Tempest in a Teacup: flowers/accidents/appearances/ties/barter
"patterns of ink and metal"
+flowers in the ashes+
”The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself." -Gilbert Keith Chesterton
#01 - Comfort
After an evening in the company of his brother, Iroh is bone-achingly eager to welcome the company of his blue-eyed ward.
#02 - Kiss
Katara never holds his hand, not even when it’s allowed and every scared line of her body wants to; but when close, trapped in a crowd, she brushes small fingertips over his and Iroh understands.
#03 - Soft
Katara’s punishment for sneaking into the library consists of a lecture about organization and a footstool to help her reach the higher shelves.
#04 - Pain
“What unusual eyes,” remarks the noblewoman and Katara looks away.
#05 - Potatoes
She buries them in the garden while Iroh smiles, but it’s too soon to tell if it’s a planting or a funeral.
#06 - Rain
It’s the only time the dark, wet spots on her sleeve don’t sadden him.
#07 - Chocolate
“But ginseng is still my favorite,” she assures him.
#08 - Happiness
The first time he hears Katara laugh, Iroh looses his last doubt about having refused mercy to a child dying in the snow.
#09 - Telephone
The Dragon of the West’s strange ward; the general’s blue-eyed wonder; Iroh’s foreign curio; the old man’s latest oddity.
#10 - Ears
Shadows in the hallways don’t worry Katara; the mouths of their owners do.
#11 - Name
The character for dragon is less complicated that she expects; the word and man don’t have that much in common, apparently.
#12 - Sensual
The curve of her jaw warns Iroh to brace himself for the future.
#13 - Death
The helmet is an awkward weight in her hands; suddenly, Katara is glad it’s an antique.
#14 - Sex
Iroh’s shock at her discovery is matched only by Katara’s confusion at having the book ripped out of her hands.
#15 - Touch
The hand on Katara’s shoulder is warm, reassuring, but she doesn’t relax until her feet back across the doorstep.
#16 - Weakness
“Tell me about your nephew,” she asks again.
#17 - Tears
“Thank you,” she mutters, reaching for the teacup with one hand and wiping her eyes with the other.
#18 - Speed
Time is distance; the girl standing in his garden is a thousand miles beyond the mute on the deck’s edge.
#19 - Wind
“I don’t know,” Iroh says, “but the previous one was called Roku.”
#20 - Freedom
Because she may ask for anything and allowed to do the same, Katara chooses to sit in the garden and flip pebbles into the pond.
#21 - Life
It’s not so strange, Katara thinks, to wish for snow during a summer afternoon.
#22 - Jealousy
Describing the prince’s practice session, Iroh wonders at the look on Katara’s face but is distracted from asking upon discovering the tea in his cup is inexplicably cold.
#23 - Hands
Katara learns to play Pai Sho by listening to Iroh describe the tiles; she learns to win by studying the hand that moves them.
#24 - Taste
The pepper flakes make her sneeze till water gathers at the corners of her eyes; Katara finishes the whole bag anyway.
#25 - Devotion
Katara traces the black thread against the red cloth, silent; Iroh watches the Water girl outlined against the Fire insignia, and is torn.
#26 - Forever
“A parent never forgets his child,” Iroh reassures her, and the pain in his eyes convinces Katara to accept the words.
#27 - Blood
“He doesn’t really look like you,” Katara says during their ride home, “but I think it’d be better if he did.”
#28 - Sickness
At the peak of fever, Katara calls out for her mother, crying; Iroh, hero of a nation, sits helplessly by her side.
#29 - Melody
It took the discovery of three snapped flutes under the bed, a shamisen in the garden pond, and a horn in an orange tree, before Iroh acknowledged that Katara would not be taught what she didn’t want to learn.
#30 - Star
“They’ll damage something,” she says as another firework erupts above and the crowd cheers.
#31 - Home
Silk instead of fur, iron instead of ice, silver instead of clay: the makings of her surroundings are a change easier to accept than forgive.
#32 - Confusion
He reaches for her and Katara falls back, half asleep and unable to distinguish the man in the room from the soldier in her nightmares.
#33 - Fear
She claims she can’t remember their faces but Iroh notices Katara doesn’t look up, at him, when she says it.
#34 - Lightning/Thunder
The moment between the flash and the echo isn’t long, but then neither is the walk to Iroh’s room.
#35 - Bonds
They share no blood, no common land, no recognizable similarity: but they are not strangers to each other, despite seeming so strange to others.
#36 - Market
Catching each other’s eye, they giggle, a girl and a general with pear juice running down their chins.
#37 - Technology
Katara spreads new maps next to the old and waits for Iroh to explain how the Fire Nation has redesigned the world.
#38 - Gift
Katara likes Iroh but no amount of affection is enough to warrant yet another stone three headed goat-monkey-frog-something in her room.
#39 - Smile
She learns to smile without showing her teeth, and to speak without saying what she means.
#40 - Innocence
Iroh does not think of her as a daughter because if he had a daughter he would never let her learn what Katara knows.
#41 - Completion
History is not her favorite subject, but it’s the one Katara’s most attentive to; Iroh cements the interest by explaining that one cannot fathom an ending of an event without understanding the conditions of its start.
#42 - Clouds
Katara knows Iroh is different from others, adults and otherwise, because it takes a special sort of person to find a winged frog in the sky.
#43 - Sky
Katara watches the color of her sky reflect in the pond; Iroh watches the power of his hope reflect in the child.
#44 - Heaven
“She was a very good person,” Katara explains to Iroh while he hands her a stick of incense to light at the altar.
#45 - Hell
Iroh doesn’t question Katara’s right to hate; instead, he marvels at her refusal to obey it.
#46 - Sun
Come dawn, Katara’s too exhausted to worry and falls asleep under the comforting weight of Iroh’s hand on her hair.
#47 - Moon
Katara talks to the moon with her eyes, silently, explaining what she doesn’t want her guardian to hear.
#48 - Waves
The screen is beautiful, an undeniable work of art, but its painted ocean is dry to the touch and thus useless.
#49 - Hair
When she tries doing it from memory, hands shaky, strands slip out and tangle until finally Katara gives up and lets the maid bind her braids in the proper Fire Nation style.
#50 - Supernova
“I forgive you, Iroh.”
-X-
AN: Written according to the "alpha" set of 1sentence themes, but never posted to the community because nobody would get it.
"patterns of ink and metal"
+accidents+
The accidents begin later than Iroh expects.
First come the spills. A plague of incompetence sweeps over the house’s pots and kettles; puddles of soup and wine and tea seem to cause a fall a day. The kitchen staff despairs over the likelihood of ever finding a sane container again until, suddenly, the spilling comes to an end as unexplainable as its beginning.
Next comes the cold. This is a happier oddity and few seem to notice, though the cook does remark, with vague happy satisfaction, that the food storage is in especially fine condition despite the hotness of the season, and barrels of wine emerge from the cellar cold. But when someone finds a layer of frost on a melon suspicion stirs. The cold vanishes the same week the melon is discovered. Afterwards, no one bothers with the subject.
Well, almost no one.
Iroh remembers, with fond amusement, that when his nephew turned five there was a sudden rash of singed tapestries throughout the palace. And that nobody ever did figure what happened to the carpets in the west pavilion, though the servants spent a week grumbling about the soot.
Iroh summons Katara.
She arrives promptly, a lacquered tray of tea ready in her hands, and she does not look guilty. Just very, very wary.
“I was wondering,” Iroh says after the tea is poured and the two are settled, “if there is something you would like to tell me.”
“About what, Master Iroh?”
“Oh. Well.” He sets his cup down and waves a vague hand through the air. “How old are you now, little one?”
“Ten, Master Iroh.”
“Ten. That’s an impressive number. A person builds up a lot of questions over ten years, I should think.”
Katara’s hands fold neatly in her lap. “Questions about what, Master Iroh?”
“The world in general, perhaps. Or the body in particular.” He raises his cup to take another sip of tea. It is, of course, excellently prepared. “Sooner or later, a body begins to undergo certain peculiar changes and I thought we might have a talk about some of them. It happened to me too, you know.”
“Is this about the moon and the river and avoiding pale colors at the end of the month? Because Kozue, the head maid, already talked to me about that.” Her brows knit together, puzzled. “Wait. It does happen to boys?”
Iroh coughs tea up his throat. “Ah. No, not that talk.”
“Is it about the eel?”
“…Eel?”
“Like how a boy has an eel and a girl has a flower, though when I asked what sort of flower, Kozue wouldn’t tell me; she just said it’s a closed flower and that it has to stay under wraps even if the eel has handsome legs. Except I’ve never seen an eel with legs and why would I wrap flowers?”
“No.” Iroh sets down his cup. This might be more difficult than he originally thought. “This definitely isn’t that talk, either.”
“Then what is it about?”
Sometimes honesty works best. “Bending, maybe?”
Katara’s hands freeze in her lap, blue eyes wide. Still, she remains silent.
“Katara, I understand that it is not your fault.”
Her eyes widen even more. She moves forwards so suddenly that the edge of her knee bumps the tray and tea flows in a flat, low arc across the floor. Before Iroh can open his mouth to say anything, anything at all, footsteps sound from the outside and the tearoom door flies open.
“I did it,” says Prince Zuko, face flushed from his sprint.
“You did?” Iroh asks, still shaking tea from his sleeve.
“He didn’t!” Katara shouts, jumping to her feet.
“Yes, I did.” Zuko says to Iroh. To Katara, “Shut up.”
Iroh looks from one to the other, an ironic scenario unfolding in his understanding. “And what exactly did you do?”
The twelve-year old straightens, every inch a prince and nervous all the same. “I taught her.”
“Taught her…?”
“Bending.”
“Ah. That.” Iroh wrings the last bit of tea out his sleeve. “I see.”
Silence stretches among the three, Zuko standing, Iroh sitting, and Katara kneeling to mop the spill. She speaks without looking up. “I didn’t mean to freeze the melons. It was an accident. I won’t do it again.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Iroh nods. “I like melon. And the spills?”
Zuko starts before Katara can. “She didn’t have any control then. That’s how I found out, by walking in when she was trying to get water to rise out of a jug.”
“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” Katara whispers.
Iroh looks at her. “Can you?”
Slowly, the girl raises her face from the floor, eyes flickering from uncle to nephew. Zuko nods. Biting her lip, she raises a hand to hold over the wet floor. At first there is nothing, not a ripple, and then a golden length of tea begins to spiral upwards. It wavers like a stalk of transparent grass, and then collapses, spraying Iroh’s sleeve once more.
“Sorry,” the girl, the Waterbender, mutters.
“She’s not very good,” Zuko explains without tact. Katara’s answering glare is motivated by habit more than anger. Both children turn to look at Iroh with identical expressions of worry. Worlds of possibility spin through Iroh’s mind.
“Well,” he says. “Let us see where we can go from here.”
-X-
"patterns of ink and metal"
+appearances+
Katara sees the Fire Lord’s face once, and only once. The incident is barely a minute long (“Raise your head, child.” She obeys. “A pretty one, Iroh.”) but it carves into her, a memory whose grooves are filled with molten gold-or an incision she can’t sew shut. That night, safe in her bed, Katara lies awake reconstructing the face of the man aiming to own the world.
Next morning, she drinks tea with Iroh; they talk about a little about the weather (the storms are coming), a little about what’s in their cups (a new blend, she finds it bitter), and about his latest addition to the library and her studies (the scroll elaborately describes a confrontation that happened two centuries and a night ago; he tries to help her understand what happened.)
Later in the day, halfway through a convoluted metaphor comparing war to a dance, Katara decides, with all the confidence in her possession, that the boy at her side does not look like the Fire Lord. Of course, actually saying this to Zuko is mistake; boiling over, the prince storms out of the room, thundering that he looks like his father, everyone knows he looks like his father, it’s his father and who the hell else would Zuko look like?
Like yourself, she says when he returns.
-X-
"patterns of ink and metal"
+ties/bonds+
It is one of life’s most inconvenient trials that a good student does not necessarily make a good teacher. A pity, Iroh reflects, because Zuko truly is an excellent student. But…
“Again,” his nephew orders. “And again and again until you get it right. What’s the matter with you? Six year-olds manage to learn this set in a day!”
“Six year-old Firebenders maybe.” Katara rubs a small brown hand across her forehead. “I’m not-”
“-in a position to make excuses. Unless Waterbenders are defective by nature.” He eyes the girl’s slumped shoulders and tired face with prominent disdain. The gesture is deliberate, though not completely fake, but it has what Iroh assumes is the desired effect; Katara’s stance levels, eyes narrowing, body moving into position. The girl is not without potential. Or pride. From his angle, Iroh can see what she cannot: the approval in Zuko’s eyes.
“Again. You have to be ready to--”
“Prince Zuko.” Both children turn to him, unconsciously expectant. “That is enough for today. You can try again tomorrow, yes?”
“But tomorrow is-oh, fine.” The boy’s shoulders sag. “Fine. We’ll try it again tomorrow.”
Behind him, Katara’s face is dejected. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea, Iroh thinks. They can instruct her about endurance, discipline, conditioning and resilience, but neither uncle nor nephew, Master nor prince, can teach Katara what she yearns to know; ultimately, they can prepare her but offer no resolution. The difference between them, Water and Fire, is simply too great to ignore. In Iroh’s opinion it is a tragedy.
In Zuko’s, it is a challenge.
“I don’t understand why it isn’t working.” Glaring at the teacup in his hand, he sets it down without drinking. “You’re moving correctly, most of the time, so why isn’t the water responding? What’s wrong with it?”
Katara refills Iroh’s cup, watching the tea pour down in a graceful arc, before looking up with an exhausted expression. She picks her words slowly; he can see their careful selection happening behind her eyes.
“It feels wrong,” she says finally. “Or not wrong, but not exactly right. Like trying to write with the wrong hand. Even when I manage to follow your speed, it winds up falling out of synch because following you isn’t-well, I can’t just follow you. It’s not enough.”
The lines around Zuko’s mouth tighten in frustration. “It should be.”
“Well, it’s not.” Tiredness chafes Katara’s manners. “At this rate you’ll be Airbending before I'll be Waterbending because-” Her expression freezes, anger suddenly overcome by a stab of inspiration. Iroh recognizes the look; it’s the same one she wears moments before unscrambling a particularly intricate line of text or dissecting an especially intricate blend of tea.
“Let me borrow this,” she says and snatches Zuko’s still full teacup before the boy has a chance to protest. She sets the cup in the middle of the training room, the same spot they’ve been circling for the past three hours, and takes a long measured step back. Zuko rises to watch, coming closer.
“What are you up to?” Apparently Zuko recognizes the look too. Katara answers by pulling out the bright ribbon holding her dark braids.
“Give me your hand,” she says.
Zuko doesn’t move.
“Please,” she says.
The prince extends his hand, rigid. The girl raises her hand to meet it. Carefully, she twines the thin length of silk around their hands, binding the two together loosely. Judging from the studious concentration on Katara’s face the laxity is intentional.
“Now,” she says when the last bit of ribbon is tucked into a baggy knot. “Let’s go through it again.”
The meaning of her idea surfaces quickly; three steps into the sequence Zuko’s hand moves too fast and the tie unravels. The boy waits and watches with open displeasure as Katara redoes the binding.
“Again.”
And again and again. Each time the ribbon finds a chance to slip, the sequence breaks down, and they return to the beginning. Go too fast, too aggressive, and the knot comes undone. Go too slow, too hesitant, and the sequence falls into ruin. Harmony is the goal.
Iroh watches the two with growing fascination, admiring one for his dedication, one for her ingenuity, both for their determination. Together, they push and pull, driving ambition against patience, knowledge against intuition, violence against serenity. The power of concentration wraps around them so thickly that neither child immediately notices the moment their work breeds true.
But Iroh does.
Zuko’s hands are open flat, and Katara’s mirror him; between them, an invisible circle is traced, its never-ending beginning bringing the pair into synchronization. The sequence is transformed into a new pattern, a compromise.
Iroh watches tea slowly spiral upward out of the cup on the floor, and he watches Fire and Water continuing to move closer, and he watches Katara and Zuko smile at each other.
-X-
"patterns on ink and metal"
+barter+
Zuko is not used to asking for anything. As a prince he has always been provided for and left without need. When he actually manages to discover an absence in the abundance of all that is considered his, he does not ask for it; the prince demands, orders, and, usually, receives. This is perhaps not the best standard to impress upon a child but the fault cannot be placed on the boy himself; as a prince he’s taught, through words and patterns, that everything available can, and thus will, be his. Eventually.
But there’s always something, thinks Iroh. There is always something to force a mind into hearing a need and thinking it’s a whim. There is always the want for more, for something undeniably real. Leave it to his nephew to complicate that particular truth of life by choosing someone to be that something.
“I cannot,” Iroh says, “give you what you are asking for.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Prince Zuko, people are not to be passed from hand to hand like sacks of rice. People are people, not things.” Many among the nobles and military think differently. Too many. Iroh was hoping his nephew, proud and certain though he is, was not growing up to be one of them. Yet Zuko has asked him…this.
Zuko has asked for Katara.
“You have plenty of servants, prince Zuko. In the future you will have thousands more, along with armies, ministers, and a nation of supplicants. Don’t take from your poor, rickety uncle the only person who can brew a good cup of tea to warm these old bones into life.”
“Anyone can make tea. You don’t need her especially for that.”
Iroh does not ask what Zuko needs her for. “But Katara makes the best tea.”
The boy fidgets, frowning at the steaming cup in front of him with ire. “She would still make tea whenever you wanted it, I wouldn’t care. Or you could both move into the palace,” he adds hopefully.
Iroh sighs. “Court air gives me headaches.” A disapproving note shades his tone, camouflaging a note of teasing. “And Katara is too young to enter the seraglio.”
His nephew’s pale skin tinges a compromising pink. “I wouldn’t put her there. Ever.”
Iroh wonders if “ever” will last past sixteen. “Prince Zuko, why are you asking this?”
“Because-” The boy’s hands clench; he looks ready to challenge, to contest, or maybe to simply crack the table in two. Instead, he exhales and relaxes his grip until both palms are flat against each knee. “Because if she were my attendant…then she wouldn’t have to be afraid of anyone...hurting her.”
Ah, thinks Iroh in enlightenment. The nightmares. Their visits lessened over the past two years but still they come, leaving Katara shaking in their wake. At nine she no longer wakes screaming, as she did at seven, but instead rises to fill a teapot and wait for morning. Some nights she will swallow a draught to leaden her limbs and fall empty into slumber, and some nights the emptiness scares her more than the dreams. Come morning, Iroh will find her watching the sky lighten with a dim hurting in her gaze. It was only a matter of time, really, before Zuko found her too.
“It would not help,” he tells the boy and watches frustration return, knowing enough now to recognize the desperation beneath the request.
“No one will bother a prince’s personal attendant. No one would dare. Once she realizes that she’s safe, that nobody can hurt her, Katara would-”
“-would still have to face what haunts her.” But how do you explain this to a boy who is experiencing the desire to protect for the very first time, not in the grand sense of honor and nationality but for the sake of something as vast and inexplicable as friendship? (Katara is, Iroh thinks sadly, the only friend Zuko can truly call his own, instead of a consequence of his status.) There is honor in this.
But there is responsibility too, debt, the guilty charge that stretches invisibly between warden and prisoner, conqueror and refugee; the Fire Nation’s fortune is Katara’s sorrow as much as it is Zuko’s birthright. Katara’s fear, the armored monsters that rip her dreams, is the voice of experience.
How does one explain such injustice to a boy? Especially a boy like Zuko, whose soul shines untarnished from his eyes, believing honor is invincible.
“I cannot,” Iroh says.
After Zuko leaves, Iroh wonders if Katara will ever grow beyond horrors’ reach, and if Zuko will ask again, and whether it is ever truly fair to ask any child to become an adult.
-X-