LNYE Fic treat: Crossing, for eruthros

[whitelotusmods]

Title: Crossing
By: recessional
For: eruthos, here
Rating: 14A
Character(s)/Ship(s): Katara, Zuko, Mai, Ursa (Katara/Mai/Zuko)
Content Notes: No content advisory; I'm not 100% sure if this is what you meant by "dense", but I hope it will be enjoyable regardless.
Summary: "It's not something Katara would have ever done in the first place, if Zuko hadn't been driving her up the wall by being the worst patient in the history of ever."

It's not something Katara would have ever done in the first place, if Zuko hadn't been driving her up the wall by being the worst patient in the history of ever.

She didn't get it. It wasn't that the men of her own Tribe weren't tough, or weren't invested in showing they were tough. They were: Moon and Ocean knew they were. They had entire activities, like the Polar Tigerbear Swim (jumping in the ocean during the winter with no clothes on) and even stupider ones, just to prove it.

But they also knew that if the healer, or the grandmother of the village who acted as the next best thing, told them "stay off that leg for three days" or "drink this every day and rest at least three times a day", it was because if they didn't do that, they wouldn't get better. Or it would take a lot longer. And if they didn't get better, there'd be a serious problem with the whole "hunting and fishing for the family" thing.

Here, though, physicians seemed to fuss over their patients like they were made of glass, and as a result those patients - especially men, especially Zuko - seemed to think that anything a doctor said was just overcautious and if you were really tough you could ignore it and muscle through. Even Sokka wasn't that stupid, and it was about to drive Katara insane.

"Zuko," she said, resisting the urge to rub her temples for the headache developing there, "you're not well enough to get out of bed yet, okay? Or to do mountains of paperwork while in bed. Snaketopus venom is incredibly dangerous, you almost died, and you could have a relapse or weaken your heart if you don't rest enough. So lie down and stop arguing with me!" When he opened his mouth, she just knew what he was going to say, so she cut him off with, "Mai and your mother can run the country just fine for another week. They both know what they're doing, and things are going smoothly."

Mai was thoroughly and deliberately terrifying everyone above the rank and importance of lieutenant or middling-merchant, as it happened, while Ursa worked some kind of magic on the side to find out, if not who hired the assassin, which assassin had been hired, while making very convincing shocked faces at her daughter-in-law's temporary tyranny and reassuring everyone that she was doing everything she could, and it would all be over soon. But saying that would not help. So Katara didn't, hiding behind the idea that a small lie for the good of a patient didn't really count as lying.

She knew some healers that would argue with that, but they weren't right here, right now, trying to deal with Zuko's tendency to martyrdom.

"Katara," Zuko started, in the voice he'd learned from her brother somehow, the I Am Speaking Reason To My Crazy Female Companion voice, the one that made Katara's teeth itch, "sitting up at a desk doing minor but essential paperwork is not exactly the most strenuous thing ever, and if I stay out of sight too long, rumours are going to start."

"And if you relapse, rumours are going to be true," Katara retorted, tartly. "No."

So when she came back, less than five minutes later, with the infusion he needed to drink, and he was already half-way standing up, she lost her temper and all sight of The Line all at once, slammed the tray with the tea down on a low table, and was in the middle of bending, of arranging his limbs and body back into bed and under the covers before her mind and her sense of morality caught up with her.

Then she let go, immediately, and covered her face with one hand. "I'm sorry," she said, after she took three deep breaths. Then she took her hand away and looked up, feeling slightly sick to her stomach.

Zuko stared at her, eyes wide, and blinked. Several times. It looked like he'd been blinking at her before, too. And for reasons completely beyond her at that point, his un-scarred cheek was slightly flushed. "That's okay," he said, sounding slightly shellshocked. But at least he didn't seem - unbelievably upset? Which she probably would have been. So that was good. Probably.

"You really need to rest," she added. "But I really shouldn't've done that. And I won't, ever again," she made sure to say. "I'm just tired."

"Right," Zuko said, still oddly distant. She sighed, bent the spilled infusion back into the cup, and handed it to him as she sat down beside the bed.

"You should drink this," she said. "And then you should stop arguing with me. Because I'm not going to blood-bend you back into bed again, but I might tie you there."

The cup stops halfway to Zuko's mouth, his bad eye slitted and his good eye suddenly staring into the middle distance. "Right," he said. And didn't say anything else, but did drink all his medicine despite the fact that Katara knew it tasted awful. And he didn't argue with her again that day about getting up.



Katara sat in the garden when Mai found her a little later, coming out of the palace looking a lot like a messenger-hawk who'd just eaten a fat and particularly slow pigeonshrew, her ceremonial robes discarded and her more comfortable, familiar black-and-red settled on around her. Katara had been feeding the ducks, but had run out of bread, and now just idly toyed with some of the water from the pond.

Mai sat down beside her, and said, "It's weird how everyone comes out and feeds the turtle-ducks when they're obsessively worried about something that isn't that important." Her voice sounded off-hand, slightly dry, and Katara felt a bit nettled.

"You don't know that it isn't important," she half-snapped, and then grimaced. Snapping at Mai was always a waste of time, unless you were just trying to get her to go away and leave you alone - which Katara didn't think she was. At least, not yet.

Mai just raised both eyebrows. "Yeah," she said. "I do. If it was important, you'd be doing something about it instead of making sure the world has fat turtle-ducks."

Katara opened her mouth at that. Then she closed it without saying a word. To start with, Mai was right; secondly, that was kind of a back-handed compliment, in its own way.

It was also a sign that Mai wasn't going to go away without figuring out what Katara was brooding on, or without a fight. She sighed. "I did something today I'm not really comfortable with," she said, starting to approach the subject obliquely. Mai nodded once.

"Zuko told me. A couple of times, actually." That seemed to amuse her, for some reason Katara couldn't even begin to fathom. Instead, she stared even harder at the water she held above the pond-surface, and then let it fall back in with a plop and a spray. "It's not that big a deal, you know," Mai added.

Katara shook her head. "It is, though. I used blood-bending on him."

"So?" Mai shrugged. "I would have pushed him and then held him down."

Katara glanced at her, and shook her head again. "That's not the same."

"Yes it is," Mai said, flat contradiction. "It's exactly the same."

"You don't understand," Katara replied. "The woman I learned it from - the woman I learned it was possible from, she was a monster. She used it on people to force them to walk right into their own prison."

"I could do that with a knife to their throat," Mai pointed out, in the same tone of voice. It made Katara pause and look at her. "There's lots of ways of making people do something they don't want to, Katara. That doesn't mean the techniques themselves are wrong." She shook her arm slightly and one of her throwing knives slid out between her fingers. She handed it to Katara. "These kill people. Which is even worse."

Katara wasn't sure she agreed with that. "Blood-bending takes people's choices away from them," she said, frowning at the knife in her hands, turning over the thought at the same time as the blade.

"Killing them takes every choice possible away from them," Mai replied. "Threatening to kill them narrows it down to two choices, and one of them is dying. It's how you do it and why that matters."

Katara hugged one knee, not sure she could accept that, still turning the knife over and over in her fingers. Eventually, Mai reached over and took it back. "Besides," Mai said, sliding the knife up her sleeve into its sheath. "You're forgetting the important part."

"What?" Katara asked. She sat up and let her legs fold into half-lotus. She probably should stop sitting around out here doing nothing, anyway; who knew what Zuko might try to do next?

Mai leaned on one hand and threw a few leaves of grass into the pond, sending the turtle-ducks into a frenzy of investigation. "Zuko doesn't mind." Mai shrugged. "I told you, I would have pushed him back down." She paused, considered and rolled her eyes. "And possibly tied him there. Sometimes you need to do that with Zuko, or he starts feeling like ruling is all anyone thinks he's good for."

Katara felt slightly adrift, and frowned at Mai. "You said he mentioned it twice," she objected, "and - "

"Not because he minded," Mai retorted, and now she definitely sounded amused, which Katara couldn't follow at all.

"I'm lost," she admitted. Mai shook her head, mouth curving slightly.

"Sometimes Zuko likes it when people make him do things - certain people, anyway. And he likes knowing we can. It makes him feel safer, or something." She waved a hand, dismissing the inner workings of Zuko's mind as opaque to any sensible person, like she did sometimes, and didn't mean at all. "The only thing that's bothering him is that he can't get up and do anything."

It took Katara a minute or two to think through what Mai said to all of what Mai meant, her mind tripping over the idea once or twice before settling. Suddenly, she felt herself blush. "Oh," she said. Which made her feel slightly stupid, but was the only thing she could really think of to say. Mai sighed, and made a very slight face.

"It's just annoying because you have to pay attention to timing," she said, rolling her eyes. "First to avoid being interrupted - "

And that had come up a couple of times with just, well, the normal, and Katara covered her mouth with her hand against half a laugh.

" - And because he kind of turns into a goof for a while afterwards," Mai finished, with words that said this was annoying, and a tone that, if you knew her, meant those words were, to borrow a Sokka-ism, lying liars who lied. Mai paused, and added, "The fact that I have to tell you this means we haven't been to Ember Island in far, far too long."

"Well," said Katara, seizing on the distraction so she wouldn't either get lost in thought or start blushing or both, "I've been here two and a half-years - "

"Really?" Mai looked started.

"Really," Katara confirmed. Mai sat up.

"Well no wonder," she said, and sighed. The sun sank a bit lower, almost touching the palace-roof, and Mai stood up. "Come on," she said. "It's going to get cold out here, and Ursa and I have things we all need to talk about. We might as well do it while we eat."



Zuko was sitting up in bed, reading a book. When they slid the door open and stepped in, he glanced at Katara and said, defensively, "It's poetry. I'm dying of boredom."

Katara felt her mouth twitch. She sat down on the bed beside him, and then lay back against the pillows while Mai went to the door and sent two servants away, one to get Ursa and the other to get food. "You sound like you're twelve," she told him, resting a hand on his blanket-covered legs.

"Something to do with being swaddled and put to bed like an infant," he muttered, but he closed the book and put it aside. He worked an arm around her shoulders, and it shook less than it had this morning. Katara glanced at Mai, and thought she might have been right.

"Maybe if you weren't such a difficult patient, you'd get better faster," Katara told him, smugly, and he muttered something under his breath, but actually settled back more, and more comfortably.

Mai snorted her half-silent laugh as she hooked the low couch with a foot and dragged it over to face the bed. Her eye caught Katara's, and there was an I told you so there, but you had to get used to those with Mai.

Besides, it gave Katara something to think more about, later. And maybe to try.

She might have said something, but at that moment a servant slid the door back to let Ursa in, and the dowager princess looked her son up and down. "Well," she said, "I suppose you don't look so much like death anymore."

Zuko sighed in a profoundly put upon way, and Katara couldn't help starting to giggle.