He scoffs softly behind her.
“If you don’t be quiet, they’re going to find us in here,” he hisses. “Do you want me to cover up your mouth again?”
Katara rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see.
Minutes tick by, and the soldiers are still standing near the doorway chatting about absolutely nothing important, wasting their time.
The prince growls lightly in frustration behind her, not that she can blame him.
She’s also painfully aware that she can feel every muscle of Zuko’s chest against her back.
The swell of her bottom is also pushed up against a certain part of his anatomy, and they cannot risk trying to move away from each other or else they’ll get caught.
Of course, it’s at precisely that exact moment that she feels the effect their current closeness has on her companion.
Her cheeks burn in realization, because this cannot be happening right now.
She hears Zuko swearing under his breath, attempting to pull back.
Except there’s nowhere else for him to go in this tiny closet, and any attempt to move away from her would only makes things worse, creating more friction.
… she doesn’t hate it, oddly enough.
In fact, it feels… almost good.
And before she can convince herself what a terrible idea this is, she deliberately pushes her hips back against his hardness.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zuko hisses before he can stop himself.
She glances back over her shoulder and wishes desperately that she could see his reaction behind the mask.
“What the hell are you doing?” Katara counters, keeping her voice low.
“I’m standing in a compromising position pressed up against a pretty girl, and my body’s reacting,” he whispers, sounding completely and utterly mortified. “In the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.”
“Clearly, you must have a thing for holding me captive. Figures that would be one of your kinks.”
If they weren’t hiding, she has a feeling that barb would have been enough to make him start yelling and throwing flames. As it is, she smells the smoke escaping from behind the mask and hears his low growl.
“It’s not like that,” he insists under his breath. “Look, I’m sorry, I – ”
If she’d only pushed her hips back just that first time, she might have been able to play it off as an accident.
But something unhinged has taken root in her brain, and she finds herself grinding back against his hardness once more, cutting him off.
He doesn’t protest, doesn’t move to shove her away, and so she repeats the motion, bracing her palms against the wall to add more friction as she rubs the swell of her bottom against him.
“… you don’t seem too upset,” he whispers, his voice oddly strained.
“I should be,” she admits quietly. “And I don’t know why, but this actually feels… nice.”
He scoffs, the sound muffled by the mask.
“Nice? You’re torturing me right now in the worst way possible when we need to stay hidden and quiet, and you call this nice?”
“Well, do you want me to stop?”
There’s a hint of desperation in his voice that he valiantly tries, and utterly fails, to hide.
“Don’t.”
She hears his unsteady breathing now beside her ear, still muffled by the mask, and she allows his gloved hands to cautiously come to rest on her hips, pulling her flush against him.
When she braces her hands against the wall and grinds back against him again, he moves with her this time.
It’s awkward, fumbling, and they can’t do much without making a sound, and she senses his frustration building as they listen to the chattering of the soldiers who still remain too close for comfort.
Despite the tight space he manages to turn her around, her back pressed to the cold metal wall, and Katara finds herself staring hesitantly up into the pitch black eye sockets of the mask.
She should put an end to this, even if that means she’s stuck hiding in a closet with an aroused and unsatisfied firebender who’s been a threat to her ever since the day his ship knocked down her village walls.
Katara knows better than to do this, and yet she refuses to stop.
He leans forward, just enough to grasp her bottom, hauling her up to her tiptoes and nudges her thighs apart.
She swallows hard, nodding when he awkwardly slots himself between her legs.
The skirt of her shroud is still in the way, blocking their efforts, but she’s able to feel the effect that she has on him between her thighs when he tentatively rocks his hips forward against hers.
It’s still not enough, nowhere near in fact, but she sighs as he repeats the motion, letting the limited contact suffice for now.
“This is a funny way to treat someone that you hate,” she hears him whispering.
Katara has no answer for that, and instead she clings tightly to his arms as he pushes himself against her again.
“We shouldn’t be doing this here,” he murmurs, even as he grinds himself harder between her thighs. “This is just asking to get caught.”
She nods, even as she wraps her arms around his shoulders for leverage so she can return the favor, spreading her legs as wide open as she can in this limited space.
Katara can practically hear his racing heartbeat in the darkness, and she feels him throbbing with need against her center, hot and hard and aching between her thighs, and it’s all for her.
And it should not entice her, but it does.
Outside of the closet, the soldiers continue to mingle, their voices gradually growing fainter as they eventually start to wander off, blissfully unaware.
Inside of the closet, Katara uses his shoulders for leverage to raise her hips up and down against his hardness and wrap her legs tighter around his waist, earning her a muffled groan.
Zuko’s clutching the back of her thighs for support, helping her move against him to create more friction, and the heat pouring off of him in waves now is overwhelming.
It feels good, so good, and she swallows down the poison that she tastes on her tongue each time their hips meet.
Both of them are too worked up to think clearly anymore, and she’ll blame that for the other stupid decisions that she’ll make later that night.
Once the coast is finally clear and the factory’s gone completely dark, they make a run for it.