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lykegenia · 8 years ago

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The Things We Hide Ch. 4

The Southern Water Tribe stood for a hundred years against the Fire Nation, indomitable until Sozin’s Comet tipped the balance in Fire Lord Ozai’s favour. Now, as planned, the South is decimated, Chief Hakoda is a puppet on his throne, and Princess Katara is a political prisoner held in the Fire Nation capital to ensure his good behaviour. But Ozai has little time to gloat. A vigilante masquerading as the Blue Spirit is causing unrest among the people, rebel ships still hound his navy, and right under his nose the South’s most powerful waterbender waits with the patience of ice to strike at the very heart of his empire and bring it crashing down.

Chapter 1 on AO3 Previous chapter on AO3

Words: 2,491 Pairing: Zuko x Katara Chapter Summary: Sozin’s Comet is coming. While the Southern Water Tribe celebrates the first day of spring, Hakoda and his council of elders must decide what to do about the looming threat to their people.

Read it on AO3

The capital city of the Southern Water Tribe glittered in the light of the noonday sun. At the bottom of the world, the light was little more than a sliver on the horizon, turning the sky a brief lilac before sinking behind the ocean once again. To the people who had endured the darkness of winter, however, that small flare of sunlight was a cause for celebration – it meant summer was coming.

Along every street within the city’s fortress wall, lanterns cleverly filled with glowing algae created firefly dots as the Water Tribe danced their hope for the bounty that would come with the changing seasons. For three days, the spiralling walkways and domed edifices that distinguished Southern architecture would ring with laughter and songs honouring spirits and ancestors.

With a heavy sigh, Chief Hakoda turned away from the revelry and made his way back to the vaulted council hall where the Tribe’s elders, his family, and the best of his generals sat waiting.

He glanced around them as he took his place at the head of the war table, their sombre expressions grim above the pale sheen of their ceremonial furs. All eyes turned to him as he settled himself cross-legged in front of the long-fire, hands pressed on his knees. The flames, refracted through three curved panels of ice, cut sharp angles into his cheeks and the line of his jaw.

“Runners from the First Fleet have confirmed it,�� he intoned. “What we have feared for a hundred years – what we have known for certainty for half a decade – is finally coming to pass.”

Uncomfortable shuffling met his words, but none of those seated showed surprise. To Hakoda’s left, Kya knit her fingers together in her lap, a sad line puckered between her brows. She glanced at her husband, and a knowing look passed between them. With a slight nod, he continued.

“A string of ships has been sent to harry them, but it is a fact that the Fire Nation Navy is on its way. Their plan is to do to us what they did to the Air Nation, to end this war the way it began, with the fury of Sozin’s Comet at their backs and our destruction on the pages of their history.”

“Let them come,” growled Kallik, a surly-looking man whose scale armour was scratched and dented from hard use. One corner of his mouth pulled down with the scar of an old burn. “A century of bombardment, and our walls have only strengthened.”

“A flame cannot endure a blizzard,” another voice concurred. “An attack by the Fire Nation, any attack, must be doomed to failure so far out of their element.”

Hakoda let the council mutter among themselves, watching the tide wash back and forth between agreement and dispute until finally one old, croaky voice cut through the rest like wind through the spires of the spirit house.

“What comes for us is not some feeble campfire that must be held close and sheltered against any breath of winter,” Kanna said. “I remember the sight of the Air Temples’ destruction. Imagine the sky red as blood, and fire spread across it like a net that traps everything within it. In less than a day an entire people was wiped out.” She nodded her head solemnly. “It will happen to us.”

Sokka spoke up from his father’s right. “Gran-Gran is right. The force they’ve gathered is bigger than anything they’ve thrown at us before. And they put all that hot air of theirs into airships, so we may not even have a chance to stop them by sea. Sneaky bastards,” he added.

“We have to do something,” Katara said, turning her eyes on her father.

Hakoda raised his hand for quiet. “The Fire Nation invasion is something we can’t change. All we can do is decide how to act against it. Do we throw ourselves at our enemy with the ferocity of a polar bear-dog protecting her cubs, and hope they get destroyed along with us; do we scatter and hope some of our people survive; or do we surrender and hope the Fire Lord is feeling merciful?”

Several of the elders sucked air through their gums to indicate their displeasure. Either course of action was suicidal – Ozai’s reputation for cruelty outstripped even that of his father, Azulon. At stake was the loss of their people, their culture, and at best, their independence. Stories of Fire Nation techniques for imprisoning enemy benders travelled through every port in the western Earth Kingdom; they made nightmare monsters and cautionary tales for small children too apt to wander in the snow; they were the reason no Southern waterbender had ever been captured alive.

Eventually, one old woman raised her voice above the others. Her hair and skin both were bleached by age, her hands flecked with liver spots. Even so, her general’s uniform hung on proud, unstooped shoulders, and her eyes were bright as the sun on the sea.

“There is another option,” Hama told the gathering. “We could survive.”

Hakoda’s gaze fixed on the Southern Water Tribe’s waterbending master. “General?”

She nodded respectfully at him before shifting her posture to take in everyone around her. “At the first level,” she began, “I teach my students this: where there is water, there is life. Where there is life, there is hope.”

“So far the Fire Nation has been pretty good at taking both of those things away,” Kallik snorted. “Even at Ba Sing Se, the power of the avatar and the Earth King’s forces combined was barely enough to stop their army.”

Hama blinked mild eyes at him. “I don’t propose stopping them. They cannot be stopped.”

“How do we survive if we don’t stop them?” Sokka asked. He had been more than a little oogied by the old woman when he was small, and the cold smile that spread across her features now reminded him why.

“Katara,” Hama said. “What does water do when it encounters an object it cannot move?”

Startled by the unexpected use of her name, it took Katara a few moments to remember the exact words taught to her years ago when she first began training – the words she drilled into her own students. “It flows around it and creates a new path,” she answered. “It may take time, but a river always reaches the ocean.”

“And how do waterbenders use this wisdom?”

“A master waterbender always moves with both offense and defence in mind, ready to change direction if an opponent proves too formidable in any aspect,” she recited. “In this way, a master uses their enemies’ energy against them, redirecting it so as to assure victory. The shift between offensive and defensive patterns also makes a true master difficult to predict in combat.”

“Very good,” Hama replied with a slight deepening of the wrinkles around her eyes. “It’s good to see you still remember the basics.” She paused and straightened her shoulders. “Honoured Council, what I propose is a coming together of the three options Chief Hakoda has laid before us. If we fight the Fire Nation during Sozin’s Comet, they will destroy us. If we flee, their navy will pick us off one by one until we can have no hope of retaliation. If we surrender, Ozai will likely slaughter most and make slaves of the rest, to be ground down on his implacable engine of war. We can stop him. It will require sacrifice, and the blessing of the spirits, but I believe not only will my plan save the Southern Water Tribe, but also help turn the tide in the Hundred Years War.”

The boldness of the statement left an awed silence behind it, and the defiance in it shook loose the tight coil of worry in Katara’s gut. Gone was the air of despondency the elders had suffered since hearing news of the comet’s return, and in its place a stirring of old energies, like the churning sky of an approaching storm.

But all that could be undone. It was her father’s place as Chief to decide how to move forward.

“Let us hear and judge what you say,” Hakoda commanded.

They spent the next few hours discussing Hama’s plan to outmanoeuvre the Fire Nation and gain control in the war. In its bare bones, the plan was sound: most of the tribe’s forces would leave the city and travel to the southern Earth Kingdom, taking the elders, the younger waterbenders, and as many citizens as would fit on board their ships. Only a few would remain to put up a fight. Not only would It buy time for those escaping, it would fool the Fire Nation forces into thinking that they really were making one valiant last stand, so that when Hakoda surrendered, the act would seem genuine and desperate.

Katara worried, however. Too many things could go wrong. What if the Fire Nation caught the refugees before they reached safe harbour? What if they decided to kill her father as an example, instead of making him a puppet leader of a vassal state as they had already done with conquered Earth Kingdom fiefdoms? What if Ozai found out about the ruse and decided genocide was the best way to retaliate?

And then there was the fate of all those left behind to defend the city. Life at the South Pole was hard, even with sophisticated infrastructure and a tight-knit community to safeguard against the unforgiving climate, but death in a blizzard could not be compared to death in an inferno. Every member of the war council knew someone lost in Fire Nation raids.

At last, Hama paused, her brows furrowed and her hands clasped together in her lap. “Of course, Hakoda, in order for the plan to be a success, you must stay in the city.”

“No!”

The shout came from Sokka, whose fists were balled on his knees. Although this would be his seventeenth summer, in that moment, looking at his father, he might as well have been a four-year-old holding his first knife and worrying he’d never make as fine a spear as his father.

“Dad can’t stay in the city. It’s too dangerous. Besides, who will command the Third Fleet if he doesn’t?”

“You will,” Hakoda told him steadily.

“What?”

“You’re of age and more than capable. You will take Katara and lead the Third Fleet to Kyoshi Island, and onto the mainland from there.”

“What – but -” Sokka turned dumbfounded to his sister, as if willing her to tell him everyone had gone insane.

“Sokka’s right, Dad. If something happens to you the Tribe will be without a leader. We can’t -”

“My place is standing with my people,” Hakoda interrupted. “General Hama is right - if our strategy is going to work, they must think we have been beaten. For that, I must submit myself to their mercy, and the mercy of the spirits.”

Katara gazed around the room, noting the defeated slump of the elders, the grim expression on her waterbending master’s face, her brother’s hard frown. So much sacrifice, so much death about to rain down on them. Touching her hand to the sea-wolf teeth woven into her hair, she lifted her chin.

“If you’re staying, then so am I.”

“Katara -”

“No. When the Fire Nation comes, they won’t show restraint. My place is here, with you, Dad. The people will stand a better chance if I’m here to help defend them. You said yourself we need to make our defeat believable.”

Time stretched as Hakoda weighed his daughter’s words. Every nerve in him screamed against letting his youngest child remain to face the might of Sozin’s Comet, and yet he couldn’t deny the truth in her words. Despite her lack of years, Katara had already advanced to the highest level of waterbending offered by the Southern Academy. As Hama’s personal student she continued to excel, channelling her determination and guile into finding new ways to use what she had learned.

And then, there was the look on her face, framed by the sea wolf teeth braided at her temples. The stubborn set of her jaw was the same as when, at five years old, she had demanded to be allowed on the tiger-seal hunt with Sokka, and then, when denied, stowed away on the outrigger canoe by making room for herself in the stores – at the expense of three days’ worth of rations.

Dammed meltwater had the power to sweep away settlements without distinction if not correctly channelled. Hakoda’s instincts told him now that if Katara were ordered to leave, she would only find a way to return and wreak similar, undirected destruction upon them all. He sighed.

“Very well.”

With the skeleton of the plan in place, all that remained was for the council to weave in the details, to decide who would go, and, more importantly, who else would stay. Although only seasoned warriors would have any chance against the full might of the Fire Nation Navy, Hakoda and the other generals were not willing to compromise the rules of comradeship which had sustained them for generations: the Southern Water Tribe did not conscript its citizens for almost certain death.

The longer they talked, the less impact the words had, until the long-fire burned low and the elders were satisfied if sombre with decisions made.

“Does the Northern Water Tribe know what fate awaits them?” Kanna asked as silence descended once again. Ozai’s eye for conquest fell on them as well.

“We have sent messengers suggesting they join the avatar’s resistance in the Earth Kingdom, but they have been too isolated for too long,” Bato replied. “We can’t send troops and hope to protect our own borders as well.”

“Then we must hope that they at least see enough of the danger to protect the Spirit Oasis,” said Hama. “Without Tui and La we are all lost.”

Hakoda nodded. “Chief Arnook knows his duty. We will know the outcome soon enough. Is there any other business?” He watched the assembled council shake their heads and used the ensuing silence to call down the traditional blessing to close the meeting.

As the elders began to file out, back down into the city where the festivities whirled on oblivious to the future, Katara caught the arm of a passing servant and requested food be brought to the royal family’s private chambers. She glanced over her shoulder as the servant bowed and hustled away, watching as her mother wrapped comforting arms around Hakoda’s shoulders. Never before that moment, with the low-burning fire cutting the sharp angles of his face, had Katara thought of her father as anything but indomitable. Looking at him now, though, she saw the weight of his responsibilities and the worry that would mark them all in the coming months; she realised her father was no longer a young man.

Spirits preserve them all.

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