Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

June watched as the waterbenders eased the steel hull down into the water. The ship bobbed, settled; floated steadily, in its hole in the camp’s ice, as the guards prodded prisoners down below its decks to check on every seam.

The ships were almost done. So was the usefulness of most of the idiots around her. If she wanted these schmucks to sail her out of here, she’d better get them at it while there were enough left alive.

“If we’re getting out of here, we need to think this through,” she said, later that night, to an ice ceiling that didn’t care and an attendant who was face-first in her furs.

“Do we?” groaned Engineer Hanako, who’d spent most of the day patch-welding leaks while cold water sprayed her in the face.

“Who else is going to?” This was a painfully honest question.

Less painful to Hanako, to whom it was rhetorical.

“Ugh, point,” the engineer conceded. Because “sixteen” wasn’t generally synonymous with “thinking things through.” The prince’s bodyguard was right: whatever Zuko’s plan was, it was going to need Zuko-proofing. Hanako was not taking the turtle seal tunnels out of here.

No one from the healer’s ward had been invited to the first float testing of the ships. But some of their husbands and brothers and sons had.

The ships were almost done. They had as many people as they were getting.

“How are we going to do this?” Katara asked.

Her mask buddy drew in a breath.

“Don’t say turtle seal tunnels,” she said.

This caused a significant delay in his reply.

June knew how to survive. The basics on the road, just her and her shirshu, were still solid here. The steps of this dance weren’t any different; she just… had to scale up.

They’d need water. Food. Shelter, which stealing a ship would already get them, so there was that. But first they needed to get the ship.

Fine. Whatever. She wasn’t exactly the Blue Spirit, but she’d gotten her fair share of targets out of places that didn’t always want to give them up.

Get the guards out of the way. Get the ship out to the ocean. Get clear. Get paid.

Ugh, she was getting paid in gratitude, wasn’t she?

“We can distill water,” her mask buddy was saying, “but it’s not efficient. We have to eat more to use our flames that long, which would mean going through our food too fast⁠—”

“Leave the water to us,” Chagluak said. “Bending impurities from water is one of the first things our girls learn. Can’t clean a wound if you can’t clean water. But you’re right; food’s going to be a problem.”

“We can steal nets on our way out,” Apayauq said, “but we can’t have those dragging while we’re still being chased. The first few days, at least, we’re going to be living on whatever we bring.”

“Do you think we can trick them into loading extra food?” another woman asked.

“Trick?” asked Yagoda. “I would think it only prudent. Won’t their women worry, if the men take this unfamiliar ship out, without enough supplies in case things go wrong?”

The grins of women shared many similarities with those of shark-seals, if one considered them threats enough to look.

June watched her fellow prisoners loading bin after bin of salvaged coal onto the test ship.

If only food would be so easily⁠—

The guards brought in pallets of food next. They loaded. And kept loading.

…The world owed her this one. June would thank it if and when this worked.

“They’re not going to leave that ship alone, once it’s stocked,” Sanna said. “How are we getting the guards out of the way? I’m not killing anyone,” she added, to be clear.

“We outnumber them,” Hanako said. Because no one had ever accused her of being adverse to a little murder, particularly none of the officers in her chain of command leading up to her posting on the Wanyi.

“You’ve outnumbered them this entire time. How’s that been going for you?” June asked, tossing another shiv at the spot on the wall she’d decided was her target. It hit hilt-first, and clattered onto the pile below. “These things aren’t balanced worth shit, by the way.”

“So sorry they aren’t up to your ladyship’s standards,” Hanako said. “Might I suggest a better place to stick them?”

“We know their shift changes,” June continued, tugging over the blanket containing her shiv pile, because only idiots left their nice warm furs to get things. She threw the blanket back to its spot once she’d retrieved them. It was about as aerodynamic as the shivs had been. “And we know who we’re dealing with. Especially with the night watch. If we can get someone to replace the spooky guy, get them jumping at shadows, maybe even instigate a little ghost action ourselves, then we’d stand a better chance at taking them down than these tetanus hazards would at hitting the damn target.”

“You weren’t complaining when you took them from my pants.”

“I had a cramp from reaching so far down.”

“I will kill you.”

“But do we kill them?” June asked, nearly making the mistake of tossing up a shiv just to catch it. She threw it at the wall, instead; it hit side-first. Not the flat part of the side. Yeah, she was not trusting these with her fingers.

“How is that even a question?” asked Hanako.

June’d had a rule, in bounty hunting: no matter what the poster requested, she’d taken her bounties alive whenever they weren’t too stupid to live. Then clients couldn’t pull the ol’ that decaying head could be anyone’s trick. And no one was even paying her for dealing with the Water Tribe, which continued to be offensive on a deeply professional level. She wasn’t going to put effort into killing anyone she didn’t have to, and she certainly wasn’t going to do it for free.

Now how to translate that from bounty hunter to noble-ese. And to give more speeches, in hissed whispers over meals, after grabbing people by their coat scruffs on the way between jobs. The smuggler crews were easy enough to convince; they were used to body trails being bad for business. It was the soldiers she had to pull her Fire Nation Noble voice with.

“You came here to kill them. They didn’t kill you. How about we minimize the murder on the way out, in case they catch us again?”

She took their grudging grumbles for agreement, just like a real noble would.

“This isn’t what the men practice,” one of the women panted, after she’d gotten her breath back, after Zuko had flipped her over his shoulder. She kept laying on the ground, like she was safe to talk back to him from here, like her instructors had never hit her while she was down before. Or like she trusted him not to.

“Your men are practicing to attack. To kill,” Zuko said. “What you’re learning is harder.”

She wiped a strand of sweaty hair from her face. Pushed herself back up. “Always is, isn’t it.”

And she took her stance again. Zuko nodded.

Katara watched, as her mask buddy walked Sanna through the moves again. This time, it was his back hitting the ground.

She smiled, and turned back to her own half of their practice.

Zuko couldn’t decide whether it was better or worse, keeping his back turned on where Katara was teaching them to freeze men into ice blocks.

“…Don’t forget their hands,” he said.

Or their mouths, he didn’t say, because he didn’t think the breath of fire would be helping any waterbenders escape.

“Stealth training and silent captures next,” he announced to their entire class, so he could go hide in the shadows for awhile.

“Yes,” said Apayauq, who was getting very quick with the good rope.

Which still left the problem of getting the ships out.

“Gee,” said Hanako, tossing and catching her newest shiv, “maybe we’ll have some friendly waterbenders on our side.”

“What a fantastic plan,” June grit out, watching the blade. “Now if that doesn’t happen…”

“Fair,” Hanako grudgingly allowed, like friendly waterbenders were a previously undiscussed assumption.

“Can your lot weaken the ice, without all the guards noticing? Enough that we can actually use those ice breakers once we get the engines running?”

“We’ll see what we can do,” said Hanako, who’d helped weaken the ice enough to drown rescue one prince and one too-cheerful crewmate, and was game to try for an entire ship next.

“I know we can get the ships out,” Zuko said. They certainly had enough waterbenders on their side, and Katara had been drilling them on shifting ice slabs even more than she’d been drilling them in combat; if they could pull off the one, they’d have the rest of their lives to learn the other. “But I’m still not sure how we’re getting clear.”

“It’s going to be hard,” Katara agreed.

“At least the Ocean won’t be personally trying to sink ships, this time.”

Somewhere sideways of both mortality and morality, the Ocean quivered a blobby quiver.

Yue booped him a blobby boop.

“When are we doing this?” Hanako asked.

She asked it like June should already know, so she answered like she did. “The night before the test voyage. When else?”

After that, the ships would start being moved to wherever the Water Tribe kept their actual working fleet, not propped up on ice blocks right next to their prisoners.

After that, who knew how many prisoners they’d even need, outside of the engineers.

The night before the voyage was their best shot.

Katara and Zuko had also run that math. And warned Lieutenant Jee, who would disseminate it on to the others in the know.

(Lieutenant Jee had not passed this information on to Engineer Hanako. Why would he? She lived with the prince’s bodyguard.)

“We’ll need a distraction,” Hanako said.

“We’ll need a feast,” one of the women grinned.

“I’ll break out the strong brews,” another said.

“I’ll break out the drugs,” said Healer Yagoda. She grinned a wizened grin at the collective gasping. “I was young once, dears. Who do you think wrote those dosage guides?”

(Kanna, lately known as Gran-Gran, had also been young once. Whether she remembered the entirety of her youth was between her, her good friend Yagoda, and certain species of kelp known to cause turtle seals to repeatedly slide down the steps of the palace, pupils fully dilated, arfing all the while. It had looked like fun.

Nature was a wonderful teacher. And also, sometimes, a reliable dealer of cannabis kelp.)

“Have you seen this plant, in the tunnels?” Katara asked her mask buddy.

“Don’t eat it,” he told her, which was absolutely a yes. And also a yes, as to whether he could get them a great quantity on short notice.

And so the women of the Northern Water Tribe, or a certain subset of them, began pushing for a feast to celebrate their new fleet. On the night of the full moon, of course, for the strongest blessings; and if that happened to place the feast the night before the test voyage, rather than after the ship’s safe return, well. Wouldn’t that be worth it, so that Yue herself could attend?

…Arnook did not push back on the date very much. And arranged for a particularly clear section of ice to be installed in the roof of the dining hall, where moonlight could grace a seat that had been standing empty at the head table.

“What if someone attacks while they’re drugged?” Sirka asked. “The Fire Nation must still hate us, and the Earth Kingdom keeps pushing back against our closed harbors, and that princess is coming with who knows how many soldiers⁠—”

“What are the odds she’ll come the same night?” Apayauq countered.

(Zuko, who knew better than to underestimate Azula out loud, declined to join this conversation.)

“I’m just worried,” Sirka said. “The last time…”

The last time they’d nearly lost the city. Had lost their own princess. The salvaged fleet they’d gained was cold recompense.

“It will be okay,” Katara said.

This did not actually address Sirka’s concern. “It will be okay,” as a concept, rarely did.

The night of the full moon, the night of the feast, the night before the (scheduled) first voyage arrived.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Zuko said, as they sat on their roof one last time. “After.”

“Okay,” Katara said, but what she meant was I trust you.

“Thank you,” he said, but what he meant wasn’t so easily put into words.

Overhead, the aurora flared, even more intensely than he’d ever seen before. He tilted back his head. Fought down the urge to take off his mask, then and there, to see it better.

And maybe for other reasons.

“It’s so pretty,” he said, because the sight was another thing too hard to put into words.

“Pretty” was Agni’s warning re: drowning entire fleets. Or even single ships. A few days late, but right on time.

Yue patted a sulking saltwater blob, and peered through her newly installed peephole into the evening’s festivities. She wondered whose idea it had been, and who was going to sit on that empty seat next to her father.

The kitchen was the warmest place in the north pole, tonight.

Sirka’s hand shook as she stirred one of the stews. Katara set her hand on the other woman’s, until she took in a breath, until she was able to return Katara’s smile, however weakly.

Dinner was nearly ready. The first course would go out soon. Not everyone was in on the plan, but enough of them were.

“It will be okay,” she repeated, like it would change anything.

“Why,” said June, “the fuck,” emphasized June, “are there so many of them.”

There were extra guards on the camp. Way too many. It went past night-before-a-big-event caution, past niggling suspicion, straight to confirmed threat.

And they were locking the camp down, cutting the workday short, by hours.

“Lady June,” the shift leader said, “the chief has invited you to dinner.”

Well fuck her.

“Come, attendant,” June said.

“Just you,” said the guard.

Hanako grabbed her hands, her face the perfect picture of servantly worry; June accepted the shivs now in her palms, and scooted them straight on up the sleeves of her coat, with noble grace.

She could tell, just by the feel, that Hanako had given her the good shiv.

Katara’s seat was at the head table, just as it had been on the night she’d first come to the north all those months ago. Literally just as it had been: she was even in the same seat. Not right next to Chief Arnook, but not far off.

The first of the food platters were coming out, but most of the guests were still too caught up in conversations, or in the demonstrations just beginning, to eat.

That Fire Nation noble lady was here, seated on the other side of the chief. She wore the same clothes as last time. Maybe with a bit more padding, from having an extra layer or two underneath, but that same dragon-embroidered silk coat still set her apart. Its edges were just a little more frayed, from daily wear. Her hair was greasier, but done up in an impeccable bun, with that skull ornament worn atop it like armor. The woman’s hands were tucked into her sleeves; she wasn’t reaching for the food.

Katara, of course, was so captivated watching the bending on display, with talking to those around her, that she barely touched hers, either.

Neither did the chief.

Neither did any of his bending masters, their water already at the ready, as they finished their display. Or his warriors, getting ready for theirs.

Katara met Arnook’s eyes, and knew.

“Did you think it would work?” He asked her, over the empty space where only moonlight had come to sit. “Did you think you knew my people so well, that you could steal them from me? You aren’t of our Water Tribe.”

Sirka was half pulled, half led from the kitchen, two warriors flanking her. Her hands were still shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But we couldn’t just leave them all defenseless, not like⁠— It only took a night. For them to break the walls, march in our streets, kill our bending, our⁠—”

“Not to interrupt,” the Fire Nation noble interrupted, eyes on Katara. “But were you getting out of here? Because this is going to be awkward, if you weren’t.”

She had one arm wrapped over Chief Arnook’s chest. Her other hand, with accompanying shiv, was at his throat.

“I was just leaving,” Katara said.

The other woman looked Katara up and down, her teeth somewhere between a smile and a threat. “You wouldn’t happen to be a friendly waterbender, would you?”

Katara grinned back.

The moon continued to shine. As in life, Chief Arnook did not think what message his daughter might be trying to convey, with her constant presence at his side. Also as in life, he did not think much of her at all.

June still had Chiefy under control. He’d struggled, tried to throw her off when she’d prodded him into standing, but apparently he’d never met a woman with biceps before. Or at least, not one willing to use them against him.

Unfortunately, the other guys in the room had grabbed some of the other women. Counter-hostages would have been more useful if June either knew or cared about any of them, but her friendly waterbender seemed outraged over it, and June was taking her cues from that girl at least until they were out of this palace.

“She doesn’t even have anything to do with this,” the woman who’d apparently been some kind of drama-traitor was shouting. “Neither does Siaja, or Alornerk!”

So the menfolk knew about as much about who was in on this⁠—whatever this was⁠—as June did. Good to know. And they were just grabbing random women to use as hostages over it. Also good to know.

No one else had gotten out weapons, yet, but it wasn’t hard to see which way things were going.

“You’d turn on your own people?” traitor woman accused.

Chiefy didn’t answer her, for reasons of shiv-to-the-throat.

“Listen,” June said, “not to kill the social revelations, or whatever you’ve all got going on. But are we escaping?”

Aaand no one even heard her, because everybody was shouting at everybody, because apparently not all the men were in on things, either, and those were their sisters and mothers and a particularly spunky grandma, there.

“That’s my wife,” one guy shouted.

“That’s your chief,” some other guy shouted.

“Oi,” June said. “Avatar’s friend. Are you making an opening, or am I?”

“I’ll do it,” the girl said.

And woosh went all the water in their fancy indoor pools, and also half their ceiling, which was why June didn’t take bounties on benders unless the hazard pay was good enough. A few scattered people were still on their feet, the ones that had bent up their own little ice shields, but most of the dinning hall was just. Out the doors.

And coming back in, flicking the water from their clothes and those of their very angry friends, as they marched under the palace’s new open air ceiling. The torches still lighting the room had nothing on the moonlight staring down on them all. Ugh, it was even reflecting off her shiv; no matter how she angled the thing, the moon kept managing to glare directly into June’s eyes.

Zuko first realized something was wrong when a wave washed half the party goers out into the canal.

He closed his eyes, briefly. Then he ran the opposite way⁠—towards the healing ward, to the women still waiting.

To the men trying to arrest them, who weren’t expecting a firebender. His flames could pass for a precocious toddler’s, now.

…After that showing, the men weren’t expecting him to actually be good with swords.

He re-sheathed them, as the women finished dragging the last of the groaning bodies inside. Apayauq rather eagerly set to work, applying her new rope skills.

“We’re going early?” Sanna asked.

“You are,” he answered. “Make sure to get the people from Katara’s ship, too.”

She nodded, stiffly.

“Let them go,” the waterbender said, her own glare on the only men she hadn’t literally swept aside: the ones hiding behind women.

“Let our Chief go,” one of them said back.

The girl looked to June. June tried to give her best are you serious look back, but the moonlight was still jabbing her retinas, so it looked more like a grimace instead. She took the shiv off his throat⁠—finally, that got the moon out of her eyes⁠—and gave him a shove forwards, raising her hands at the same time. Not all the way into the air; not a surrender, just a this is on you.

“Let them go,” Katara repeated.

The men didn’t.

The real fight started not with a wave of water, but with one man punching another for manhandling his mother.

And then it was the kind of brawl with no clear sides. Not men versus women, so much as the guys who’d laid hands on women versus the ones who’d taken offense to that, with a dash of women who’d had enough of tonight tossed in. Chiefy was shouting something, but Chiefy should have given better orders long before this little party got started. Katara was bend-shoving her way through the crowd; June stuck to her, as the girl gathered up the people who were hers. At least someone had an idea of who was on what side, here.

They made it most of the way out before Arnook got his own guys gathered up. Someone bent an ice wall over the hole Katara had opened up; one of the women with them slashed her hands, and a much smaller hole reopened. But by then a few men were in their way, and June was really missing her whip, which had always been excellent for crowd control. She was missing anything with a longer range than Engineer Hanako’s best piece of metal, actually. Besides the waterbending, though, most people hadn’t broken out more than fists.

…So of course, one of the guys blocking the door whipped up an ice spear.

“Move,” Katara said, and June didn’t know what she was doing with her hands, but it looked threatening.

Spear guy did not move. Neither did his friends, who’d taken his cue. One of them had pulled a knife, one of them had a club, and the crazy guy jumping down through the doorway with a mask had two swords⁠—

Katara gasped. And surged forward. And between her and crazy mask guy, they had the others on the floor in seconds.

“You were supposed to help the women if something went wrong,” Katara chided.

“I did,” a particularly distinctive voice said, with much affront. “Then I came back.”

Unlike Katara, it was a voice June fully expected to hear up here. She just hadn’t expected to hear it again.

Prince Zuko was alive. And still in the north. Which meant everything she’d done for the past few days was useless, because her bargaining chip was standing right here.

(Maybe if she’d wanted to ride his coat tails out of here, she shouldn’t have stolen his coat.)

June wished she’d figured out which of the jugs on the table had been northern booze. At least she could have blamed drunk June in the morning.

After that, she was done with dramatics. The kids weren’t. She ran after them, good shiv in hand, as Katara made ice slides down levels of the city and over canals, as the prince parkoured grown men into unconsciousness, as people stared out windows at them passing and all June could do was give them a dead-eyed stare back. And occasionally grab the arm of one of the women running with them, when someone tripped or fell behind. She wanted as many of these waterbenders as she could get.

They reached the city wall. A surge of snow brought them to the top; another spirits-cursed ramp was their way down, towards the open ground and the prison camp below. June stood at its top for a moment. Just a moment. Just long enough to appreciate that the unnecessary drama of this escape could be summarized in one word: teenagers.

She took the spirits-cursed ice slide.

Yes, it was fun.

June resented it immensely.

Katara didn’t find her slide fun. Katara found it slow, found it nearly endless, didn’t know what she’d find when they got to the bottom.

(Didn’t notice the way the men chasing them had been losing ground. Didn’t notice how their own ice ramp, when they tried to make one, shattered into a thousand glittering crystals before they could step foot on it, like it was no more substantial than moonlight.)

(Yue could still be a teenager, too.)

What they found, at the end, was the other women waiting for them. And taking turns peering through a hole someone had bent in the ice wall, into a prison where the prisoners were already knocking together heads.

June finished her own turn peeking, and stood up straight. Slid her good shiv sideways into her hair, just below her silver skull, like another ornament.

“Are you opening those gates, or what?” she demanded, hands on her hips.

She was grinning, when Katara bent them open. Her people caught sight of her, and grinned back.

“Found some friendly waterbenders,” she said, and the people cheered for Lady June.

…Zuko had never had people cheer for him after a prison breakout.

“Huh,” one of the women said, as they bent a clear path for their ship. “I thought this would be harder.”

It would have been, without days of firebender feet rotting the ice.

Smoke was already rising from the ship’s stack, as somewhere inside, Engineer Hanako assumed command of her domain. Coal was shoveled, fires lit, boilers pre-heated with all the speed determined firebenders could bring to bear. The first gears began to turn.

The plan, if they’d had a whole evening with Arnook’s court drugged senseless, had been to consolidate the coal stores onto one ship. To slag the other ships’ engines, to hole their hulls, to give them back to the Ocean.

With all the men Arnook could rally bearing down on them, they made due with a mere full speed ahead.

Their ship picked up speed, as it chugged through a canal opposite elements had opened together. Went fast, and faster, as waterbenders worked the currents and firebenders the engines.

The camp’s wall crumbled under several tons of very motivated steel. As did the thin ice shelf beyond.

Ahead lay open ocean, their path lit by moonlight.

Arnook’s men watched them go. They found their bending far more cooperative as they aimed for the harbor than it had been when they’d tried to get down to the camp. The women had done something to them, clearly.

Yue still considered herself a woman, so this was technically true.

She allowed them their bending in full again, as they reached their own ships. It was too exciting a chase not to. And if she lent a little extra power to the bending of her favorites on Katara’s ship, well, it was only a fair counter to the nudging currents the Ocean was providing to its favorites.

The Ocean blorbled in concentric rings of excitement. Tui had never raced boats with it before.

Their ship was free, the moon was full, and Master Katara of the soon-to-be-expanded Southern Water Tribe was only feeling more energized as this went on.

“Iceberg,” one of the former prisoners called, from the lookout. And, a moment later, “Ice field.”

And her mask buddy started giving orders, and Helmsman Kyo⁠—propped up on a stool, his broken leg in front of him⁠—listened to him, like for some reason a teenager was the one with the most authority here.

And maybe Katara would have paid a little more attention to that, if the moonlight wasn’t singing in her blood.

“Hold course,” she countermanded.

“We’ll hit them,” her mask buddy said.

“We won’t,” she said, and watched the distance close.

The North hadn’t just been repairing the ships; they’d been refitting them, for a waterbending crew. For a waterbending crew at war. Which was a terrible thing, but.

But Katara had been daydreaming how to bend with them since the moment she’d seen them.

“Lower the fins,” she ordered.

“Lowered,” an older man with sideburns confirmed, a moment later.

She stood on the little deck in front of the wheelhouse, the wind on her skin and the waves in her blood, and pushed.

And an entire imperial class Fire Nation cruiser spun on a Ba Sing Se dime, and changed course from southwest to southeast in the time it had taken baby Katara to spin a leaf boat in a spring melt stream.

“Raise them,” she ordered, and the drag they’d provided disappeared.

Arnook’s ships scrambled to follow. Sails were shifted and local currents re-directed with a speed that startled even the men bending them.

They were gaining on the cruiser again.

“They’re changing the currents,” Katara said. “Everyone, like we practiced; it’s not about strength, it’s about working together. We can do this.” And she started calling the moves to build a surface current in their favor, as their pursuers drew closer,

and closer,

their own currents skimming them along.

There were no convenient icebergs to dodge around, no use for maneuverability over speed when there was a line of ships behind them, a V of teeth closing in from east and west. The only clear way was ahead.

The men were just behind. Close enough to attack, now. But their crews were too busy putting in the final push to catch up, and Katara… Katara could have tried sending ice through their hulls. But it would have meant taking her own bending away from what all the other women were doing, from what they were building up together.

Chagluak opened her mouth, and started to sing. It wasn’t a song Katara had grown up with. But she’d heard it around the city, where groups of women worked. It was just as good for setting the rhythm on their bending as it had been for hauling nets up from the piers, or beating the dirt from blankets. Another woman took it up, and then another, until Katara had heard enough that she could join in, too.

The current under them was swelling, gaining strength, but not fast enough⁠—

Their pursuers were nearly on them⁠—

Which was when the Greenland seal shark surfaced in their wake, rather grumpy from a near-miss with this new-fangled “propeller” technology. The huge old creature bark-roared its complaints before turning to go. Its sightless eyes, dangling with the glowing parasites that had blinded it, seemed to stare directly at the oncoming Northern ships.

More than one crew lost their own rhythm completely.

“Whoa,” Helmsman Kyo said, “that was spooky.”

The cutter had reached its full speed. Below deck, their firebenders were making sure it stayed that way. Their waterbenders were singing the path ahead. The men behind them were disorganized, and going to tire a lot sooner than a coal-powered engine. It was as good of a head start as they could have asked for.

Colony waters and the Fire Nation’s navy were only a few days south of here. Katara had never thought of “Fire Nation navy” as a synonym for “safety,” but things had gone weird the day an iceberg started glowing and hadn’t stopped with the end of the war.

They’d made it.

Which was, of course, when a dark shape rounded the ice pack ahead.

“Ship,” the lookout called. And, a moment later: “Fleet.”

In the lead was an imperial class cutter, much like their own.

“That thing I had to tell you,” her mask buddy said, suddenly.

(“…Nope,” said June, to no one in particular. She pushed away from the panel she’d been leaning on, and away from whatever conversation this was going to be.)

“I think we have bigger problems,” said Katara.

Metaphorically, yes. Literally, the ship was exactly of a height with theirs, and the girl standing across from them at her own rail, the moon-glittered sea between them, slightly shorter.

“Brother,” she said, and somehow managed to make her completely flat tone carry over the space between.

“I can explain,” said Zuko, lowering his mask.

“Can you,” said Katara.

So at least he had options, when it came to his upcoming death.