Avatar fic: Proposing the Truth

[scwlc_fic]

Title: Proposing the Truth

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise from before I started writing this series, I don't own.

Rating: PG-15

Summary: One step forward, Katara's bending in public and talking to people and starting to be normal. Three steps back. Or are they steps back? Seventh in the Proposal series.

Author's Notes: This is the longest of the instalments in the series so far. I started and it just kept going and going and going. As to the bouquet thing, it actually was something done in Europe in at least the Regency period, probably more. People could have whole conversations with flowers, because each kind of flower meant something different. So you could send a bouquet of something to a guy, and he'd know you were asking him if he was interested in seeing you the next day, and he could send flowers back saying yes or no, or whether you'd like to dance. I just decided to appropriate the idea for the Fire Nation nobility, because it's an interesting tradition. I don't know if there are flowers known as 'mim blossoms' anywhere in the world, but I wanted something that sounded . . . Avatar-ish. So I made up the flowers. Picture them however you like. No, I'm not using any real messages for flowers, I just made it up.


Katara had never been so relieved in her life when Iroh had agreed to sit in on the bending lessons. He was a kind man, and she knew that he'd make sure no one harassed her or Shui while they were working. More, she knew he'd be gentle if she exceeded the bounds of what was proper.

Her father was a kind and loving man, but he didn't take well to his daughter's conflicting approaches to things. When she'd acted inappropriately, his responses had always been swift and uncompromising. She understood that it was necessary for a woman to understand her place in the Tribes, but if he'd taken the time not to simply deliver ultimatums, Katara knew she would have dealt better with it all.

But now they were at the Fire Nation capital. In the palace. In the Fire Lady's rooms.

The rooms were so beautiful and elaborate they put the luxury of the ship to shame. Beautifully decorated in a combination of styles, Katara found herself relieved when the maids, and Shui in particular, would help her pick out the right clothes, pick out her foods, pick up everything she touched, move everything for her and generally treated her like she needed to be looked after. Mostly, she was relieved because everything was so overwhelmingly different that she felt like she needed looking after.

It was very annoying, but Katara submitted, because she knew she didn't know better, and these were trained royal servants. Surely they knew how a Fire Lady was supposed to act. Also, while it was annoying to be treated like a child who couldn't be trusted with nice things, it was pretty nice to know that she didn't have to cook anything, mend anything, fix anything or listen to some man whine about how something was wrong that he couldn't deal with because it was women's' work. As though somehow he was too good to sew a damn button back onto his parka.

She was quietly waiting in her sitting room for Ty Lee. The former acrobat, former friend to the Princess, former noblewoman and current Kyoshi warrior had volunteered to join Katara on her excursions among the Fire Nation noblewomen. The bubbly girl had been both a shield and a sword, showing some startling depths that Katara hadn't expected from her.

They'd spent one afternoon together with some of the uppermost echelons of the nobility. These were women raised in homes of privilege, who'd never had to work at anything in their lives, and had never wanted to. They couldn't understand someone like Katara, who'd had to work to survive, or someone like Ty Lee, who had chosen a path that didn't lead to power, just to a life that made her happy.

"So," one had said with a slight sneer. "Lady Katara. I am most intrigued as to how I might achieve a success similar to yours. Why, I am most impressed the Fire Lord recalls you after three years of separation. You must have been quite . . . talented for him to select a former . . . companion with your background."

The subtext had been all too clear. Lady Chan had all but said, You slut. I know you were sleeping with him before. A prostitute should never have been given the position of Fire Lady.

There had been no way for Katara to respond to this. She could figure out how to deal with politicians and governing. For one thing, when they implied something like that, she could demand they stay on topic. Unfortunately, here this was the topic. She knew anything she said would be too obvious. In the Water Tribes, a discussion like this tended to be far more open, and while it wasn't seemly to snipe back, it wasn't complete social suicide.

Ty Lee came to her rescue with a cool, restrained confidence that was entirely unlike the girl as Katara knew her. "Lady Chan, the Fire Lord has told me himself he was greatly impressed at Lady Katara's resistance to his affections. Why, her simple refusal to even speak with him after they allied was far more intriguing than all the bouquets of mim blossoms and crimson roses in the world."

Lady Chan had flushed, and Katara recalled suddenly that, in the Fire Court, whole conversations could be held by exchanges of flowers. That particular combination, once she thought about it indicated a lady's willingness to spend time alone with the object of her affections. Or, as Zhi had put it, "A woman sends those flowers when she wants a man to know she's ready to be bedded by him."

Later that evening, Ty Lee had said, "Oh everyone knows about Lady Chan. She sent Zuko bunches of those bouquets. No one would have known, you're not supposed to, after all, but he returned them to her in front of everyone."

The bubbly girl had been an absolute goldmine of information on recent court gossip. They were relaxing together in Katara's sitting room when Katara got up the nerve to say, "How do you know all that gossip? I mean, about the court."

"Well," Ty Lee said, "I am from the noble class, you know." She smiled happily as she stuffed a sweet into her mouth, continuing with her mouth full of pastry. "I have a few acquaintances that I stay in contact with here." She smiled, "But I like being with the Kyoshi warriors or the circus way better. I don't have to pretend not to be me so much."

Katara smiled sadly. "Any suggestions on how to keep pretending not to be me?" she asked.

"What?" Ty Lee said.

"I'm hardly normal court lady material," Katara told her. "I don't fit in with them at all."

Ty Lee shook her head as she said, "That wasn't what I meant Katara. There are lots of noblewomen that you'll like."

"Then where are they?"

The pink-clad girl got up and moved to the couch where Katara was sitting. While the Water Tribe woman was trying to maintain a demure appearance, Ty Lee simply flopped onto the furniture and pretzeled herself next to her friend. "They're out doing useful things. It's only the silly ones who don't like having fun that stay at court. I didn't like it here because there are only two ways to go if you're noble. You can do things, like Mai or Azula, or you can be silly and useless and have no fun. I wanted to have fun. I didn't want to be serious all the time, I wanted to just enjoy things.

"You like doing useful things, Katara. You're serious about a lot of stuff. Like bending and fighting and things. You'll fit right in, and once those noblewomen know that someone's in charge who wants to do something other than play bad songs and listen to bad poetry and have boring balls they'll come right to court and you'll have lots of friends. You'll see." Ty Lee smiled encouragingly. "Anyhow, there are a lot of girls like Mai here. Ones that learned to fight and bend and stuff. You'll have so much in common with them."

Katara flinched. Her mind echoed her father's words. Now that you're home, you can stop trying to force yourself to pretend to be a warrior, Puppy-seal. You can go back to what you really want and help your gran and the other women care for the needs of our tribe's warriors.

"I'm not supposed to, you know," she heard herself say.

Ty Lee frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Dad told me, I'm supposed to stop pretending to think I can fight." Katara felt a little distanced from herself. She wasn't supposed to say these things. She was supposed to be the way she was before . . . everything.

"Katara," Ty Lee said her name worriedly, and actually straightened up, putting a hand on Katara's shoulder. "It's okay. You're . . ." she searched for something to say. "You're safe here."

"I didn't want to fight any more," Katara told her. "I mean, he was right about that. And when he kept saying I shouldn't go out hunting with the warriors I let it go because I didn't want to have a fight over something that wasn't that important."

Slender arms wrapped around her, and Katara was faintly grateful for them and the light floral perfume that suddenly surrounded her. It kept her from vanishing into the memories of snow and the smell of fish. "It's okay now."

The words still kept coming. "And when he said that my bending was distracting for the warriors I was okay with doing it out of sight. And they kept saying . . . things about me in clan meetings, it was easier not to go to the men's meetings even though I should have. They should have asked me, but they didn't and they never listened anyhow so nothing would get done so I didn't want to argue about it. I was just tired." With a wrench, Katara brought herself back to the present. "Sorry. I just-"

"He who?" Ty Lee asked.

"My father," Katara told her. "He's very . . . traditional. I mean, he loves me, but he likes to have everything . . . I don't know. The way it 'should' be. And sometimes I think he doesn't see that I'm eighteen. It's like he still thinks I'm the ten-year-old girl I was when he and the others left to help the Earth Kingdom armies."

Ty Lee shook her head. "I think a lot of parents are like that. Look at mine! There are six of us, and just because we look the same, my parents think we are."

Katara's eyes widened. "Six!"

"Uh-huh." Ty Lee nodded. "I think it's partly because my parents want us to be the same. They want me to fit in with the others so they just assume I do."

"That's it," Katara agreed. "Dad doesn't treat Sokka like that, but it's like he wants me to be just like my mother, so he assumes that I want to be just like her."

They were on a roll. "And when you do something that's not what they expect, they react as though you're wrong, not because you've done anything wrong, but because they just don't want you to be the kind of person who would do that."

It was coincidence, but Ty Lee's statement sparked something in Katara's memory. She froze as that memory overwhelmed her ability to feel her surroundings. The humid Fire Nation air was gone, replaced with the dry cold of the South Pole. The blue and green room was suddenly white with animal skins covering the floors and walls, and not even Ty Lee's perfume could overwhelm the sudden smell of fish, leather and fur that seemed to fill Katara's nostrils.

"I cannot believe my daughter is the kind of person who would do that. Who would accuse such an honourable warrior of despoiling her."

"Dad! He broke in and just-"

"You're fully capable of discouraging interest in suitors. I've seen you do it," he said disapprovingly. "Even though I do not approve of your methods, if you are capable of leaving Arutak frozen to a glacier, you are capable of removing Ujarak from your igloo if you do not wish him there."

"The eclipse-"

"As you clearly did not, I have to assume you're accusing him for some other reason. Are you ashamed of your actions with him? Because you should be. For having thrown away your purity so that no man will ever be able to know that you came to his bed unsullied."

"Dad . . ."

"I can't even look at you. I knew you had been trying to sneak into the men's meetings to gain advantage over the other girls in the village to attract a man's attention-"

"I was there because I fought beside the Avatar and Zuko and against Azula and the Dai Li. Because I'm as much a warrior as-"

"You are a foolish girl who has let a few months without any adult supervision go to her head and make her believe she did anything other than provide comfort and support to her brother and the Avatar on their way to defeating the Fire Lord. I should have put a stop to this before now."

She was trapped in the memory of months when everyone decided that the fact that they refused to listen to her was the same as her having nothing to contribute. Months when every time she tried to bend, she'd be told to run off and stitch something like a good girl because she didn't want what she thought she wanted. Months of loneliness while the other girls talked spitefully behind her back about how manly she was becoming. Time spent seeing them all paired off with the young men of the tribe returning from war, while they avoided her because a few had thought she was going to spread her legs to anything male just because she'd been travelling with her brother, a twelve-year-old boy and the future Fire Lord who'd already had a girlfriend. She'd discouraged them with her bending, and the others had all decided that there was something wrong with her because of it.

For three months, the only person who had talked to her for anything more than snarled requests that she get back to the stew pot where she belonged, was her gran. It was as though the whole tribe had decided to shun her without consultation among each other. It had hurt, and Katara had ceased to wonder why so many of those who were punished with shunning had killed themselves. The silence, the feeling that she didn't exist to anyone, was horrible.

And then Ujarak.

She'd been even worse off. There were those unmarried women who thought he was wonderful. They were angry at her 'success' at landing the warrior. They'd spent all their time sabotaging anything she did. Her father had refused to believe that Katara had tried to repel the man. She'd been married to him before she could even fully understand what happened, and he'd suddenly had a husband's rights to his wife's body. The memory of the pain spiked through her.

She was so cold. He'd loved to take her on the icy floor, using her as a barrier between himself and the snow. He'd snarl her name in a parody of a lover's voice, Katara.

It had been so awful she'd tried to block out the sound of her own name from her mind because it was better to be nameless than to hear him say it. Katara.

"Katara!"

Zuko had been in his office, dealing with the paperwork that came with being the Fire Lord. One thing he was looking forward to was that once he and Katara were married, he could make her take on half of the paperwork, and she could summarise what she read for him. It would free up a lot of his time.

The guards outside shouted, there were two thuds, and Zuko already had his Dao blades in hand and his breathing regulated for bending when Ty Lee burst in, having incapacitated the guards in her hurry to get in to see him. "Zuko! It's Katara!" She grabbed his hand and started dragging him down the hall. "I don't know what happened. We were talking about my parents and her father and she just . . . I don't know! She just froze and started panting and she's cold and I can't get her to respond and I don't know what to do and I already called a healer, but she's not here yet!"

He'd pulled ahead of Ty Lee and put on a burst of speed, seeing the healer kneeling next to Katara. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"I can't be completely sure," the woman in a healer's uniform told him. "But I think she's gone into shock. I've seen it with some of the soldiers. Something has happened to her that was terrible enough that she's become trapped in her memory and can't find her way out."

Zuko had felt the blood drain from his face. He could only imagine what memory was trapping her.

"We need to warm her up, at the very least," the healer told him. "The shock can make her body temperature drop."

"Anything else?" he asked. He'd taken one of her hands in his, and true to the healer's words, it was ice cold. He warmed his hands, trying to get rid of the corpse-like feel the cold gave her fingers.

The woman shook her head. "No. All we can do is hope something will trigger her to come out of the memory."

"Then excuse us. And whatever you hear, don't interrupt," Zuko said. Ignoring the protests of the healer and the look on Ty Lee's face, he scooped Katara up, carried her into her bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him, and treated her as though she were suffering from cold sickness. He stripped off all of their clothes but for a minimum for modesty, climbed into her bed with her, pulled up the covers and wrapped his body around her. Then he raised his internal temperature and started murmuring to her. Anything he could think of.

He couldn't think of much and quickly degenerated into saying her name, over and over again. It wasn't very long, but it felt like an eternity as he lay there, his friend and future wife curled up, shivering, cold and panting. Her eyes were staring blankly forward and her skin was pale. Abruptly she stiffened, flipped over and seemed to come into focus.

One trembling tan hand emerged from beneath the covers to cup his face, and Zuko had to consciously resist closing his eyes and leaning into it. There was something so caring and gentle the way she did that. It made his heart ache a little.

"Zuko?" she whispered.

"Yes?"

"I . . . what happened?" She looked confused, but she didn't pull away. In fact, when he started to shift away a little, just to get a slightly better angle to look at her from, she wriggled a little, following him. He let her, and pulled her closer. He felt her almost melt into him, and he marvelled at how well they just fit together. He and Mai had never just slid into place together like two puzzle pieces. There was always a hip here or an arm there that felt out of place.

But now wasn't the time to think of that. "You went into shock," he told her. "Ty Lee said you were talking about your father and just . . . went catatonic. The healer thinks you were caught up in a bad memory and couldn't find your way back out again." He waited while she absorbed this, starting to feel uncomfortably warm everywhere but where her still too-cool skin touched his.

A long silence followed. Then a still trembling Katara started to pull away. He let her, sitting up and watching as she slid over the bed and put a foot to the white fur rug on the floor. Abruptly the shaking intensified and she froze, her eyes caught by the rug. Zuko was across the bed and pulling her against himself immediately, hoping to break her out of whatever memory she had been caught in.

Instead of letting him, she reacted. A snarl escaped her and she whipped around, ice daggers forming from the humid air of the room. He would have dodged. Wanted to dodge. He didn't want to get into a bending battle with her. Not while she was traumatised. Not while he couldn't even be sure who she was seeing in front of her. But he couldn't dodge from his knees on the bed. Not fast enough.

So when the daggers came hurtling through the air at him, he brought up a wave of fire that sent them up in a burst of steam.

She'd already pulled the water from the vases spaced around the bedroom, that water hovering around her like a strange sort of battle armour, something he'd seen her do when they attacked the Southern Raiders looking for her mother's killer. The water lashed out at him and Zuko managed to dive and roll out of the way, instinctively bringing his inner flame to the surface.

"Katara," he tried. A ball of ice, rocketing toward him at a deadly speed, smashed into the wall behind him, leaving a hole as it punched straight through, no doubt falling to damage something in the garden outside.

"No," she snarled. "Don't touch me."

"Okay," Zuko said, placatingly. He held his hands in front of him, deliberately trying not to stand in anything at all like a bending stance. "I won't."

"You can't make me do anything!" She snapped. The blankness in her eyes told Zuko that she was still lost in her memory. Instead of being in shock, she was somehow acting it out. On him.

Diving and rolling out of the way of her deadly strikes, Zuko couldn't even gather his thoughts. It was all he could do not to find himself hurt by the sharp edges of the ice she sent flying at him, or the whirling arms of the water whips that were trying to catch him, trip him up or break his neck. Through it all she kept speaking.

"I'm as much a warrior as any of you! You weren't the ones who had to run and fight Azula, you didn't have to face off with Fire Nation with only Sokka and a pacifist twelve-year-old with you, you weren't the ones that had to face off with Zuko! Were you! I've seen him fight, he's ten times the fighter you are!"

That was a nice compliment, he thought dryly as he took a welt from a whip in favour of having his throat slit by a razor-sharp disc of ice. Now if only she could have said that to him without trying to kill him.

But a defensive game wasn't enough. Katara was too good for him to just dodge her forever. And Zuko brought up his element reluctantly. He couldn't help her if he was dead. The first couple strikes he made against her seemed to take the steam out of her. And then she was fighting against him as hard as she ever had. In spite of everything, some small part of Zuko was enjoying this. Relishing the challenge.

Then he saw the look on her face, and it made him let go of his reservations. It was that small smirk on her lips. The same one she'd had at the North Pole when she'd locked him into that globe of ice. That smile that said she was sure she was going to win and if I wanted to take her on, he was going to have to work for it.

The next few moments were a blur of strikes and blocks, fire and water and a room filled with steam from all the clashes of the opposing elements. And then suddenly they were stalemated. Her on top of him with a dagger of ice in her hand, pressed to his heart, him with a flame dancing above his palm inches from her throat. They both stared at each other. Then something slid back into place in her eyes, and she scrambled off him.

He was going to make light of it. Congratulate her on the fight, when he saw what she was doing. Katara was scrambling back from him, still on the floor. She looked terrified. Zuko moved to go to her, staying low, trying not to make any intimidating moves. It didn't help, and suddenly she was pleading with him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please, I didn't mean . . . I'm not challenging anything. I don't . . ." A broken litany promising him that she'd never challenge him again, that she wasn't pretending she could fight, that it was his right as her husband to do as he wished and she was sorry.

All the glee he'd felt at the battle they'd had melted away. Worse, all the progress he thought she'd made had been undone with one bout of memory. "Katara," he said. He came closer, trying not to feel hurt by the way she clearly thought he would hurt her for the best bending battle he'd had in months, if not years. She just sat there, eyes fixed on his face, trembling and frightened. She flinched, violently, when he laid a hand on her shoulder, and Zuko let his hand fall away. "It's okay, Katara. I wouldn't hurt you. I'd never . . ."

A wave of despair filled him. He'd thought she was better. He'd thought they were making progress. He'd thought that the woman he might truly want to marry was just hiding and all he had to do was coax her out. She wasn't even listening, she was just begging him not to rape her. Was this what her time with that . . . thing masquerading as a Water Tribesman been like?

The sound of her soft pleading faded to white noise as Zuko collapsed back, sitting on the floor, his back resting against the bed. Katara looked so broken there, and everything he'd done had been for nothing. Zuko felt tears pricking his eyes, and blinked, trying to force them back. It didn't work and he felt the saltwater trail down his face, the teardrops pausing at his chin, interminably, before coming loose and falling to his chest.

Katara had gone silent, and Zuko closed his eyes. He should be finding some way to help her, but he couldn't think of anything. Not one thing. And it was too hard right then to even look at the broken shell of a girl that he'd had a crush on, had dreams about and had been in denial about.

There was a soft rustling sound, and he felt a hand on his face. Zuko opened his eyes to Katara, her right hand cupping his cheek, her left, tracing the path his tears had left. "Zuko? Why are you crying?" she asked softly. She looked confused.

He didn't dare move. "Because you've been hurt so badly that you think that I'd ever, ever hurt you because I lost a fight with you." He swallowed, hoping he wouldn't scare her off. "Because I don't know how to tell Sokka that we all failed in helping you get better. Because you're frightened of me. You were never frightened of me. Not when I took you captive, not when we faced off in the North Pole, not when I came to the South Pole looking for the Avatar. Never."

"Zuko." His name fell from her lips and he suddenly wanted to know how she'd sound saying it some other way. With love, or in a moment of passion. "You're not him," Katara informed him. But there was something odd in the way she said it. She was speaking as though she was making a discovery of some kind. "You're not him."

"No."

Both hands cupped his face, and she leaned forward, her head tilting a little. Zuko stayed still as she leaned closer. She seemed to be searching for something, and he sternly kept himself from asking what she was doing. "You're not mad?"

"No." He took a risk. "Not about this, not about you freezing me upside-down on the ship or anything else."

"Why not?"

"Because I want the old Katara. The one who wasn't afraid of anything and would happily kick me around like one of Aang's air balls every full moon if she had the chance." Zuko poured every bit of sincerity into his voice.

"You can't go back," Katara said. "I can't just go back and be her again." She sounded close to tears.

"Then you'll find a way to have that confidence again," Zuko told her. "I just don't ever want you to be afraid."

At that moment, Katara noticed a few things. First, she and Zuko were down to the barest essentials of clothing. Just enough to cover all the important bits and nothing else. Second, was that even though she had buried herself in layers upon layers to make sure there was nothing appealing about her in that way, she didn't care right then. She just felt fully confident that no matter what happened, Zuko would never do anything she didn't want, even if she paraded around naked in front of him.

It was a realisation that was incredibly freeing. Her father would have scolded her for trying to usurp a man's prerogative with her aggressive warrior's bending style. Ujarak had found ways to disable her and punish her for such a presumption. Zuko . . . she knew she'd been confused over the last half hour, or however long it had been, but she could recall with crystal clarity everything that had happened between the two of them since she woke up in bed with him.

The careful way he'd treated her when she woke up. The way he'd tried not to be threatening when she lost it, thinking he was going to be just like the men of the Water Tribes. What stood out the most, however, was the look of happiness on his face while they were fighting. Not a smug look that he was going to enjoy hurting her, or the patronising look so many of the Northern benders had had before she'd been forced to encase them in solid blocks of ice to shut them up. He'd been taking a simple joy in bending with her. In having an opponent that matched and met his mettle on the playing field.

He'd told her he wanted the old her back. The old her that her father and Ujarak and the warriors of her tribe and the traditional girls had all tried to stamp out. The girl they all told her could never be wanted by anyone, and that was what Zuko wanted. For the first time in a very long time, Katara felt like she could really breathe.

With that, something else loosened inside her, and Katara found herself looking at Zuko in a way she'd thought she couldn't ever look at anyone again. Not like someone she had to be wary of because of his male authority, or to be frightened of because of the rights he had to her due to the Water Tribe wedding they'd had before they left for the Fire Nation. He wasn't the kind friend who was saying nice things because of the political marriage he'd had to make the best of.

He was a very good-looking man, who smelled like warm spices and was wearing nothing but a single pair of drawers, whose face was inches from her own.

The change in perspective was enough for her to recall they weren't dressed in much at all. She understood that if she'd been in shock he had to warm her up and skin-to-skin contact with a much-warmed firebender was the best treatment. But she wasn't in shock any more and she was practically on his lap. Embarrassment washed through her, and Katara squeaked and suddenly leapt away, spotting the clothes she'd been wearing before on the floor. She dove for them, paying no mind to the fact that they were wet and singed from missed shots from their impromptu duel.

Zuko just sat there, blinking. He looked perplexed. "Wha-?"

"Get dressed!" she hissed. "I can't believe this. I really appreciate you helping me with the shock, but what if someone comes in? They'll think . . . I don't even want to know what they'll think." She felt her face reddening.

"Are you . . . embarrassed?" Zuko asked, curiously, as he slowly stood, collecting the clothes he'd shed in his hurry to get her warmed.

Katara slowed, realising how silly she was acting. "I just . . . I lost my reputation in the tribe, Zuko. I don't want to have that problem here."

"First," he told her, as he started pulling on his clothes. "We're married according to your people and we're engaged here. What we choose to do is our business."

She stared. "But we're not married according to Fire Nation tradition yet."

"No," he told her. "But once the commitment has been made publicly, what we do in private is no one's business but our own, unless we decide not to marry after all."

"Really?"

"Really."

They finished dressing in silence. Then Zuko sat on the bed, and patted a spot next to him. "Sit down Katara. I know you don't want to talk about it, but maybe . . . maybe you should. Sokka told me what he knows about what happened to you, but I haven't heard it from you."

She hesitantly sat down next to him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I know Ujarak . . ." he took a deep breath, and then seemed to force the ugly truth out. "I know he raped you. What I don't know is everything else. What happened Katara?"

She sat in silence for a moment. He was right. She'd talked to enough of the men coming back from war to know that sometimes, the only way to understand something was to face it. She'd been trying not to face these last few years ever since she'd agreed to marry Zuko. Some small part of her had been hoping that it would all just go away. It hadn't, and she'd almost just killed a good man and a good friend because of it. He looked at her, no expectations, just hope that she'd trust him enough to let him help her.

It was time to face everything.

"It all started when I got back home. Dad told me I didn't have to do what I didn't want to any more, and what he meant was a warrior's bending . . ."

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