Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the beginning, they kept me in a cage. A real cage, ugly, squat, and steel, dropped in the basement of a cute, suburban townhouse. It was out of place, terrifyingly out of place. Like a dead body on your living room floor. I thought I was in a nightmare the first time I woke there. But days and nights passed and the steel bars held firm.

I used to wonder what the cage must have looked like being delivered, hauled in over the neat, manicured lawns, around flower beds, and past tacky fall decorations. Did anyone ever lean across the counter of the cozy local coffee shop—What could they possibly need it for? What are they keeping in there? I used to fantasize about it. Whispers in the corner market would turn to awkward questions and police investigations and eventually—eventually— to me. They would find me here, alone and cold and starving, and they would unlock the fucking cage.

Or sometimes I would imagine beasts—wolves or bears or lions—throwing themselves at the rough steel bars, snapping and snarling. Flinging blood and feces against the semi-gloss eggshell walls. Screaming. I used to try to be like them. Relentless. Untameable. Not shivering. Not afraid. Screaming because I was furious and fearsome and not because I was at at the end of my sanity that I needed to go home that I would do anything please please please please please please please—

Eventually, they moved me out of the cage and into a room in an apartment with a dirty beige carpet and a boarded over window. Bigger. More comfortable. But still a cage. The Boss would come and ask me questions and I would scream. Or curse. Or sulk. Or rage. I screamed all of the time there, kicked the walls, called for help, tried to break the plywood boards off of the window and throw chunks of baseboard down on the sidewalk below. I figured no one would be coming to rescue me. I figured I should try to rescue myself.

That was when they started sending Spearmint to me. He had a long face and a little round nose. He would stride into my room, snapping his gum quietly. He would cover my eyes in an old bag or a t-shirt or a crusty yellow pillowcase, and then beat me within an inch of my life. Fists raining down on me. Or knives cutting into me. Once a brand new curling iron to burn me (he made me watch him take it out of the box). He blew mint-smelling breath over me in huffs as he hit me. Careful, controlled breaths, the kind runners used to maintain stamina.

I stopped screaming. They didn’t stop sending Spearmint in.

My name is Katara Naqa. Before they put me in that cage, no one had ever hit me. I know no one would believe that. My father led one of the most powerful, far reaching organized crime networks in the southern hemisphere and my brother was going to lead after him. Our family’s success was built on violence. And it was our way, Water Tribe people, to raise children sternly, to discipline them harshly. The tundra inspired severity and respect. You would think that I grew up calloused, sharpened by a life full of harshness.

But my mom was soft-hearted. She couldn’t bear the thought of us unhappy, couldn’t bear to hear us cry and know it was her doing. “I love you, Katara,” she used to tell me, and her brows would pull together and tears would gather in her eyes. You believe me, don’t you? her eyes begged. My mom refused to hit us and my dad was too in love to risk her unhappiness. So that first time that Spearmint hit me, fully hit me with his closed fist smashing down on my ribs and the air slammed out of my body and the pain that radiated and burned, it terrified me. I was eight when a man shot my mom in the chest right in front of me. But somehow that first hit, it was like opening up my eyes.

After that, I stopped telling myself that story. Of being found. Of being free.

The very first time he hit me.

Eventually, I learned it was easier to be a thing than a person. As a thing, it didn’t hurt so much when Spearmint hit me. It didn’t crack so much when Wire Brush fucked me. It didn’t burn when I answered the Boss’ questions. Things didn’t have need for pain or shame or wanting. When I was a thing, I could let it wash over me, drip down from my fingers and toes. They could abuse me and carry me from cage to cage and I would endure, the way a sagging old couch or a burned up pot would endure.

So, I was surprised the day that I ran. I didn’t know that I would do that.

I’d lost track of the weeks by then. I used to have awful pains—headaches and stomach cramps and dizzy spells—every Saturday afternoon, worsening steadily as the day turned to dusk. Eventually, I figured out I was making myself sick. The dread I felt knowing I would wake in the morning and add another tally to my total… So, I made myself lose track. I don’t know how long I was in the cage, or how many times they moved me by the time that I ran.

I know that we were good at it by then, a trio of well-practiced actors. Spearmint would put the bag over my head and the zip ties around my wrists. Once I was laid into the back of the van, he would zip tie my ankles too. Wire Brush would drive. He used to complain about it all the fucking time, how Spearmint got to have all of the fun, how he was nothing but a glorified delivery driver. When I first went into the cage, the pair were stiff and formal around each other, Wire Brush overly deferential and Spearmint overly harsh. Wire Brush was younger and fatter and less well-groomed, but he was charming. Eventually, enough time passed that they grinned and joked when they interacted. That day, Wire Brush convinced Spearmint to let him put the hood on me and tie me up and put me in the van. But then, he pulled the hood off of me again, gave Spearmint a wink and shoved his fingers into my mouth. I gagged, trying not to think about the gritty, sour taste of his fingers pressing down on the back of my tongue. I thought about the upholstery instead, the rough texture against my arms.

“You fucking serious, kid?” Spearmint said. He sounded annoyed, but also amused, the way you might scold a precocious nephew. Wire Brush pulled his fingers from my mouth, then shoved them between my legs, thrusting and twisting, while he pulled his ugly, pink cock out of his pants.

I thought about closing my legs. I didn’t usually think about that. It was easier to let Wire Brush have his way, to let the world happen around me and hope that he would get bored. My reactions, my aliveness, it fed him. I perfected the art of being a thing while he violated my body in whatever way pleased him that day. But my thigh twitched, a ghost of resistance. Wire Brush’s reaction was swift. He reached up and slapped me across the mouth. I tasted blood. I lay still.

“Something to remember me by,” Wire Brush said, eying me with a leer.  Spearmint rolled his eyes, but he stepped back, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He turned, as if to go wait somewhere else, but Wire Brush called out to him. “Don’t bother,” he grunted, stroking himself, shoving his fingers farther into me. “Won’t take me long.” I lay still and watched snowflakes drift, down through the sterile, blue-white glow of new streetlights, to settle in clumps across the concrete. It was cold out today, colder than the day they first took me. What a long winter. Much longer than it was last year. I had been so excited when I first came to Ba Sing Se, when I first saw the snows come and go. It was thrilling for a Water Tribe girl who’d lived her entire life at the edges of the world. The idea of transient snows, of rains that could wash the ice away before it had a chance to stick, was gorgeous. How exciting. How restorative. Wire Brush’s fingers twisted roughly inside of me. I didn’t hold back the pained little whimper that bubbled out of me.

Wire Brush was short, with thick, awkward limbs and thinning hair at the crown of his head. Most of it seemed to have migrated to his chest, where he sported a dense tuft of wiry, silver hair. It left friction rashes across my chest and back whenever he came to me. The rashes hurt more than any pain he left behind between my legs. Hurt my pride more anyway. It reminded me just how many time he thrust into me, even when I made myself lose count.

Eventually, he lurched forward with a gasp, swearing as he emptied into his fist. He laughed breathlessly as he cleaned his hand in the hem of my t-shirt. Spearmint sighed again from his spot a few feet away.

“Can we get on with it?” he asked. Wire Brush grinned at him again and rocked up onto his feet. Something long, silvery, and thin dropped from his pocket, but he was already slamming the door shut. When the pair climbed into the front seats, they turned up the radio, chatting amiably as they drove.

And suddenly, I wasn’t just a thing anymore. I wanted.

It was like coming up from underwater. The sound of my breathing was loud in my ears. The feeling of my chest expanding pricked uncomfortably. I felt awful. My body ached, my limbs felt heavy and dumb. When I breathed, a wheezy, wet sound burbled deep in my chest. I was sick, I realized with a lurch, I’d been sick like this for a long time.

Were they taking me somewhere to get me help?

The back of the van was bitterly cold, but a grubby, sweaty feel coated my entire body. I had been sick for a long time. And in all that time, no doctor. No medicine. They hadn’t even bothered to give me more water or food to replace what I regularly vomited up.

Something to remember me by, Wire Brush had said.

I never quite said the words to myself, never let the full thought bloom. Something to remember me by, I thought instead and wiggled carefully across the dirty van floor. The sound of tinny, over-processed pop junk hammered through the car. It obscured the sound of my panting. Something to remember me by. I rolled the last bit of the way, grasping blindly with my hands tied behind my back. There was a bump in the road and the pocket knife slid into my hands. A moment later, I had its tip digging into the thick, plastic band.

I had tried to run once before. Just once. Boss had come to me, asking his questions, and I had lunged at him. I clawed at his face. I made it through the unlocked door behind him.

Sometimes, I could still feel the door knob on the front door in my hand, cold and perfectly smooth against the middle of my palm. I only touched it for a moment before Spearmint was on me.

It was the only time I had ever wished that I would die. In all of this awful, tortuous eternity, when I powered down my heart, when I pretended to be nothing rather than be me, here, still, I never wanted to die. Except for that one night, the night they punished me for running.

Suddenly, my hands were clammy and unsteady. Fear made my stomach roll and clench. But Wire Brush’s words wouldn’t let me go. Something to remember me by. I grit my teeth and forced my fingers to move. The tip of the pocket knife ripped past the zip tie band once, and nicked me in the palm. I winced, but didn’t dare to make a sound. I tried again. No cut this time, but the zip tie band held firm. I tried again.

And then I was free.

Nameless, formless emotion barreled over me and I closed my eyes and beat it back. There wasn’t time. Up front, Spearmint and Wire Brush were singing with the radio. I held still, held silent. We rolled to a stop and red light flooded the van, turning my fingertips crimson. I teased the door’s latch upward, balanced it on just this side of clicking open and I held my breath. Something to remember me by. The moment the light turned green, I threw open the door and sprinted.

It was that easy.

I only ever remembered scraps of what came next. The snow had fallen and melted and refrozen. It was sharp on my bare feet. Car horns erupted around me, but I still heard the piercing pop pop pop of gunfire. There was screaming and running and I lost myself in the crowd. I lost myself, ricocheting unsteadily off of bodies and concrete walls. It was hard. I was dizzy and weak and hurting, but I ran like I had never run in my life. I could still feel the cold door knob underneath my hand. The last time I ran I’d wished that I was dead. How much more terrible would it be this time? I ran desperately, blindly, until I found myself somewhere new, a wide open room flooded with blazing florescent lights. 

I don’t remember what drew me there. Maybe it was the light. Maybe it was the music. But it was him that made me stay. My body was too cold, too weak, and too sick. I collapsed soon after they found me, puppet strings cut by my flagging adrenaline. He caught me before I hit the floor and there was a moment just before I slipped into unconsciousness when he held me close and our gazes met. It was like realizing I’d been holding my breath, an ease to a tension I hadn’t known I was carrying.

Warm, I thought as the edges of my vision began to grey. So warm.

I was awoken by my own thundering pulse and my breathing, loud and fast in my ears. I had run. The realization was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. I had really run. My palm still stung from where I’d cut myself with the pocket knife. The soles of my feet still ached from where I’d stumbled barefoot over jagged ice. I had run. And now there would be punishment more awful than anything I had endured before, more awful than the fists or the blades or the burning or the fucking, now there would be pain beyond imagining, now—

Except.

Except I curled myself into a ball, expecting blows or curses, but none came. Except no new pains screamed out in me, only the usual ones, old and aching. Except the room was quiet—but, not silent, not brooding. I could hear birdsong outside and chatter. Screaming, but not the kind I’d become used to. Joyful. Juvenile. There were children nearby, playing. 

Except I was wrapped in something soft and sweet-smelling, tucked into a bed—a real bed, with a wooden headboard and a box spring and a clean, fitted sheet. It smelled of fabric softener, something cheap and floral. To my left, the side table was crowded with assorted knick-knacks. An old photograph in a dusty frame. A paperback with a cracked, worn out spine. A glass of water. I reached for the water slowly, took it, and sipped as I propped myself up higher. No Spearmint. No Wire Brush. No Boss. I took in the rest of the room, the window streaked with cleaner, with its generic white blinds pulled open wide to let in the winter sun. In the corner, there was a dresser with a tall, arched mirror anchored into the wall and a tall, heavy bookshelf. The wood matched the headboard, I realized, feeling shaky and unsettled. A matching set.

I tipped unsteadily out of the bed. Quickly, too quickly. Dizziness descended on me like a blanket and I spent a full minute clutching my head, steadying myself against the wall to stay upright. I was dressed in the same torn T-shirt, the same dirty cotton underwear, but someone had zipped a massive fleece hoodie over the top of them both. Last Dragon MMA was embroidered across the front in red block letters. The hem of it reached the middle of my thighs. My fingers fumbled dumbly with the zipper, but then I thought better and kept it on. Comfort felt foreign on my skin, but the thought of shedding something clean and warm was suddenly too awful to bear. I rolled the sleeves up a few times instead so that they sat at mid-forearm. There was a door on the other side of the room. I crept toward it slowly, carried as if in a dream.

If this was a cage, some new terrible cage, worse than the cages before because of the tricks, because of the lies, because of sticky temptation to believe—

If it was a cage, then the door would be locked.

I crossed the room. I laid my hand on the doorknob. I opened the door.

The home beyond the door was small, but warm. The carpet was worn out and stained in places, but it was clean. A movie poster was fastened to the wall, something old-fashioned, full of men with swords. Toward my right, the hallway opened up into a living room. I could see the edge of a couch and a huge flatscreen television. To my left, there were more doors, all closed. I stood frozen, staring. Not a cage. Something stranger, something somehow more unfamiliar. I didn’t know what to do, here in my not-cage. I inched further into the hallway and was just about to peek into the living room when a door to my right swung open and a naked man stepped out.

He looked around my age, maybe a few years older, tall and lined with thick muscles. Fire Nation, I thought, taking in his creamy pale skin and inky black hair. A scar stretched over the left side of his face, over his eye, across his cheek, even over his ear. It gave him a dangerous look. His skin was steamy wet and he hadd a towel wrapped around his hips. I shrank back, startled. His unscarred eye went wide.

“Oh,” he huffed. He clutched his towel more tightly around himself and glanced around the hallway, rubbed nervously at his bare chest. Uneasy. Unsure. His uncertainty set my own heart thundering. It seemed that neither of us knew what we were supposed to do now. He raised a hand toward me. “I—”

I didn’t wait to hear what Muscles had to say. I turned and ran, through the living room, past the absurdly large television, through the front door, unlocked, unchained, and out onto a wooden porch. My freedom was short-lived, though. I barreled straight into a old woman with a broom in her hands, probably the same age as my own grandmother. She was dressed in a shapeless pink dress and a huge, puffy coat. Despite her age, she was like a pillar of stone. She glowered as I bounced off of her. Behind her, a dog barked happily from behind a screen door.

“Who’re you?” the old woman spat. Her voice was high, graveled, and mean. She looked me up and down, and I was suddenly terribly self-conscious of my bare feet and legs. Behind her, the dog kept barking. The woman scowled and jabbed a crooked finger in my direction. “I’ve never seen you here before, not once!”

The sharpness in her glare was like being scorched by a fire. Despite myself, despite the rational part of myself that scoffed at the idea of being afraid of a mean old woman, my heart pounded. My legs felt leaden and rooted to the spot. I could feel my eyes grow wide in my head. The old woman advanced and I stumbled back. “You a subletter?” she demanded. When I didn’t answer, she slammed the broom down and planted her hands on her hips. The crash made me flinch, brought tears to my eyes. “Speak up, girl! I do not allow subletting in my house!” I opened my mouth to answer, but my throat felt hot and tight. I was rooted, speechless, to the spot, absolutely undone by an old woman in a pink mumu and slippers. The old woman advanced, wagging her finger. “I told him when he moved in here—”

Suddenly, an arm dropped down around my shoulder, heavy and warm. For a moment, my breath stuttered in my chest. I glanced up, and for a moment was it was Spearmint leering down at me. But no, I blinked and it was Muscles. He pulled me casually against him and smiled at the old woman. Despite myself, I cringed into his side. So far, he hadn’t been half as frightening as she was. And he didn’t look quite so dangerous when he smiled.

“She’s not a subletter, Mrs. Long,” he said breezily, as if the woman wasn’t still advancing on us. “Just a friend crashing with me for the weekend.” The woman’s scowl only deepened.

“You think you can flash those pretty eyes at me and tell lies straight to my face,” she grumbled. “I’ll have you know that lease you signed is air tight. You try to pull anything funny with me—!” Muscles adopted an expression that was somehow equal parts charming and contrite.

“I wouldn’t dare, Mrs. Long, you know that. No funny business here, ma’am.” Despite her protests to the contrary, the pretty eyes seemed to be doing their job. Mrs. Long glared, but all of the venom had drained away. A light blush dusted her cheeks. She turned and reached for her broom, but Muscles leaned forward to grab it for her, passing it to her with a winning smile. Mrs. Long snatched it from him and turned to continue her sweeping. “Put some clothes on your friend before bringing her out here again,” she called as Muscles turned to pull me back into his side of the duplex. I followed after him, dumb and compliant. “This is a respectable neighborhood now.”

Muscles didn’t answer, but his expression was exasperated as he closed the door behind us. The sound of the latch clicking into place was like a gunshot and I ducked out of his grip, stumbling into the middle of the living room. Now it was me Muscles was watching warily, as if I were a wild animal. I swiped at my cheeks nervously, annoyed to find them wet, annoyed that my fingers were trembling.

“Where am I?”

I realized faintly, as if in the background, that it had been a long time—a really long time—since I’d heard my own voice. It hadn’t been important to say things in the cage. I’d gotten into the habit of passing day after day after day in absent silence. The Boss hadn’t come around in a long time. Spearmint and Wire Brush never had many questions. And slowly all of my words withered away. Now, my voice sounded wrong to me, too thin and worn out, like a sheet of paper that had been rubbed and rubbed and rubbed away. Muscles blinked, as if it was a surprise to him too.

“You’re in the Heights,” he said. “Or, New Harmony Heights. In the Lower Ring.” Now it was my turn to blink. Muscles continued on nervously. “It’s this new revitalization project the Earth King is pushing to try and rebrand some of the ‘unsavory’ neighborhoods on the southern and eastern sides of the…” he trailed off, apparently registering that I was absolutely baffled. He shook out his hands nervously. He was wearing a pair of black athletic shorts and a long-sleeved shirt that clung around his chest and shoulders. The shirt was on backwards. He must have thrown it on in a rush. “I’m sorry. I’m fucking this up,” he muttered and shoved his fingers through his hair. “You’re in my apartment—In Mrs. Long’s house. It’s—”

“You brought me here,” I said. “Why?”

Muscles gave me an odd look, somewhere between confusion and pity. It curdled in my stomach. He glanced around the room again, jittery. “Do you drink coffee?” he asked suddenly. I swayed uncertainly, startled by the sudden change in subject. Muscles’ expression softened and he took a slow, careful step away from the door. The intention was clear, an offering meant to appease me. “I—,” he started again, then paused and took a deep, steadying breath. “I had this whole plan for when you woke up,” he said, “and I thought the whole thing might go better over a cup of coffee. Or tea? Just…” He gestured toward the kitchen, to a wooden table crowded with old bills and magazines. “Maybe we can sit and we can talk for a minute. If you really want to leave, I swear I won’t try to stop you. But it’s cold out today and it’ll be colder tonight. You spent half the night coughing and you…” He trailed off, an unreadable, pained expression clouding his face. “I just don’t think you should leave yet,” he said eventually.

I pulled the strange hoodie tighter around myself, considering. Aside from the static-y panic, the ever-present white noise of fear that prickled at me, I felt weak. I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my temples. Just the thought of venturing back out into the cold… I nodded, just a small dip of my chin. Muscles’ answering smile was dazzling. It softened the angry squint to his scarred eye and lifted his brows. I looked down at my hands, fidgeting nervously.

It was the first time anyone had smiled at me, really smiled at me, in longer than I cared to know.

Muscles crossed into the kitchen and busied himself with a coffee pot and two mugs while I took my seat at the kitchen table. It was strewn with papers, old receipts and bills with lots of sloppy writing in the corners. I cleared a space gingerly and folded my hands in my lap. “Milk?” Muscles asked over his shoulder. “Sugar?”

“A little sugar, a lot of milk,” I answered. It was automatic, like saying “bless you” after hearing a sneeze. I started a bit at how easily my body fell back into the rhythm of normal conversation. It felt wrong, I realized, pulling the hoodie lower over my thighs. As if I was back there, making small talk with my coworkers over mugs of dark roast. As if in all of this time, I had never been anywhere else.

Muscles interrupted my train of thought with a steaming mug of coffee that he slid in front of me with a teaspoon and a few paper packets of sugar. “A few extra,” he said as he took the seat across from me. “In case I under-did the sugar.” I hesitated before I took the mug. They were always putting things in my food or in my drinks, sometimes drugs, sometimes things more disgusting, more humiliating. But Muscles took an easy swig of his cup and then waited, smiling encouragingly at me. I raised the mug to my lips and sipped.

It was divine. Rich and creamy and just sweet enough. Normal. Wrong, to be sitting here, at a stranger’s table, sipping coffee. Distantly, I felt Wire Brush’s fingers inside of me. Thrusting. Twisting. Something to remember me by.

It was like none of it had ever happened.

I set the mug back on the table with a sharp thud. “You said you would tell me,” I said. “Where am I? Why did you bring me here?”

His smile dimmed and he set his mug down as well, slower. Considering. “You showed up at my gym last night. Late, around 11:30. One of my instructors and I found you. You were…” he hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “You seemed really sick. Really hurt. You kind of just collapsed. We decided to bring you back here. We hoped that you would be less out of it today and maybe we could figure out some way to help.” I blinked. A gym. Had I broken into a gym? If I did I didn’t remember. I reached back in my mind to the night before. All I found was the feeling of Wire Brush’s hands shoving my thighs apart, the low chuckle that Spearmint gave him as he turned away. I made myself stop thinking about it. The memory felt horrifically dirty, here in Muscles’ warm, messy, lovely kitchen.

“I… showed up in your gym?” I said slowly. “And instead of calling the police, you brought me back to your apartment and put me in bed?” My tone was sharper than I had intended, but Muscles didn’t react other than a single arched brow.

“Would you rather I had called the cops?”

He tone was odd, as if the question was rhetorical, as if he knew that I didn’t want that. And he was right. The police had been awful when my mother died. They arrested my father in the hospital waiting room, took my brother and I and split us up, threatened not to let us go back home. All because of who we were and what my father did. The memory alone was enough to make my stomach twist. It didn’t matter that Ba Sing Se was half a world away. Once I told them my name, Katara Naqa, I wouldn’t be a victim to them anymore, not really. I would just be another casualty in a way of life they disdained.

Still, how would he know that? My confusion must have registered on my face, because Muscles sighed and reached for the band of his pants. Immediately, my entire body recoiled. I jerked backward in my seat so hard that my chair scraped loudly on the grubby linoleum. Muscles looked up at me, baffled at first and then horrified. He put one hand out towards me.

“No, no,” he said quickly, “Look, I know you have no reason to believe me or to trust me, but I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? I swear to you on my honor, I’m not going to hurt you.” He leaned forward, the intensity in his gaze suddenly piercing. I chewed on my lip and wrapped my arms around myself. He was right. After everything I had been through, I had no reason to believe him. No reason to trust him. But I didn’t run. I held still in my chair. Muscles rose slowly from his chair and took a slow, careful step away from me, and the tight feeling in my chest eased. “I just want to show you—” He reached again to the elastic band in his pants, more slowly this time, and pulled down on one side, just enough to reveal a small tattoo over his right hipbone.

I recognized it immediately and the sight of it made my heart squeeze. It was the head of a rose, blooming in the center of three concentric circles. My fingertips went to the same spot on my body where I had the same tattoo. “Honor,” I breathed. “Tradition. Restraint.” My father had told me the stories over and over again for weeks before he took me to get the seal. A long time ago, the crime families across the four nations had ruled recklessly. Lawlessly. They targeted the vulnerable—wives and children who died by the dozen. Eventually, the most powerful families agreed to a truce. Children, spouses, close friends could be given the seal and they would be safe, as safe as anyone ever really was. They wouldn’t be targeted, they would be allowed to live normal lives, as long as they stayed out of the Business. Muscles’ seal was broken, a thick black line through its center. He had joined his family’s Business when he was old enough and became fair game for retaliation. Mine was still in tact. I’d thought of having it removed when I ran away, but at the time I couldn’t bear to erase the last shred of connection I had to my brother and grandmother.

I blinked, stunned. He was—not kin, not family, but something like it. A kindred spirit. I looked him up and down, more carefully this time. I could see it now in the way that he held himself, the way he watched me. It reminded me of Sokka, I realized with a jolt. He had a predator’s look, the kind passed from father to son. “Who are you?” I asked. Muscles stood a little straighter.

“My name is Zuko Sozin. My father is Ozai Sozin.” He sat down again at the table, watching me carefully. I knew the name. The Sozins operated in the Fire Nation, mostly dealing in illegal arms, some drugs, some prostitution. Ozai was their head, had taken power in the family over his older brother. No one knew exactly why, only that Ozai was the crueler choice. Muscles—Zuko tilted his head. “Will you tell me your name?” he asked gently.

“I’m Katara,” I answered. I only hesitated a moment. “Katara Naqa.” I swallowed. “My father is Hakoda Naqa.” Zuko nodded, recognition in his expression. I supposed it would have been embarrassing if I had heard of his family, but he had never heard of mine.

“You’re a long way from home,” he said. His tone was curious. I shifted in my seat, avoided his gaze.

“So are you,” I answered and now it was his turn to evade. He paused and then leaned away from me, as if trying to give me space.

“Last night,” he said slowly, carefully. “You were running from someone.” I swallowed again. My throat felt suddenly tight, my body felt flushed. “Who was it?”

“Spearmint,” I whispered. And then he was there, looming over me, his hot hands pinning me in place while he drew blades through the flesh on my back. “And Wire Brush.” He wrapped my hair around his fist and forced his cock so far down my throat that I gagged and choked. I reached for my coffee mug, suddenly desperate to feel something warm and real in my hands. Zuko’s expression was gentle.

“They attacked you?”

“They…” I didn’t know how to say it, I realized, stomach sinking. In all my fantasies of a rescue that never name, I never practiced how I would put into words the way they had taken everything from me, the way I’d lost myself in the agony and the shame and the hopelessness? How could I explain to Zuko Sozin how I had told the Boss everything I knew about my father’s operation and my brother’s fears and my grandmother’s home, how I would have said anything to make it all stop?

How even now, I had no where to go. The thought started out small and nagging. But with every labored breath I took, it grew bigger. Had I already been kicked out of my apartment? Had I been fired at work? Had my few, tentative friendships fizzled away? Had anyone even noticed when I disappeared? I swayed in my seat.

“Wha—” I choked, suddenly overwhelmed and shaking. The full weight of everything that had happened was falling down on top of me, crushing me flat, pressing in until there was no air left in the room. “Wh-when—?” I tried again, but the words broke apart in my mouth. Last night, Wire Brush had been too busy raping me to tie me up properly and I had run. I had been beaten and raped and tortured and debased for days and weeks and months and months and months—

“Z-zuko,” I gasped. I pressed my hands flat on the table and tried to quell the shaking. “Zuko, what day is it?”

Zuko’s eyes were wide. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to reach for me, but he kept his hands where they were, folded on top of the table. “Today is February 5^th,” he said. “Katara—”

But no, he was wrong. He had to be wrong. Because it had just been the autumn equinox, right before I was taken. All of the coffee shops had just put out all of their fall specials. There was a troop of girls selling pumpkins outside of my favorite corner store. I used to wave to them every day on my way home from work.“No,” I said, breathless. Tears blurred my vision. “No, that isn’t right. It was—um,” I gulped against the sob twisting around in my gut. “It had only just been September when they took me and I stopped counting because of how awful it was every time another week went by and no one—” my voice broke, and I wiped clumsily at my cheeks, “no one ever came for me, but I got to twenty-six, I got to twenty-six weeks a long time ago.”

Of course, Zuko figured it out before I did. His expression crumpled and he leapt from his chair, circled the table to kneel at my feet. He took my hands tight in his. I didn’t flinch back this time. He could do with me what he liked. I was nothing, after all, I had been nothing for one year and four months and fourteen days.

“Katara, you need to put your head between your knees.” Zuko’s words were dim. Distant. I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. He squeezed my hands. His palms were warm and calloused. “Do you hear me? Lean forward and put your head between your knees.” He reached for me and I let him. I didn’t care what happed to me anymore. He hooked a hand around the back of my neck and tugged until I folded forward. He held me there for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity. Slowly, the mounting pressure in my chest began to ease. Zuko kept his hand on the back of my neck, not holding, not restraining, just resting there. Bit by bit, the panic ebbed and something else seeped into its place.

I pressed my hands over my face, curled in on myself, and sobbed.

It was a long time before my grief was spent, until I had poured all the excess, venomous hurt out on Zuko’s pretty, mid-tier linoleum. He stayed with me the whole time, hands warm and reassuring on my on my shoulders. “It’s going to be okay.” The words rang hollow, but it was all I had left now. “You’re safe now,” he whispered. “We’ll figure it out. You and me, we’ll figure it out.”

Chapter Text

I blinked and two weeks passed squatting in Zuko’s spare bedroom.

I spent the first week sleeping more than anything else. Adrenaline had taken me as far as it could. Now, I needed rest and clean water and medicine and food, all of which Zuko eagerly delivered. He crept out the apartment early every morning and returned exactly at two and six every day with more food and gentle reminders to take more medicine.

It unnerved me and confused me, Zuko’s gentle, consistent care, but at least for that first week, I didn’t have the energy or the will to unpack it. It was all I could manage to sleep and eat and hack up old phlem and rub ointment on old wounds and count old scars and then do it all again and again until it all started to get a little easier.

By the second week, I was stronger. Or, my body was stronger.

“I need to go back to my apartment,” I told Zuko one day. It was Thursday. In the cage, Thursdays were hard when I knew about them. I would start the week hopeful, certain. I could withstand them, someone would come for me finally someone would come for me. My hope would wax like the moon as the days passed. Until Thursday. Thursdays marked the beginning of the end of the week, the day that my hope would begin to wane. Last week, I had spent most of Thursday  knocked out on a generous dose of cough medicine. Today, a desperate, familiar thrum needled at me. Not here, I reminded myself as I set a plate of toast and the full coffee pot in the center of the table. I hesitated, adjusted the plate, and the coffee. It looked right, but it didn’t feel right. Nothing felt quite right.

“It looks great,” Zuko said. His voice was gentle, which meant that something I was doing was noticeably insane. I dropped into my chair and made myself take a deep breath. No danger. No cage. Only me and Zuko and the toast. Outside, Mrs. Long’s truck backfired and I flinched.

Not here, not here, not here.

We didn’t talk much, Zuko and I, but I was trying to change that. It went against all of my instincts as a good, Water Tribe girl not to make myself useful to my host. I’d made a point every day this week of listening for him in the mornings, rising and pulling together breakfast before he left for the day. It felt like the least I could do, in a very literal sense. I had no money. Nowhere to go. Nothing to offer. So, I threw myself into toast and conversation.

More pragmatically, it was time well spent. The more I talked to Zuko the less scared I felt around him.

Zuko filled our coffee cups, added milk to both and sugar to mine, and we settled in to watch the kids from the neighborhood dawdle their way up the street to the bus stop. “So… your apartment?” he said eventually. His tone very carefully implied nothing at all. What he meant was that I had no apartment. I had scribbled my old address down for him some time last week. He had gone there hoping to retrieve my things and returned with a stack of forms an inch thick and a pamphlet on Ba Sing Se’s property reclamation laws. I chewed my lip and fidgeted with my sleeve. The oversized hoodie had become mine over time. It covered the scars on my wrists and forearms, hid how skinny I was now. Zuko had collected a small hodgepodge of clothes and essentials for me from one of the female trainers at his gym, but I wore the hoodie nearly every day.

“My old apartment,” I clarified. “With my ID and my bank cards and all of my things. Once I have all of that, the rest will be easier to figure out.” It would. I rearranged the toast, fanning it nicely over the plate. It would be easier to figure it all out. I picked up the coffee pot and set it on an old checkered pot holder. The reason I couldn’t figure it out now was because I didn’t have my ID. Or my bank cards. Or all of my things.

I sipped at my coffee.

“Okay.” Zuko nodded and rubbed at his eyes. He looked tired as he picked a piece of toast from the plate and smeared it with butter and jam. “I have private sessions all morning today, but I think I can get out for the afternoon. We can go then.”

“Oh. No, I—.” It startled a smile out of me. My mom used to tell Sokka and I that if he frowned so much his face would get stuck like that—that the frown muscles would grow out of control until they simply took over, firing at will. Now, I thought that it was the other way around. The ones that orchestrated your smile could wither away, atrophying over time until smiling left you winded and uncomfortable. My smile felt odd and creaky on my face. I rubbed at my cheek. “I didn’t mean that you had to come with me. Of course you don’t have to come with me. You’ve done so much for me already…”

Zuko frowned at me. “You want to go alone?” His tone and his expression prickled at my nerves, raw and overexposed as they were. Suddenly, I was breathless and sweating. I went to the counter to give myself space to breathe.

Honestly, I didn’t want to go alone. I’d tried a trip alone to the corner store and ended up nearly passing out in the produce section. It was too easy on New Harmony Heights’ busy streets to catch a flash of silver hair or feel the weight of eyes that lingered on me for too long.

I saw Spearmint and Wire Brush everywhere.

“You’ve done enough for me,” I said and washed my hands to give myself something to do. I grabbed the bowl of fruit I had cut and washed and brought it back to the table. Then moved the coffee pot off of the pot holder and put the bowl there instead. I started to reach for the plate of toast, but Zuko cleared his throat.

“Let me take you. It’ll be faster,” he said. He served himself a scoop of fruit and then spooned some onto my plate. I sank down into my seat and pushed my fruit around my plate. “We can drive, pack your boxes in the trunk, all that.”

Spirits, but he was earnest. It’s what kept me perpetually off balance with Zuko, the certainty with which I could tell that he wasn’t lying. Despite myself, I nodded at my hands. From the corner of my eye, I could see Zuko smile. It looked easy on him. Natural.

“Will you contact your family?” Zuko asked. “Once you have your things again?” The question pricked at old instincts, buried deeper than any of my new paranoias. Normally, we didn’t talk about much of anything. Zuko would list his appointments and classes for the day and I would rearrange the table. We certainly never talked about anything as sensitive as the f-word. I’d forgotten how hard it had been before in Ba Sing Se to juggle questions from well-meaning acquaintances about my mother or father, if I had any siblings, if I visited them on holidays, if they ever came here to visit me. And before Ba Sing Se, it had been even harder. The South Pole was big, but the community was small. People knew my father and my brother and that meant that they thought they knew me too. No questions to dodge there. Just smiling at the right times, parroting the right lines, appearing in the right attire, the right posture.

For a moment, I pulled her on. Hakoda’s girl. Pretty. Polished. Happy. It was like trying to stuff my feet into shoes two sizes too small. “No,” I told Zuko and shoved a bit of fruit in my mouth. I tried a smile. It didn’t feel very polished. Zuko chuckled and took a big bite of his toast.

“You know, I think you’re mysterious enough even without the shadowy relationship with your family that you never talk about,” he said. It surprised a laugh out of me, just a quiet huff of air, but it felt… good. A little easier this time. He loaded another slice of toast with butter and slid it onto my plate. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. But you don’t have to not talk about it either. I’ll probably understand more than you think.”

I think I liked Zuko. When I wasn’t afraid of him. And I think that he liked me too.

I couldn’t imagine why.

I twisted my sleeve in my fingers, considering, before I decided to try. “I couldn’t contact them, even if I wanted to. My dad is… particular. About security. He rotates the family through residences every year or two, some in the South Pole, some abroad. Same for our cell numbers, same for online contact. Everything is encrypted, everything is behind multiple layers of security, all strictly monitored, all under his control. If you don’t already know what you’re looking for, everyone in my family is functionally impossible to find.”

Zuko’s brow pulled together. “That seems… extreme. Even for his line of work.” I shrugged a shoulder and answered the question he very politely did not ask.

“My mom…” I was going to say that she was murdered, that when she bled out her blood was so hot that steam rose up off of her body, that I didn’t run and call 911. That I wish that I had been brave enough to call 911. “My mom was killed when I was eight. My dad kind of lost it after that. The security measures got more and more extreme, he started staying away from us for longer and longer.”

I think my mom was the only person my dad ever really loved. I think when she died, it broke his heart and he never bothered doing the work of putting it back together.

“I’m sorry. About your mom,” Zuko said. His voice was gentle again, but rough. Like he meant it. He opened his mouth to say something more, but then hesitated and cleared his throat instead. “Is there a way for you to contact your brother?” he said eventually, rubbing at his temples. “Or to get… I don’t know. Security clearance again? To get back in contact in case something happens?”

“There’s a panic line. If you’re caught on the outside and lose access somehow, you can call, give a code, and be looped back in.” I picked resolutely at a scar on my arm. A cigarette burn. “The code changes once a year.”

Zuko blew out a frustrated breath. “Damn,” he muttered, almost to himself. I fidgeted in my seat, suddenly self-conscious.

“I should have made a plan or… or left a way for myself back in,” I mumbled. “I know that now, but I just…”

But I couldn’t breathe there. Mom was dead. Sokka was taken away, too busy becoming the perfect heir. GranGran barely remembered who I was most days. I was all alone all the time and the worst thing about it was how normal it all felt after a while. As if that were the way it was supposed to be.

“When I left the South Pole, I just… left.” The words erupted out of me, like I was a shaken soda bottle he’d cracked open. “My dad was everywhere—he controlled where I went and who I talked to, he controlled where we lived and what we ate. Do you know he pulled me out of school? At eight years old. I barely managed to finish middle school with all of the moving and secrecy and stress and… and I tried. I told him that all of this was killing us, me and Sokka and GranGran, but all I ever got back was more money and I just—I could see it, you know? He would pick someone who would do what he said, he would marry me off, and I’d never have anything that was mine, not in my entire life. I’d spend the next fifty years decorating houses and raising babies to run his fucking drugs!”

I stopped, breathing hard, cheeks warm. And suddenly, there was the truth, unsaid, but hanging plainly in the air between us. I had been impulsive. And arrogant. I was a dropout heiress, pampered my entire life, complaining about her controlling daddy. I had thrown a tantrum and run away on a dream of making it on my own in Ba Sing Se. No plan. No way to protect myself.

And look how that had turned out.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. Suddenly, I felt immeasurably small next to Zuko. My crappy apartment and my old waitressing job were laughable next to everything he had built. A hot knot of shame lodged itself at the base of my throat. “Sorry, I shouldn’t—I sound stupid. And ungrateful. Sorry, I—”

“Katara…” Zuko started, but I shoved back from the table and swiped his empty mug.

“I’ll just… start the dishes,” I muttered and retreated to the sink. I filled it with soap and water as hot as I could stand and started scrubbing. When I was done with the dishes, I would start the counters and the cabinet doors and maybe once he was gone I would find something to clean the floors with. It was the least I could do. Zuko sat quiet at the table for a moment more before he stood and came to stand next to me. I kept my eyes down, trained on the water.

“It’s not stupid,” he murmured, so quietly it could have been to himself. He grabbed a dish towel and slowly began to dry as I washed. “It’s what they do, isn’t it?” he said as he stowed away the last plate. “They neglect you. Abuse you.” He gestured toward his face—to his scar, I realized with a lurch. His tone was casual, but I could see the hurt there still. “And still you end up more desperate than ever for them to love you.”

Silence stretched between us, heavy and sad. I drained the sink and suddenly I was out of things to do with my hands.

“Have you thought about what you want to do?” Zuko asked.

“I want to go get my things from the apartment,” I answered. Zuko turned to face me, propping his hip against the counter.

“I mean after, Katara. Have you thought about how you want to handle—”

“You’re going to be late for your private session.” I kept my gaze straight forward, kept my voice even, pulled myself in tight. Zuko looked at me for a moment more before he seemed to relent. He sighed and started for the cabinet where his water bottles and protein shake were.

This, I had learned, was an unskippable component of his morning routine. He filled two massive insulated bottles full of water from his filter pitcher every morning, but there was only ever enough in the pitcher for half of the first bottle, because he basically only ever refilled the pitcher in the mornings when he ran out of water for his water bottles. He would then have to refill the pitcher, wait for it to run, and fill the rest, all while complaining bitterly about how much better the water was when it was cold.

Sighing, I reached over and pulled open the refrigerator. “In the door,” I said with a nod. Zuko stopped short, then pulled out the two bottles. He blinked at them and then at me as if I had done something profound.

“You filled these?”

“Well, yeah,” I answered. “Is that okay? You said you liked it better when they’re cold. And you always forget at night.”

Zuko didn’t answer. When I glanced at him again, he was staring at the water bottles, his brows pulled together. Suddenly, he reached for me—too quick, unexpected, unclear. I flinched, shoulders high around my ears.

I was embarrassed even before I’d really done it. Zuko wasn’t them. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he’d had his chance a dozen times over. He’d been nothing but kind—irrationally, unaccountably, bafflingly kind. There was no logic in my reaction. But these days my body and my brain took it in turns, short-circuiting, disobeying me. It didn’t matter that I liked Zuko when I wasn’t afraid—I was always afraid. So he reached for me and I tensed, waiting for hands or fists or blades or lighters or—

Zuko stopped mid-gesture. He planted his hand next to mine instead, on the edge of the countertop.

“Thank you, Katara.” His voice was soft and honest. I held still, swallowing around the lump in my throat, and started to say… what?

You’re welcome.

It was nothing.

It was literally, actually nothing.

I have literally, actually nothing.

Don’t you know that I have nothing?

“Eat the rest of the toast,” Zuko said. “Okay?”

He was gone then, before I’d managed to puzzled it all out, bag packed and out the door to make his first session of the day. Once I was alone, I reached out to rest my hand where his had been on the countertop.

I spent the rest of the day talking myself into something like optimism. Nothing specific; I still had no clue what exactly my secondhand clothes and modest bank account were supposed to solve. But potent enough that I spent the entire morning chipping away at the stack of legal forms.

But then, just after noon, I was interrupted by a sharp rap on the front door. I froze where I was, cross-legged on Zuko’s couch. A curtained window looked out onto the front porch and I watched as a pair of shadows shifted around on the other side of the door, one taller and the other short. Suddenly, my throat felt hot and tight and my hands were trembling and sweaty. Not here, I told myself as the taller shadow reached for the door. Not here, as the locked handle jiggled and turned. I stood and began to back away from the door. Not here not here not—

“Katara?”

The door swung open wide to reveal Zuko, leaning heavily on the shoulder of a young girl.

For a moment, I stood rooted to the spot. I could feel my heartbeat pounding behind my ears. Then I actually registered Zuko in front of me and sprang forward.

“You look awful.”

The girl hefted Zuko and tossed her head with a snort. Zuko cracked a smile and started to say something, but it got caught up in a fit of coughing. His skin, already creamy pale, had a sickly pallor to it, somewhere between green and grey.

“Does he?” the girl crowed. “Please tell me it’s worse than he smells.” She strode forward, half guiding, half dragging Zuko with her, and deposited him on the couch. Zuko half collapsed with a groan and I hurried to ease him back onto the cushions.

“Thanks,” Zuko bit out around wet, hacking coughs. “Glad you’re here to keep me humble.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, even as I pressed my hands against his forehead and neck. His skin was hot and clammy. Suddenly, the way he had scrubbed at his eyes and cleared his throat at breakfast snapped into clear focus. “Zuko, you’re sick. You’re really sick.”

“I’m fine,” Zuko protested.

“He puked all over his eleven-thirty,” the girl chirped. Her lip curled and she dropped Zuko’s bag at her feet.

“I did not puke all over her—!”

“She has been saying for weeks how she’s going to post us on that snooty ass mom group and you go and projectile vomit all over her.” I fussed with Zuko for a bit, turning him the right way on the couch and tucking the cushions nicely around him, while the girl turned and wandered into the kitchen. I could see now that she was young, but not as young as I had first thought, maybe a few years under my twenty-one. Her height made her look even younger, easily a head shorter than me. Her bearing made her taller though, the way she angled her head forward and ever so slightly down, as if that was where she expected the rest of us to be. Her complexion was about as pale as Zuko’s, but with black hair cropped short and dusty jade eyes. She had a solid build to her, not lined with muscle the way Zuko was, but stocky and thick and rooted where she stood. She muttered darkly to herself as she groped her way around the kitchen and I spied a folded walking cane clipped to her belt loops.

“I’m fine,” Zuko told me. I pressed my water cup into his hands and he took it with a murderous look. “You’re so goddamn dramatic, Toph!”

Toph was clanging through the cabinets now, feeling around with fingertips both delicate and brash. She rolled her eyes.

“Can I get your help in here? The man is obviously on death’s door.”

“I’ll, um, I’ll go get the medicine,” I muttered, overwhelmed by all of the activity and bickering. I turned and started for the bathroom, but Zuko caught me by the back of my hoodie.

“Hold on, I don’t need any medicine. It’s just Lotus Fever, the class full of homeschoolers have been passing it around for a week. It was only a matter of time—”

“—I haven’t gotten it because I sanitize the gym equipment properly—”

“Also, I don’t know if you remember Toph from the other night, but that’s who this criminal is rifling through my belongings.”

Toph turned and planted her hands on her hips. “Toph Beifong, good to re-meet you and all that stuff. Can you please get this idiot a thermometer?”

Ah. The other night. Zuko had alluded to an instructor at the gym, a woman, who had also been there the night I escaped, who helped him get me back here to the apartment, who gave him her clothes for me to wear. I hadn’t thought much about her, but what I’d imagined had certainly not been… this. Between her and Zuko, it was clear who I should listen to. I ducked into the bathroom and started opening doors. I found a respectable cache of soap, toilet paper, and shaving cream. A few bottles of allergy pills rattled pitifully under my inspection, but nothing for a cough or a fever and no thermometer. I checked my room and found all of the bottles drained and another pinprick of shame pierced me. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone through the whole stash. By the time I came back into the living room, Toph had the kettle warming on the stove and had dug a worn out looking box of ginger tea from the depths of the the upper cabinets.

“And why is there no food in your kitchen except eggs, bread, and protein powder, you fucking meathead—?”

“I think we need to go to the store,” I said. Both Zuko and Toph turned in my direction. Zuko’s expression was somewhere between sour and embarrassed. Toph looked unsurprised. “There’s no more medicine. And she’s right, there’s no food in the house. But I can make soup.” Toph rolled her eyes.

“Great, you’ve got no food, no medicine, and you’re puking on the clients.” She heaved a massive breath, zipped her winter coat closed, and unfolded her cane. “Come on, then. Let’s go now and maybe I’ll be able to salvage the afternoon schedule.” She turned and went to the door, one hand out in front of her and one behind, reaching for me. Without thinking, I put my arm in her grip and let her pull me out the front door. Zuko sat up straight from his place on the couch.

“Toph, Katara doesn’t like going out—”

“Shut up and drink your tea once it’s ready,” Toph said and slammed the door in his face. It surprised another shred of laughter out of me. Toph wound her arm around mine, but she led more than I did as we strode down the stairs and through the front gate. She swept her cane out in front of her almost as a matter of routine and a few of the people we passed on the street called quiet greetings as we went by.

“Do you live near here?” I asked as an older woman smiled in our direction. Toph shrugged.

“Like ten minutes down the street and around the corner. I hooked Zuko up with Long, actually. She was moaning for weeks about how her renter was moving out and the only people she could find willing to take the spot were scumbags or couples with babies.” Toph snorted again and marched us into the grocery store. Arriving at our destination seemed to remind her of her bad mood. She kept up a steady stream of insults and curses against Zuko under her breath as I led us up and down the aisles. I would have been uncomfortable, except it was harder to micro-analyze the expressions of the strangers who passed us while also trying to parse why it was that Zuko was a Class A Ninny.

“I mean, can you believe this little twerp?” she groaned as I perused the medicines. I’d gleaned by now that all of Toph’s questions were rhetorical. “First time the gym has turned a profit in nineteen months—which is well below median by the way—and he’s blowing chunks on Mei Jin-fucking-Lu. We finally have enough people around to cover for each other when we’re sick, and he’s still running himself ragged trying to do it all himself. Just like a fucking man. He wants me dead. There’s no other reasonable explanation for such utter dipshitery.” I snagged a cheap digital thermometer and turned us toward the register. “Anyway,” Toph sighed as she dug in her pocket, “how are you doing? You seem better.”

The clerk scanned our haul without ceremony, carrots, onion, celery, meat, spices, noodles, and stock. A bottle of cough syrup and some fever pills. The thermometer. “Insert your card,” he droned. Toph counted off a few bills folded lengthwise and set them on the counter.

“Oh,” I answered, startled by the sudden shift. “Yes. I am. Thanks. And for the clothes too.” Toph reached up to settle her hand on my shoulder, measuring.

“You probably shouldn’t thank me,” she answered. “I bet all the pants look so dumb on you.” Her hand ran back down the length of my arm and when she got to my hand, her fingertips dipped suddenly into the sleeve of my hoodie, lingering over the raised lines across my wrists. I pulled away, startled, and Toph let me, but now her expression was dark.

“Have a good one,” the clerk said and handed me the packed bag of goods.

“You too,” Toph answered. She wound her hand around my bicep this time. Her touch was gentle now, even as she marched us quickly back up the street. “Are you going to talk to the police?” she asked me. The question struck me oddly, planting something akin to guilt in my chest. I hadn’t considered going to the police because the entire notion was absolutely ludicrous. Whoever Spearmint and Wire Brush and the Boss really were, they were absolutely connected to my dad in some way. And as long as the police saw this as another inter-family squabble the more quickly any investigation into what had happened would die. I wasn’t naive. Connections to the Business made justice a matter of might. I should have considered myself lucky that I made it out with my life and move on.

Right?

I blinked and glanced at Toph. “I—no, I hadn’t planned on it.” Toph arched an eyebrow.

“Why not? Those scumbags need to pay.” I couldn’t fault her the logic at least. I wondered how much Zuko had told Toph. Strictly speaking, I hadn’t told Zuko much, but he had effectively read between the lines. Toph seemed equally adept. Her fingers contracted slightly around my arm.

“There’s no point,” I told her, my voice low. “The police aren’t going to do anything for me.” Toph’s lips twisted thoughtfully.

“That may not be true. Ba Sing Se is changing. The gangs and big families can’t keep control anymore, the city is too damn big. The Earth King’s deal for the last few years has been to divide and conquer, try to get lower level guys to roll over on their bosses. They might be tripping all over themselves to talk to you.”

I stopped, suddenly flushed and breathless. I could hear him in my ears, the way his voice was smooth like velvet, the way he always spoke quietly, even when I screamed. The Boss didn’t come to the cage often. I could count how many times I’d seen him on all of my fingers. When he did, he brought a notebook and a short, yellow pencil. On one side, he read from a list of questions about my father. The size and regularity of his shipments. The locations of his safe houses. The movements of his men. And every time I told him I didn’t know, he’d mark a tally on the other side.

“I would never tell them about my dad,” I told Toph. My voice was shaking, I was shaking. “I wouldn’t do that. No matter—even—I love my dad, I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t sell him out like that—”

“Whoa.” Toph’s voice was gentle and she reached up again to put a hand against my shoulder. “Slow down a second.” She pressed down, pinning me in place. “Just breathe, okay? Slower than that.” She took a deep, deliberate breath, but I stumbled a step backward, out of her grip.

“N-no, why would you say that?” I mumbled. My brain felt frantic and foggy and the only thought I could manage clearly was that I hadn’t meant to, of course I hadn’t meant to. But eventually I learned that every tally meant a punishment, it meant Spearmint or Wire Brush would be coming to exact their price. And sometimes I just couldn’t take it, knowing that I was here, alone, abandoned, defending a man who hadn’t given a damn about me in more than a decade. A man who wouldn’t come save me. “I wouldn’t—why would you say that?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

And just like that, the world twisted sharply into place again. The wintry wind buffeted my cheek. I took a deep breath and it knocked around in my chest a bit. Toph’s eyebrows were drawn together. “Sorry. I just meant that if you went to them, they’d want to investigate your case.” I tightened my grip around the grocery bag and started down the sidewalk again. I was suddenly hyper aware of the weight of the wide sky up above me. I wanted to be back in the apartment. Toph walked along with me, silent.

“We used to vacation in the Southern Earth Kingdom when I was little,” I said after a while. “There’s this little cluster of islands halfway between the South Pole and Gaoling. We would hire a boat for the day and sail out into the open waters. Picnic. Fish. Swim.” Toph’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t speak. Her fingers worked ever so slightly where she gripped my arm, tightening and loosening in turns, the way someone else might nod. “It feels like that lately. Every day. Like I’m treading water alone on the open ocean and every time I think I’ve caught my breath the water closes over my head again.”

Toph didn’t speak as she led us through the gate and up the stairs. Back in the apartment, the front room was empty. Zuko had abandoned the couch and the door to his bedroom was closed. I sighed and went to stow away the groceries, but Toph stopped me with her hand on my shoulder.

“You and Zuko are just alike,” she said quietly. “A sea of life preservers all around you, and you’d still be in the middle of the ocean kicking.” She groped around in the grocery bag until she found the medicines and cradled them against her chest. “You get pulled under sometimes. For a moment. Or a minute. But you’re here now. With us. Zuko and I are always going to pull you back up.”

She disappeared then into the back hallway. For a long moment, I stood still, turning the comment over in my mind. The day was catching up to me. My hips and knees ached a bit from all of the walking and my mind felt a bit foggy. Still, I went into the kitchen and unloaded the rest of the food. I set to work finding pots and dishes, chopping vegetables, lighting the gas stove. By the time Toph emerged again, the soup was half done. She paused on her way to the front door, her expression smoother than it had been before.

“Smells good in here,” she said. I stood up straight from my spot in front of the stove.

“It’ll be ready in a bit. Do you want to stay…?” But Toph was already shaking her head.

“I have to get back, rearrange the roster, do damage control with Mei Jin.” She already had a hand on the doorknob and I nodded, then remembered again that she could not see me.

“Oh. Okay. Well, nice to, um. Meet you.” Toph smiled. It looked nice on her. Brash. There wasn’t an ounce of self-doubt in the expression.

“Take care of him, all right? Maybe between the two of us we can actually keep this moron alive. Call me if you need anything, Katara. I mean it.” And then she was gone, slamming the front door closed behind her.

I was alone again. I waited for the familiar kind of chill that usually accompanied silence settling in, but minutes ticked by and I felt… nothing. No creeping emptiness. No resignation. No loneliness. The warmth of Toph’s presence lingered in the room after she’d left. Call me. I mean it.

The soup came together quickly. I served myself a bowl and ate at the table. It wasn’t my best work. Before, when I’d first moved to Ba Sing Se, I’d had a vast collection of spices. The city was massive and diverse. I’d made a hobby of finding and visiting remote regional grocery stores to pick through through their store of herbs and spices. It made my cooking that much more exciting. For the first few months I couldn’t follow a recipe to save my life. I was too excited to mix and match, swap ingredients, follow blind intuition.

I had been so happy at first. After I left. Before the cage. I had been so happy.

When I was done, I wandered back to Zuko’s room, easing open the door. He was fast asleep underneath a haphazard mound of blankets and pillows. The opened medicines were left on the side table and I winced a bit at the level of remaining cough syrup. He would probably be out for a few more hours. I felt his forehead and straightened Zuko’s blankets and pillows. Then I arranged his medicines on his side table and went to the window to draw the curtains closed. I started to leave, but once I had made it back to the doorway, I hesitated. The sound of Zuko’s breathing, quiet and slow, it reverberated in my head, distorted, louder and louder. I chewed on my bottom lip and stood rooted to the spot, while I weighed the risks and potential rewards of spending just a little longer here, watching, in case anything went wrong.

“Katara?”

It was like realizing I had been holding my breath.

“Hi,” I whispered, startled. The sunlight outside was bright, but maybe the drawn curtain made it harder for Zuko to see me blushing. He brushed a hand through his hair and over his face. His movements were slow, still heavy with sleep. “Sorry, I didn’t wake you…?”

“How long have you been standing there?”

I blinked and a half of dozen lies chorused through my mind. I cleared my throat and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Um. Fifteen minutes.”

“Oh.” Zuko frowned and scrubbed at his unscarred eye. He curled onto his side and propped his head up on his pillow. “Why?”

I groped around in my head for a good lie, but nothing surfaced.

“I was worrying that if I couldn’t see you,” I answered slowly, “that you would die.” I fiddled nervously with my sleeve, twisting it around in my fingers. “It was easier to just stand here.”

I tensed, waiting for the spell finally to break. Whatever it was that kept him somehow tied to me, this would be the end of it. Zuko’s brow furrowed for a moment, and I closed my eyes. It would be easier that way to hear it.

Zuko chuckled. The sound of it was gentle and warm, like a hand smoothing over the back of my neck. I felt some of the sick feeling roiling around in my gut drain away. “I know what you mean,” he said. His voice was quiet. Considering. “I think I watched you sleep for like, half an hour one night.” Then, he raised his head to look at me, squinting. The sudden movement seemed to set off another coughing fit and I sprang from my seat to pass him the glass of water right next to him. “Fuck,” he bit out as I propped his pillows up behind him and eased him back against them. “I probably should not tell you that.”

I was startled enough that I forgot to be self-conscious about my smile. “You watched me sleep?” Zuko wrinkled his nose at me and I held my hands up, appeasing. “I’m obviously not judging,” I told him. The corner of his mouth twitched. “I just—when was this?”

Zuko’s smile froze on his face, suddenly brittle. “That first day that you were here,” he answered quietly. “You cried for hours, do you remember?” I did. I remembered the way that time stretched out behind and ahead of me. I remembered feeling like I was in the middle of the ocean, no shore and no sea floor, just endless waves of grief. And I remember Zuko there. “After a while, you just kind of… stopped. Like you weren’t sleeping or passed out, but you wouldn’t speak or look at me. You wouldn’t eat or drink. Your fever spiked, you were sweating and shaking.” He took a deep breath, as if he was steadying himself and I took his glass and set it back on the side table. “I managed to get you back into your bed and then I just stayed there, standing in the door to your room, listening to you breathe.” He shook his head and glanced up at me, suddenly shy. “Sorry,” he said. “If that’s creepy.”

I felt something inside of me soften, some door that had been shut open up. Just a crack. 

“I don’t think it’s creepy,” I told him, “as long as you don’t think it’s creepy.” I pressed my hand gingerly against his forehead and Zuko smiled at me. “I should let you rest. You two were kind of heavy-handed with the cough medicine. It’s not fair to let you tell me all of your secrets.”

I turned to scurry away, but Zuko reached out to catch my hand in his, quicker than me even doped up as he was. His hand was hard, rough across the knuckles and calloused over his palm. “I…got something for you. And I’ve kind of been trying to work out how to give it to you.” He pointed to a thick, white business card on his bedside table. I picked it up and read it.

Detective Aang Gyatso. Special Investigator. There was a number handwritten underneath the clean, serifed type.

I looked up at Zuko, questioning and he shrugged, looking unsure.

“I asked around. This guy has a good reputation. You can talk to him off the record, no pressure to file a real report or anything.” He squeezed my hand. “Just think about it, okay? We’ll do whatever you decide, but just… think about it.”

I turned the business card over and over again in my fingers, but just before the anxiety closed over my head, Zuko squeezed my hand again. “Sit with me a little longer,” he said. “Just a few minutes.”

I nodded. Maybe too quickly. Zuko still held my hand nestled in his. I let him keep it.

He was sick after all.