His Sacred Flame

The council hall was warmer than the wind outside, but the cold lived in the room anyway. Elders sat in a crescent, layered in blues and white, the flicker of seal-oil lamps cutting shadows over carved whalebone. The sea hummed under the ice beyond the walls, steady as a heart. Katara kept her hands folded in her lap, fingertips pressed tight to keep them from shaking. It wasn’t fear. She told herself that twice. Maybe three times.

Zuko stood before them in red and gold, subdued but unmistakable. Fire Lord. The title still sounded wrong in her head, like a knife set down in the wrong place. He bowed, too polite, too careful, a traveler trying not to startle a skittish animal.

“Honored Council of the Southern Water Tribe,” he began, voice low and even. “Thank you for receiving me.”

Katara watched the slight dip of his chin, the way his breath fogged in the cold air. Scars and embers. She didn’t look at him longer than that.

Chief Hakoda sat straight-backed at the center, his expression neutral. “We always listen to those who come in peace,” he said.

Zuko’s jaw tightened for a heartbeat. Then he unrolled a scroll, the parchment crackling softly. “I come with a proposal. A joint project between our nations. The restoration of the southern Spirit Oasis near the old meeting ground. Our records show it was a place of learning, of exchange, long before the war. It was destroyed in the conflict.” He swallowed. “Destroyed by the Fire Nation.”

No one spoke. Someone shifted, furs whispering against the floor. Katara focused on her breath. In, out. The word destroyed hooked under her ribs.

Zuko continued, slower. “The Fire Nation will supply laborers, engineers, and masons trained to work with ice and stone. We will provide funding for materials. Your tribe would guide cultural restoration, verify authenticity, and oversee any work that involves sacred elements. My hope is that together we can restore what we broke.” He glanced up at Hakoda, then around the room. His gaze brushed Katara and slipped away like a hand that didn’t dare touch. “I understand if the answer is no.”

Elder Siku leaned forward, the beads at her throat clacking. “Why now?”

Zuko’s hands tightened around the scroll. “Because it’s overdue.”

The council murmured. Katara pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth. He sounded older. That was unfair. He was older. They all were.

“You acknowledge your nation’s responsibility,” another elder prompted.

“Yes,” Zuko said, the word clean and unadorned. “And mine.”

Katara finally looked at him, really looked. The scar didn’t define his face the way it used to in her memory. It was there, of course, an old burn that never stopped speaking. But there were new lines at his mouth, a steadiness in the set of his shoulders. He didn’t look like the boy who had chased them across oceans, driven by fury and shame. He looked like someone who had learned how heavy a crown was.

Her throat tightened anyway.

Hakoda’s gaze flicked to Katara. She straightened. “Master Katara,” he said gently, “as our lead healer and representative to the North, your counsel here matters.”

Of course it did. Her breath left her in a thin thread. She rose. The eyes in the room tilted toward her, familiar and warm, trusting. It hurt.

“The oasis was sacred,” she said, and her voice sounded steady. She could be grateful for that later. “It was where our healers drew guidance. Where our elders taught history. Where our identity was reflected back to us in still water. It wasn’t just a place. It was a promise.” She felt Zuko listening. “If we restore it, it can’t be as a gesture for trade benefits or a symbol in speeches. It has to be real. It has to be right.”

Zuko didn’t flinch. “Agreed.”

She kept her eyes on Hakoda. “Any Fire Nation involvement must be under our direction. No flames near carved ice. No new structures added without our elders’ consent. Our spiritual leaders oversee every ceremony. Our apprentices are trained by our masters, not your engineers.”

“Agreed,” Zuko said again, softer.

“And,” Katara added, because the word burned, “the first hands to touch the fountain will be ours. Not as a concession. As respect.”

A crackle of approval moved through the room. Hakoda’s mouth curved. “These terms seem fair,” he said, then turned to Zuko. “You understand the depth of what you ask?”

Zuko closed the scroll. He didn’t hide his exhale. “I don’t expect forgiveness,” he said. “Or trust I haven’t earned. I’m asking for a chance to do something that matters. For both our peoples.”

The council withdrew to confer. The hall dimmed as bodies shifted, voices low. Katara didn’t sit. She stood in the pool of lamp light, the smell of oil and snow threading together, fighting the sting behind her eyes. She felt the ghost of a cave, the taste of ash, the sound of her brother’s laugh. She felt the ocean behind the walls like a steady hand on her back.

When the elders returned, Hakoda spoke for them. “We accept your proposal,” he said. “We will restore the southern Spirit Oasis together.” He paused, measuring something in the air between them. “And we assign Master Katara as the lead representative for our tribe.”

The words landed heavy. Katara kept her face smooth. Inside, something flared—pride, caution, grief, hope—tangled and impossible to sort. She dipped her head. “I’ll serve,” she said.

Across the hall, Zuko’s relief was a flicker she didn’t want to acknowledge. He bowed, not to the council, but to her. Respectful. Careful. Like stepping onto new ice.

The meeting dissolved into logistics, parchment and ink and schedules. Voices wrapped around supply lists, travel routes, work crews. Katara answered questions, assigned apprentices, noted which tools to bring, which herbs to gather. She didn’t look at Zuko. She felt him anyway—his attention like heat on skin in winter, steady, held back.

When they were dismissed, the wind outside cut sharp as they stepped into the courtyard. Snow sifted from a pale sky, sound softening around them. Katara pulled her hood up, the fur brushing her cheeks.

Zuko fell into step beside her, leaving an even trail of footprints that didn’t quite touch hers. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for… not refusing.”

She stopped. He did too, half a pace ahead, then turned. His breath fogged between them.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she said, and she made sure it wasn’t cruel, only true.

His mouth tugged at one corner. “I know.” A beat. “Still. Thank you.”

The space between them was thin and brittle. Katara glanced past him, to the horizon where the sea met sky in a white line. “We leave at dawn,” she said. “Pack light. It’s a two-day trek.”

“I’m used to cold.” He winced at himself. “I mean—I’ll be ready.”

Something in her chest shifted, like ice settling. She nodded, then stepped away, her boots crunching softly. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to to feel his gaze on her shoulders, cautious as a hand hovering just short of a touch. The wind pushed against her face, clean and bracing. Her heart beat steady. The ocean answered.

Dawn would come. She would walk beside the Fire Lord. And she would not forget.

They reconvened around a lower table strewn with maps and brittle sketches salvaged from northern archives. Ink stones, quills, string weights. It felt almost domestic, which only made Katara’s skin feel tighter. The elders ringed the far side; Hakoda took the center with the quiet authority of someone who didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. Zuko stood opposite him, shoulders set, the crimson of his cloak a bright cut against the room’s blue.

“Master Katara,” Elder Siku said, nodding to the seat at Hakoda’s right. “Your insight is needed here.”

Katara sank into the place indicated, palms pressed to her knees until the heat under her ribs dulled. The parchment nearest her showed a careful outline of the old oasis: the fountain’s basin, channel lines, an outer ring of etched ice panels. The memory of what it should have been—what it once felt like to stand under the watch of Tui and La, even from stories—threaded through her fingertips as she traced the lines without quite touching them.

“We’ll send two teams,” Hakoda said, glancing at her for confirmation. “One to clear access paths and stabilize structures. One to begin cataloging artifacts and carvings.”

“Three,” Katara corrected, keeping her tone even. “You’ll want a group dedicated only to water purification. The channels will be contaminated from soot and sediment. If we reopen them before that’s addressed, we’ll spread the damage through the whole system.”

Zuko inclined his head in quick acknowledgment. “We can bring filtration cloth and charcoal.”

“We have our own,” Katara replied, eyes fixed on the map. “Our method works with cold temperatures so we don’t have to compromise the ice. Elder Siku’s granddaughter can lead it. She’s been training on glacial runoffs.”

A soft murmur of approval moved through the elders. Hakoda’s mouth tugged at the corner. “Then that’s settled.”

Zuko unrolled another sheet. Schematics sketched in a crisp hand—clearly Fire Nation—showed supports and temporary braces. “Our engineers suggest lattice frames to relieve pressure on the western bank while we work.”

Katara glanced at the marks and forced herself not to follow the line of his finger. “We can brace with packed snow and ice locks. Your metal will conduct heat. It’ll shift more than you expect.” She pointed to the north edge, close enough to the paper that she could feel its grain. “Here. We’ll use anchor points carved into the bedrock beneath the ice. It’ll hold without introducing a foreign structure.”

Zuko’s gaze flicked to her face and away. “We can adjust. We brought stonemasons who can cut without vibration.”

“Good,” she said. Her voice sounded level to her own ears. She kept it there. “Noise will disturb any spirits still bound to the place.” A breath. “We proceed as if they’re listening.”

“They are,” Elder Siku said, approval threaded through the words like warmth. “This will be as much a return as a rebuilding.”

Katara wrote supply lists in her small, neat script, her quill skimming. Salts. Herb poultices for strained muscles. Seal oil for lamps. A set of polished stones for guidance rituals. For each item, she pictured the motions, the weight in her hands. Work grounded her. It filled the space where resentment wanted to sit and clench.

Zuko spoke again, careful. “I’ve brought a team used to cold work. They’re disciplined. They’ll take direction from your apprentices. I’ll… take direction as well, where needed.”

Her quill didn’t pause. “You’ll follow the elders’ guidance,” she said. “We all will.”

“Yes.” A breath. “Understood.”

Hakoda watched them both, eyes narrowing very slightly, and returned to the map. “We can be ready to depart by dawn.”

“We will be,” Katara said. She handed off the list to a waiting runner without looking at Zuko. If she looked, she was afraid she’d see something she didn’t know how to place—contrition, determination, the softness she remembered last, bare and unguarded under moonlight in the North when he had apologized. She didn’t want to see any of it. Not now.

They discussed routes. Katara tapped a finger on the safer ice, the places where the wind carved drifts that could conceal crevasses. “We’ll avoid the ridge,” she said. “The snow there is wind-slabbed. One wrong step and it’ll shear.”

“Agni Kai Ridge?” Zuko asked. “Your people call it—”

“We call it the ridge where we don’t walk,” she cut in before she could stop herself. The room dipped with a held breath. She folded her hands together to still them. “The eastern route is longer, but we’ll arrive with everyone intact.”

Zuko’s jaw flexed. “We’ll take the eastern route.”

Elder Siku rose to fetch a carved box from a shelf. When she set it down, the room quieted. She slid the lid back to reveal small carved bone seals, each etched with a distinct pattern. “For the work parties. And one for the lead.” She lifted a seal inlaid with a sliver of moonstone, the mark of the healer’s path. The weight of it in Katara’s palm was familiar and heavy. A dozen times she’d accepted similar tokens for rites and journeys. This time felt different, as if the edges bit just slightly into her skin.

“Master Katara,” Elder Siku said, voice gentler. “You will speak for us there. You will set the pace. You will decide what is touched and what is left to rest.”

Katara bowed her head. “I will honor the responsibility.” She tucked the seal into the leather pouch at her belt, the movement steady even as her throat worked.

Zuko’s gaze brushed the pouch, then the elders, and he straightened. “And I will answer to you there,” he said to Katara, simple as a promise. The quiet in the room shifted, interest prickling at the edges.

She kept her gaze on the table. “We’ll see that you do.”

Hakoda cleared his throat, mercifully moving them on. He assigned hunters, ration keepers, runners. Names and roles moved like stones clicking into place. Katara added notes—who worked well together, who needed watching, who would falter in whiteout conditions. She kept her voice precise. No warmth. No invitation.

When it was done, people began to rise, the scrape of chairs against wood soft and familiar. Hakoda touched Katara’s shoulder, a brief squeeze. “Rest, daughter,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

She nodded, eyes still on the ink drying on the map’s edge. “I will.”

Zuko lingered at the far side of the table. Katara felt him wait like a change in pressure. He didn’t speak until the last elder had stepped away. “Your plan is—” He stopped, then tried again. “It’s good.”

She gathered her quills and the worn leather folio she kept them in. “It’s what the oasis needs.”

“Katara,” he said, quietly.

The name slid over her like a remembered touch. She pressed her lips together, then lifted her chin enough to meet his eyes for the briefest moment. Gold, steady. The scar pulled tight at his cheek in the cold. It was a face she had known in so many different forms she couldn’t catalog them all. The boy who chased. The man who turned back. The Fire Lord standing in her father’s hall.

“We leave at dawn,” she reminded him, the words the only safe ground in reach.

He dipped his head. “I’ll be ready.”

She nodded once, then stepped away, the fur at her collar brushing her jaw. She kept her eyes on the door and not on the weight of his stare. Outside, the wind had risen. Snow hissed along the packed ground in thin veils. She drew her cloak tighter, the seal at her belt a cool press at her hip, and let the cold bite clean. Inside, plans had been set. Roles defined. Her hands had work to do. She held to that, and not to the ache that settled under her breastbone, sharp as a shard of ice she hadn’t found the right water to melt.

Dawn bled slowly into the snowfields, a pale wash over blue shadows. Breath puffed in quiet clouds as the column formed—hunters at the front with spears, runners weaving along the edges, the sled teams shifting their weight. Katara wrapped her hands tighter in her mitts and checked the straps on their lead sled. The leather creaked, iced crystals clinging to the fur trim. Her seal pressed a cool weight at her hip.

Zuko adjusted his cloak with a careful motion that felt too deliberate to be casual. He stood on the opposite side of the sled, gloved fingers at the harness buckle. “Does this sit right?” he asked, glancing up. “I don’t want it chafing the runners.”

“It’s fine,” she said. Her voice came out even. She moved past him to give a final touch to the lashings anyway, retying a knot. The sled dog shook itself, sending a dust of frost over both of them. A small thing, domestic, lanced through the tension in her chest and was gone.

They set off with the steady scrape of runners and the hushed rhythm of feet on snow. The world narrowed to whiteness, faint blue shadows, the dark line of distant ice cliffs. Wind combed low over the ground, teasing up drifts that shimmered and settled. The air was dry enough it burned.

Zuko walked at her shoulder, half a step back. She felt the heat of him even through their layers, a steady pulse under the cold. He cleared his throat. “So,” he said, the word thin in the open air. “Your filtration cloth. Is it woven from—”

“Seal gut,” Katara said without looking over. “Stretched and dried. Treated with ash and salt. The weave matters more than the material. It’s stronger than it looks.”

He nodded. “We use fine sand and charcoal in the colonies along the coast. It’s… less elegant.” He made a small, frustrated sound, as if even this simple conversation could go wrong. “Not that—your method is better. I meant—”

“I understood,” she said. The wind took her words and thinned them into the space between them.

They walked. The runners hit a patch of rough ice and jolted. Katara put a hand out, steadying the sled; Zuko reached at the same moment, his glove brushing over the back of her hand. The contact was brief, a spark under wool, and they both pulled back like it burned.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine.”

Silence settled again, broken by the low calls of the lead hunter and the faint yip of the dogs. Katara lifted her gaze to the sky, clear and hard, a pale ribbon of cloud low on the horizon. She counted her steps, counted her breaths, let the rhythm dig into her bones. Work. Keep to the plan. Keep to the route that doesn’t break.

Zuko tried again. “I was thinking—about the brace points you mentioned. The bedrock may be shallow near the western edge. We could probe with—”

“Water sense will tell us,” she said. “We can read the density under the ice. We’ll find the right places.” She paused long enough to make it polite. “Your stonemasons can help after we mark them.”

He accepted the correction with a small nod, jaw tight. A gust shoved across the path, and he lifted a gloved hand to shield his scar without seeming to realize he’d done it. The movement tugged at something deep in her chest she didn’t want to name.

He looked out over the white. “It’s beautiful,” he said softly, almost to himself.

Katara’s throat worked. “It is.”

He smiled, small and almost relieved, and then lost it. “The snow looks different here than in the north. The way it stacks. The light is—” He faltered. “I don’t know. I sound like a fool.”

“You don’t,” she heard herself say. She kept her eyes on the path. “You sound like someone who’s paying attention.”

“Trying to,” he said. He swallowed. “It’s warmer today than yesterday.”

She glanced sideways despite herself. “By two degrees. Maybe three.”

His mouth tipped, hopeful. “You can tell that?”

“You can smell it,” she said. “And the way the snow surfaces. How it compacts under your feet.” She realized she was explaining and clamped it off. “You learn these things.”

“I’d like to,” he said quietly. “If you’re willing to teach me.” A beat. “I’ll listen.”

Her steps faltered almost imperceptibly. Memory rose with the cold: fields of ash under a red sky, steel on her wrists, a ship’s deck slick with snow and fear; then another image, later—him kneeling on the deck of a different ship, the moon gone, apology in his voice that had come too late and then somehow, impossibly, not too late at all. She kept her gaze forward. “We’ll see.”

He nodded. She wondered if he could feel the way the air tightened and loosened around them with every word.

Ahead, the lead hunter signaled, one arm sweeping low. Katara lifted a hand in answer and guided the sled to the right. A low hollow groan rose under the surface, deep as a whale’s call. She planted her feet and felt for the thread of water under ice, its sluggish push. “Crevasse,” she called. “Step wide. Follow my line.”

Zuko’s boots crunched a heartbeat behind hers, matching her careful detour. He was quiet now, focused on her steps, his presence a steady anchor at her back. The dogs whined once and then settled, trusting the path she cut. The crevasse’s mouth showed itself—a dark seam in the white, rimmed with pale blue glass. Katara’s breath left her in a long, controlled exhale she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

When they were clear, Zuko said, “Thank you.” The words were simple, stripped of anything royal.

She nodded once.

They paused at midday to drink quickly and share dried meat. Katara tipped the skin to her lips, the water shock-cold on her tongue. A strand of hair had worked loose under her hood, slipping against her cheek. She pushed it back with a clumsy gloved hand. Zuko watched and then looked away, as if he’d trespassed.

He cleared his throat again. “Your father—Hakoda—he trusted me with this,” he said, staring at the horizon. “I won’t make him regret it.”

“Good,” she said. She packed her water skin and rose. “Keep up.”

They fell into motion again, the shadows stretching, the sun slow and pale in its arc. The silence held, but it felt different now, less brittle in places. When the wind cut through, Zuko edged closer on instinct, his heat a quiet buffer. She didn’t move away.

By the time the ice cliffs lifted taller ahead, blue light seeping through their seams, Katara’s legs ached with a satisfying burn. She could see the dark smudge of the ruined oasis out on the flat—what had once been carved and careful, now scar and scorch. Her fingers tightened around the sled handle.

Zuko followed her gaze. He didn’t speak. The quiet between them hummed, full of everything they hadn’t said and might never say. She drew a breath, tasted cold and salt and a trace of smoke that lived in his clothes no matter how far south he came.

“Almost there,” she said.

“Almost,” he agreed, voice low, the word sinking into the snow and staying.

The final rise flattened beneath their boots, and the world opened into the wound she’d been bracing for. The oasis lay ahead, no longer a sanctuary but a scar cut into ice and stone. The carved columns that should have curved like the ribs of a whale lay shattered, half-buried in snowdrifts. Scorched earth spread in irregular patches where fire had licked once and then again, ugly shapes blackened under a fresh dusting of white. The central pool—a place of quiet reflection, of mirrored sky and soft current—was a cracked bowl of frost and ruin, its lip split like a mouth that had been forced open.

Katara’s heartbeat climbed into her throat. She moved forward, leaving the sled behind, her steps careful without thinking. The air felt thinner here somehow. She crouched at the edge of the pool and laid her palm to the frost. The cold slid beneath her skin, the faintest whisper of trapped water far below—a memory of flow, strangled and stilled. Her bending reached for it and met resistance, the ghost of something sacred that had been set upon and scattered.

Behind her, Zuko stopped. She didn’t need to turn to know his shoulders were rigid under his cloak, that his fists had curled before he loosened them. The silence pressed hard. The hunters’ quiet breath, the distant click of a dog’s nails on ice—everything else went thin at the edges in the face of this place.

“This used to be—” She couldn’t finish. The words were brittle, and the wrong ones would break her mouth open. She pressed her hand a fraction deeper. Beneath the ruined crust, a thread of current trembled, as if startled, as if unsure whether to meet her.

Zuko came to stand a few paces back, respectful distance and yet too near, always too laden with what he represented. “I know what it used to be,” he said, voice low. His breath melted a small cloud that drifted past, only to vanish.

“You don’t,” she said, not turning. It wasn’t fair and it was true. Memory rose without asking permission—moonlight on a different pool, the hush of the North’s sacred grove under her feet, Sokka’s laughter, Gran-Gran’s stories. And then ships. The smell of metal heating. Her mother’s hands. The crack of fire where it shouldn’t be.

He didn’t argue. The restraint scraped at her nerves, easier to push against than apology. She curled her fingers and drew the smallest line of water up through the fissure, a fragile ribbon that shivered in the cold. It caught the tired light and trembled. She eased it back down rather than risk snapping it with her anger.

The ruined carvings along the circle wall tugged at her. She stood and stepped to them, brushing snow from their surfaces with slow swipes of her mitts. Water Tribe spirals lay gouged through, their elegant curves broken by char marks. Interlaced with them—the lines she didn’t expect the first time they found this site, the marks of early Fire Nation craft—were similarly defaced. Where their patterns once met, there was a blank gouge, as if the meeting itself had been the offense.

“It was deliberate,” she murmured. “Not just battle. Erasure.”

Zuko’s jaw worked. “It was,” he said. A pause. “We have records. Not official ones. Notes, lists. Places to be cleared. Symbols considered ‘subversive.’” His voice thinned to almost nothing. “My grandfather signed most of them. My father the rest.”

The heat that rolled through her at that didn’t warm. It seared. She traced a broken spiral again, knuckles whitening against the stone. If she closed her eyes, she could see hands—hers, small and frightened, clutching at a coat hem as blue fire split the sky in another life. She could see him then, that boy with the golden eyes hunting the Avatar, the name burning in his mouth like fuel, fire and fury and ruthless need. She could see him on that cliff, lightning circling, her blood turning in her veins at the moon’s call.

She opened her eyes. The ruin stayed. So did he.

“We’ll mark the perimeter,” she said, voice steady now from somewhere deep. Professional. Safe. “We need to know what’s stable and what isn’t before we begin clearing. No open flame within the inner ring. Not until I say.” She didn’t look back at him for that. She didn’t need to.

“Understood,” he said immediately.

She bent and pulled a coil of blue cord from her pack, handing one end to the closest hunter. Her instructions came crisp, efficient. Place markers every eight paces. Use the poles to test the crust; if the sound changes, stop and call her. She set sleds to the outer path where the ice was thicker. Work would keep her from thinking too long about the hollowness under her ribs.

Only after the small hive of motion began did she let her gaze slide to Zuko. He stood with his arms at his sides, empty palms open in a useless, careful way that made something complicated twist inside her. He had turned his scar away from the wind. She found herself resenting even that small, human instinct for shelter, as if he didn’t deserve to be protected from anything this place had to say.

He caught her eyes and held them for a breath. There was apology there, yes, and grief, but also that stubborn, infuriating steadiness. “Tell me where to be,” he said softly. No title. No command. A request.

She drew a line in the snow with her boot and felt some mean satisfaction at how stark it looked. “There,” she said. “Run the probe along that edge. Say each depth out loud. I’ll chart.”

He took the long iron rod without flinching at the cold and set to work. “Three feet,” he called. “Then four. Dense. Hollow here.” His voice carried in measured beats, an offering to the emptiness. She marked each with a quick notch of charcoal on her map, her gloves staining black.

The work steadied her until it didn’t, until the map became a picture of damage she could hold in her hands. She tucked it away before her throat could close again.

Light shifted, long and blue. The wind changed by a point, subtle but clear. Katara breathed it in and out like discipline. The ache under her breastbone hardened, cooled. She rounded the cracked bowl one more time and stopped at a place where ancient runes had once been set into the lip, now clawed into illegibility.

“You can’t fix this with apologies,” she said without looking up. She wasn’t sure if she meant the stone or the last decade.

“I know,” Zuko said. His voice didn’t waver. “I’m not here to be forgiven.”

She let the words hang. She didn’t offer absolution or ease. She reached into the fissure again, coaxing a thin thread of water up, and steadied it between her hands. It shook, then held. She smoothed it back down into place where it belonged.

The wind carried the faintest smell of smoke from his cloak, a reminder woven into the fur. She didn’t move closer to it. She kept the space that felt necessary between them and set her shoulders to the work that would come. He would be a tool where she needed one. A presence to coordinate. Nothing more. Not here. Not now.

“Tomorrow we start on the outer carvings,” she said. “Today we mark. We listen. We don’t rush.”

He nodded once, and his breath drifted up in a thin cloud and was gone.