Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar the Last Airbender, its settings, or its characters.

Chapter 19: Mothers and Fathers

On the fourth day of their imprisonment, Zuko awoke feeling much warmer than he should have in the chilly cave. The source of his increased warmth was the small form pressed back to back with him. Katara had apparently rolled towards his greater body heat in her sleep.

Zuko had never awoken touching another person, not even his uncle. He tensed at the feeling of her soft breathing as her ribcage expanded and contracted against him. He was almost afraid to breathe himself.

Katara for her part was blissfully unaware of their proximity, being used to sleeping close to her brother or grandmother for warmth in the night. She was sleeping more deeply and comfortably than she had since being tossed into the cave.

Zuko held himself still for the better part of half an hour, trying to decide how best to disentangle himself without disturbing Katara. It was not that he actually minded the feel of her cuddled up against him. If he was being honest with himself, he really quite liked it. He just did not want her waking up and accusing him of anything.

Although he could not consciously admit it to himself, he had become extremely attached to Katara over the last several days. If he had known what it felt like to have one, he might have even called her his friend. The last thing Zuko wanted to do now was to test the fledgling relationship they had formed.

Bracing her with one hand so she would not suddenly flop to the ground when he moved, he slowly extricated himself. He gently lowered her to the ground. She made a slight groaning noise as her warm back came in contact with the less than warm cave floor. She blinked up at him, giving Zuko just enough time to snatch his hand away from her.

After three mornings of waking up to see Zuko right in front of her, Katara was getting used to seeing him first thing when she awoke. "Time for breakfast?" She asked, stretching.

"Yes," Zuko said hurriedly. He almost ran over to the supplies, pulling out the last crackers and some fruit. He studiously avoided looking at Katara to somehow escape any scrutiny that might lead to questions.

Katara generally found most of Zuko's behavior over the last several days strange. Unlike in the past, he had not attacked or threatened her once, so this latest quirk passed unremarked upon. As she ate, she was preoccupied with thoughts of how she might manage to brush and detangle her hair if she dared unbraid it. Thinking of their limited water supply, she regretfully gave up on her hair. Wistfully, she thought of the spa Toph and she had enjoyed during their stay in Ba Sing Se. This naturally progressed into thoughts of her missing friends and what they might be up to right now.

Katara was deeply grateful to Zuko for keeping her mind off of their imprisonment or what horrible things might happen to her friends when they returned to Ba Sing Se. When she and Zuko were talking or training together, everything else seemed to fall away leaving only the two of them and this cave in the world. But now as she waited patiently for him to meditate, the worries and fears she had been suppressing crept in threatening to drown her.

Zuko was still feeling tense and unreasonably guilty for having let the cuddling continue beyond the moment he had awoken. His unease was exacerbated by Katara's unprecedented stint of silence. She had not said anything to him since that first question, which had been two hours ago. He had tried meditating but found her continued silence distracting.

He was just working up the nerve to say something to her when she sighed seeming to shake off her preoccupation. Turning to him, she asked, "Would you like to do more concentration training?"

Relieved that Katara did not seem upset with him, Zuko readily agreed. The morning passed much as it had the previous day, only this time they each drew more directly on their memories for inspiration.

The training session ended unexpectedly when Katara created a beautiful woman silently singing as she brushed and braided a small girl's hair. Staring at the strange woman, Zuko thought he detected similarities to the girl sitting across from him. He broke Katara's concentration by asking, "Is that your mother?" The forms of the woman and child dissolved into amorphous floating water.

"Yes," Katara said in a pain tinged voice. She had not meant to show Zuko this part of her past. She regretted losing focus on whom she was training with.

"She was very beautiful," Zuko said quietly. "What was her name?"

"Kya," Katara said, blinking back tears. She reached up to run her fingers over the pendant at her throat, seeking comfort. "She and I were very close."

"I was very close with my mother, too," Zuko said watching the way Katara clasped the stone at her throat. During his banishment, he had often wished for something of his mother's to help remind him of the better times. "She used to sit and tell me tales and myths until I fell asleep every night, even when I got to be too old for bedtime stories."

"My mom did the same for me. What was your mother's name?"

"Ursa," Zuko answered quietly. "She was very kind and strong. She hated the war and always talked about how good life would be after it was done." As a child, he had thought she had meant when the Fire Nation won but now, he was not so sure.

"I think our mothers would have liked each other. They sound very similar," Katara replied softly. "I often wonder if I can ever live up to her. I fall so short of the ideals she tried to teach me... I make so many mistakes." Zuko felt as though Katara had given voice to his own feelings of inadequacy.

"More than anything, I'm afraid of forgetting her," Katara continued after a long pause. Looking at the floor, her fingers continued to trace the ridges in the carved blue stone.

"You won't," Zuko said firmly, reassuring himself as much as Katara. Katara met his eyes then, with such a look of gratitude that Zuko's breath caught. I think my mother would have liked you, he thought. Katara had frequently reminded Zuko of his mother in the last several days. Not that she had in any way mothered him, just that her humor, kindness, and determination were qualities his mother had often displayed.

"I'll tell you one of my mother's stories, if you will tell me one of yours," Katara offered, breaking the silence.

Zuko almost smiled. "You start."

After their stories were told, they talked more about the happy memories of their mothers. Zuko gleaned that Katara's mother had held some position of authority within the tribe based on some of the responsibilities Katara described. His own mother, despite being married to a prince of the Fire Nation had played a less active role in the running of his own nation. Honestly, Kya seemed to have held more sway in tribal life than even he had as the crown prince. This made Zuko wonder about the structure of Water Tribe society and what responsibilities had Katara had before leaving with the Avatar.

Zuko's image of her as a barbaric peasant seemed to slip farther away each day. Surely, no peasants had Katara's bearing or power. Perhaps it was his own ego that would not allow for a peasant to have bested him in the past.

Whatever it was, Zuko was finding it more and more difficult not to reach out and touch Katara. To push a wisp of hair back over her ear or nudge her gently when she teased him. He had never felt so drawn to another person. Maybe it's just being trapped in here with her for so long, his mind tried to rationalize. But deep down Zuko knew it was more than their shared captivity making him spill his stories and secrets.

Katara was thoroughly enjoying her talks with Zuko, he had a way of making her consider things from a new perspective, challenging her, and she found his quirks endearing rather than threatening. She felt certain that he would listen seriously to anything she had to say, a nice change from the sometimes-overwhelming levity of her friends. Not even with Sokka had she spoken so openly about the death of their mother.

Sure, she had gotten in the habit of stating her personal tragedy to many of the people they met along their journey. This was a recent tactic to try to push herself to acknowledge fully what she had lost and hopefully heal from it.

For a full month after Kya's murder, Katara had not spoken a word to anyone. Her father had found her that day holding her mother's lifeless body covered in her blood not crying or speaking, just silently frozen in horror. She had been the only witness to what the Fire Nation officer had done to her mother.

While the monster had broken down the door to their lodge, Kya had quickly rolled Katara in a rug and made her swear not to make a sound. Stashing the little girl under a nearby low table, she turned to face the intruder as he blasted the door apart. Katara's eyes were the only part of her that protruded from the rug. She had seen and heard everything that had transpired in her mother's final moments.

After the monster had left, Katara had fought her way out of the rug and rushed to her mother's side.

Throughout her family's initial questions and grief, she had remained like a little mute statue. Not even at the funeral did Katara cry. In the weeks that followed, she did as she was asked, silent and diligent as if by carrying out her final promise to her mother she could bring her back.

Hakoda, Kanna, and Sokka tried and failed to get any reaction from the girl. They feared that Kya's murderer might also have directly damaged Katara in some way.

The whole village was in the process of relocating, for safety and to leave behind the scene of such horror. None of her family had slept in their lodge since the attack, staying instead in Kanna's home.

It was inevitably Sokka who broke the silent spell on Katara when he slipped on an ice flow hitting his head and sliding into the arctic water. Katara screamed his name so loudly the entire village came running. They found both children in the water. Katara holding her unconscious older brother's head above the surface, calling his name over and over. Both children were quickly pulled out and warmed in a nearby hut. Katara had not stopped crying and pleading with Sokka to wake up until his eyes opened.

It was with a sense of relief breaking through his almost all-consuming grief that Hakoda watched Katara berate and care for her brother.

On the last night before they left the village to begin again, the villagers were roused by the resounding crash of breaking ice. When they emerged, they found Katara kneeling before the wreckage of her family's lodge. Not one ice block now stood upon another. She had leveled it with her bending.

It had taken her years to even mention her mother's death to another member of the tribe. It was not until the months leading up to Aang's discovery that she had begun her tactic of stating the tragedy out loud as a means of dealing with her inner turmoil and overwhelming guilt.

Now, here she sat in this cave in a strange country talking with an enemy about what she had lost to his nation. True she had not told him about the specifics surrounding Kya's death. That was still too painful to acknowledge. But in Zuko, she saw a reflection of herself and so she told her stories of the good times with her mother. Together, they both began to heal.

Once again Zuko and Katara fell asleep within arm's reach of each other. Tonight though, Katara consciously scooted closer to the firebender, unable to resist the warmth his sleeping form offered. She hoped that he would not waken and yell at her for it.

Zuko slept deeply until the nightmares came for him once again. This night, he faced his father in the Agni Kai and was burned. He awoke screaming as Katara shook him vigorously calling his name, desperate to wake him. He sat shaking as the dream receded and his surroundings pressed in on his consciousness.

When he was once again himself, he found he was leaning on Katara's shoulder, face buried in her neck with one of her arms wrapped around his back and the other running soothing fingers through his hair as she murmured reassurances to him. He stiffened, then relaxed into her. He had not felt so safe or cared for in more than seven years. Slowly his shudders receded leaving him feeling exhausted and drained.

Sensing his return to calm, Katara gently pulled away from Zuko, letting one hand linger on his shoulder for continued support.

"I'm sorry," he rasped, his voice more hoarse than usual from yelling and the emotion still pumping through him. "I'm sorry for waking you," he tried again.

"Don't worry about it, Zuko," Katara said comfortingly, squeezing his shoulder. "I get nightmares sometimes too. If you want to talk about it, I'm here."

Part of Zuko wanted to tell her, to talk through the horror and the pain. Another part of Zuko cowered at the thought of having to recount the story and having to face her afterward. He had not made up his mind when she said, "It had something to do with your father."

Not a question, a statement. Zuko wondered what exactly he had cried out in his sleep. Does she know now? Does she know about my scar? He searched her face for any sign of horror or revulsion.

Again, sensing his agitation and reluctance to talk, Katara said, "It's all right. You don't have to tell me anything. Just know that I will listen if you ever do want to talk about it."

Zuko felt both relieved and disappointed that she didn't push him. "Thank you, Katara. Sorry again for waking you."

Katara nodded sensing the close of the topic and laid back down to sleep. She did not move away from him as he expected, instead, curling up with her back pressed to his leg. She did not look at him again as she settled back into sleep.

Zuko watched her, transfixed by her closeness. How did she know I didn't want to be left alone? He was so grateful for the feel of her pressed close to him. He craved the comfort and support he felt when she touched him. It had almost been worth the nightmare to have her hold him as she had.

Slowly he raised one hand and stroked her hair once gently. She did not stir. Knowing he would not sleep again that night, he sat finding it relaxing to just watch her sleep. She seemed unaffected by his earlier disturbance. No nightmares came to trouble her rest. Not tonight anyway. I wonder what she dreams about?

After hours of peacefully contemplating the waterbender, Zuko woke her for their morning meal.

There was an unexpected expression of dire foreboding on her face as Katara sat, handing him a strip of jerky and a piece of dried fruit. Eating his meal quickly, Zuko looked at her hands. He noticed no complementary piece of meat there. She had only a couple of nuts and another piece of dried fruit. Swallowing his mouthful, he said, "Are you feeling okay? Why aren't you eating any jerky?"

Katara seemed to be avoiding meeting his eyes. With assumed nonchalance, she answered, "That was the last of it."

"You gave me the last of the jerky?" Zuko asked disbelievingly. He felt guilty that he had eaten it all without offering her at least a piece.

Definitely not meeting his eyes now, Katara said, "That was the last of all of it."

Zuko paled. They were out of food. And he knew that their chances of being fed were about as good as their chances of being rescued before they starved. We are going to die in here.

Bounding to his feet, Zuko said, "You shouldn't have given me anything this morning, Katara!" His words came out harsher than he had intended. She winced then glared at him as she got to her feet more slowly, meeting his fiery gaze.

"We were going to run out of food whether we ate it now or three hours from now. I didn't have that much on me when I was captured. We knew that this was going to happen eventually."

"This is my fault! If you were on your own, you would still have enough food for another week maybe," he declared, infuriated with himself and with her for her stoic fatalism.

"It is not your fault!" she snapped, her veneer of tense calm breaking. "If I was on my own, I might have died of thirst by now without a way to get the water." Both their voices were steadily increasing in volume.

"You would have figured out a way!"

"Maybe!"

"You shouldn't have shared with me!" Zuko almost shouted, taking a step towards the obstinate waterbender.

"What?! You think I am such a horrible person that I could have sat here happily munching on food, watching you starve?" Katara looked insulted and horrified.

"No! I just wish I wasn't here so you had more food." They had begun leaning towards each other in their agitation.

"Well, I am still glad you're here! I would have gone crazy with worry and loneliness. You have kept me sane, Zuko. I might have given up hope if you were not here!" Katara took her own step closer to the impossible Fire Nation prince. Part of her wanted to shake him. They now stood only inches apart glaring into each other's faces.

Zuko was amazed by her confession. Struggling to master himself, he asked, "Katara, you still think we are going to get out of this?" his incredulity plain in his voice. How can she still have hope?

As if she could read his thoughts clearly, Katara replied her breath slightly labored, "Yes, because you are Prince Zuko! You are unstoppable! You always show up, you always survive, you always keep going. Being trapped in some cave is not going to be the end of you. And if you can make it, then I can too!"

Zuko stood stunned by her intense confidence in him and zealous hope for their futures. Not even his uncle had shown such unquestioning faith in him. Her eyes blazed at him showing no sign of deception or weakness. Zuko felt his own hope spark to life under the ferocity of her passion. His was a tiny candle next to her roaring forest fire but even that small flame was a big step forward for the prince.

Straightening, he said, "Fine," as if Katara had won the argument. "You still shouldn't have given me the last of the jerky."

Katara's emotions were riding too high to let him have the final word even as she sensed that she had somehow won. "Well, it seemed appropriate. Jerky for a jerk!" With that, she whirled and stomped off to their one remaining ice container and began bending the water in it to alleviate some of her feelings.

Taking a deep calming breath, Zuko sat down. He watched her for a time waiting for his heart to stop racing. He had never met someone as stubborn as Katara. This time her determination to do the right thing might just cost her her life. The new hopeful voice that had awoken in Zuko whispered that both he and Katara had a higher destiny that would not allow them to perish here.

Deciding that giving Katara space to work off her temper was the safest course of action, Zuko moved to the far side of the cave and focused on his breath of fire. He wondered just how warm he could make the cavern without resorting to fire punches or kicks. He was so intent on moderating his body temperature that he missed the cessation of splashing and the soft footsteps walking over to him. When he, at last, looked up, Katara stood before him with her hands outstretched towards him as if to a campfire.

Zuko continued to radiate heat off of him with his bending. Reaching up he grasped both of Katara's hands pulling her down to sit in front of him, knee to knee. She shivered slightly as the warmth washed over her but made no effort to pull away. After a moment, Zuko broke the silence saying, "You should have said something if you were cold."

"It must be nice to be your own personal furnace," Katara quipped, deflecting his remark. "I might never leave home again without my sleeping roll on my back after this adventure."

"Katara, where are your friends and why did they leave you?" Zuko finally asked the question again that continued to nag at him. How could they just leave her behind like this? Especially her brother.

Letting out a long breath, Katara began, "After we supposedly stopped Long Feng's plot to control the Earth King and the city with the Dai Li, we thought we could finally take a break. In Long Feng's files on us, they found a letter to Aang from some guru who wanted to help him with his control over the Avatar state. There was a letter from Toph's mother apologizing for the way they had left things and asking her to meet so they could resolve some of their past issues. While there was no letter for Sokka or me, there was a report mentioning the location of the Water Tribe fleet off the coast.

"Seeing that everyone was needed in different places, I suggested that we split up for a time and reconvene here in Ba Sing Se in a month. So, they each left to meet with various parents and gurus. I was fine here for the last week before my capture. I was kept busy with meetings with the generals and King Kui. Then I saw you and your uncle in that tea house and panicked. I ran straight to the palace and was captured by your sister and her friends."

Looking down ashamed, Katara quietly apologized, "I am sorry, Zuko. I think I am the reason that you were captured. I don't think your sister knew you were in the city until I went running to her. I just thought you were after Aang again. I didn't mean for all this to happen."

So that was how Azula had found them. A few days before, Zuko would have been furious at this piece of information but thinking it over he could not blame Katara for her actions given their history. "It's alright, Katara. Azula would have discovered us eventually and it was my choice to stand and face her rather than run with my uncle. Don't beat yourself up over it."

Katara looked up at him with a timorous smile playing across her lips. Zuko squeezed her hands in reassurance then asked, "I still don't understand why you stayed in the city when your brother went to meet the Water Tribe?"

Katara's hands were suddenly cold and hard in his hands. She pulled away. Zuko was surprised by her reaction to what he thought of as a fairly innocuous question.

Even her voice had an edge of frost when she replied, "My brother has not seen our father for about five years. It has been hard on him, separated from all the men of the tribe. Someone had to stay to coordinate war efforts with the Earth Kingdom so I sent him on without me. Sokka deserves to be with the other warriors."

Zuko still could not understand her shift in mood. Against his better judgment, he pressed her, "You haven't seen your father in all that time either. Why couldn't Toph or the Avatar have stayed a little longer to coordinate while you both got to see your family?"

"Because I didn't want to see him!" Katara finally burst out. Her icy crust had melted and he now saw the hurt and anger that she was trying to hide. Zuko was taken aback by the bitterness and rage that poured out of her. "He left us. Our mother was dead and he just left us! Oh, I know why he left. The war. It was necessary because of the war. He was needed... But we needed him too! Sure, we had Gran Gran but we needed our parents. We needed him but still, he left us behind. I was ten when he left and Sokka was eleven! I was already filling my mother's shoes and suddenly Sokka and I had to fill his as well."

When Zuko said nothing to her tirade, she demanded a response from him. "How could he? If he really loved us, how could he just abandon us?"

Zuko had no idea how to answer her. He had felt some of the feelings she was showing when his mother had disappeared. As she continued to glare at him expectantly, he answered honestly, "I don't know. He must have felt it was the best thing to do. He might not have been right but he made his choice."

Katara let out the breath she had not known she was holding. "I am so angry with him! And yet… I miss him so much." She sat staring at the floor, letting her emotions seep out of her and pass away. Oddly, she had found ranting at Zuko cathartic. Chuckling to herself, she thought of the absurdity of venting her resentment towards her father to the crown prince of the Fire Nation. "You must think I am ridiculous."

"No, not at all. Believe me, Katara. If there is one thing I get, it is the complexities of anger," Zuko reassured her. This clearly had been building in her for years and she looked relieved to have let it out. "And how complicated fathers can be," he muttered to himself.

Unfortunately, Katara heard him. Leaning forward she caught his gaze, as she asked, "Zuko, why were you banished?"

Zuko pushed back away from her. He did not want to talk about it especially with the raw edges left by the nightmare still gnawing at him. "To learn respect," he bit off sharply.

"Your father banished you to teach you respect?" Her voice sounded incredulous and it grated on Zuko's nerves.

"You wouldn't understand!" Zuko felt the panic begin to rise in him as it always did when he looked too closely at his life and situation.

"Maybe. I do find it hard to imagine a child doing something so horrendous that his own father would set him adrift on the sea for years. Lesson or no." Catching sight of his expression, she tried to moderate her remark. "But I don't know the situation or your culture. In my tribe, only a monster would do such a thing…"

"My father loves me!" Zuko defended blindly. "I was in the wrong and must complete my mission so I can regain my honor! So I can go home!"

Hearing Zuko defend the Fire Lord only solidified in her mind what an awful human being and parent Ozai was. Zuko obviously loved his father and was desperate to gain his father's affection, no matter the cost to himself. She knew that her own resentment of her father's abandonment was nothing compared to what Zuko's ought to be.

While Hakoda had left, she had never truly doubted that he loved her and her brother. She did think he had taken the easy way out when things got hard after her mother's death, retreating into his role as chief more and more. But Zuko's father, he did not deserve to be called a father.

Of course, Katara did not even suspect that the banishment had not been the worst of Zuko's punishment. It could not have entered her mind that any parent would deliberately maim their child in a public act of cruelty, humiliation, and power.

"You are not going to stop hunting us ever, are you?" Katara sagged. She suddenly felt deeply sad and tired at the thought of once again being at odds with Zuko.

Zuko paused for a long time. "I already have," he said in a low voice that just barely reached her.

"What?!" Katara's head snapped up.

"I stopped trying to capture him, some time ago. I hadn't really been trying since the North Pole. You might have noticed that you haven't seen me much in the last year," Zuko pointed out. "But I truly gave it up when I realized we were all in Ba Sing Se together a few weeks ago. My uncle was so happy. I decided that his happiness and safety meant more to me than the hope of going home." He did not share the heated confrontation with his uncle over Appa's release and his subsequent illness.

"Zuko." Katara reached forward grasping his forearm. "I am truly sorry about your uncle's tea house."

"Thank you," he said covering her hand with his own.

After such an emotionally tumultuous morning, they spoke of lighter things occasionally lapsing into companionable silence, until the growling of their empty stomachs set them talking again as a distraction.

That night there was no pretense about their proximity. They lay down back to back and almost instantly fell asleep.

A/N:

Phew! Made a few last-minute changes to this one. Elizabeth, thanks for your notes.

Unlike this chapter, the next chapter is probably the fluffiest, tropiest thing I have ever and possibly will write. If you are going to make your protagonists starve, the least you can do is have some fun with them. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks to all of you for reading and especially to those of you who have been writing reviews. Shout out to KatriaFaeyero for sticking with this story from the beginning.