Fic: The Usual Suspects: Incidents and Accidents
Title: The Usual Suspects: Incidents and Accidents
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: The usual, I own nothing you can recognise from your tv screen.
Summary: Some things that happen after the now-brainwashed Zuko and Katara of The Usual Suspects and The Usual Suspects: The Imagined Years reunite with everybody.
Notes: So, my laptop with the stuff I should be working on, ie/ Airbender's Child: Other Perspectives and Arranging Marriages, is in the shop because I spilled Dr. Pepper all over the keyboard. So until I know what's up with that, I'm on another computer with none of my stuff on it. So instead, I'm wasting some time on doing more writing in the posting box and not checking over my work.
This was all just too weird. Sokka loved his sister, and most of the time she didn't seem different. Except for the hugging. She'd hug him at the drop of a hat, and you'd think there was a rain of headwear going on with the amount of time he spent half-strangled by his loving sister.
Sometimes though, she do or say something, and it would just be so . . . not-Katara. Like right then.
He'd been feeling out this new, not-angry Zuko, talking about sword work, when his sister had just waltzed over and plonked herself on the jerk's lap. And not like she did to Sokka when she was three, no. She practically oozed into the firebender, looking for all the world like she was going to start doing creepy things she was way too young to even know about, let alone do.
And the guy didn't even seem to notice!
"Uh . . . Katara?"
"Yeah, Sokka?" she asked, not even removing her right hand from where it had buried itself in Zuko's hair, and oh-so-casually putting the prince's hand on her thigh.
"What are you doing?"
"Uh . . . sitting?" she asked, looking confused.
"On top of the jerkbender," he said pointedly.
"Why . . . oh!" she said, looking startled. "Sorry. Habit, you know." Then she oozed out of the guy's lap and onto the floor next to him. Then she snuggled up to him, which wasn't much better.
It was an effort of sheer will not to smack a hand to his forehead. "What kind of habit would have you oozing all over him?" he demanded.
"The kind of habit when you're trying to convince the Fire Lord that you're sexually addicted to his son," she said. "Also, I like sitting on Zuko. He's warm and snuggly. I can't wait to bring him home for a while. I'll bet he'll be better for staying warm than you and your stinky feet," she said.
Sokka sputtered in denial, the whole notion too horrible to contemplate.
"I think you broke him," the jerkbender said, amused.
"Aww, Sokka," Katara cooed as she hugged him. Again. "I'm sorry. But I love Zuko and I'm going to marry him. You have to get used to it sometime."
"No! No I do not!" he vehemently denied. "When you get over him, and you will, I'll find you a nice Water Tribe guy who'll never ever touch you like . . . like that," he pointed at the pair who had somehow managed to remain upright, even with all their limbs all tangled up together, "Ever again!"
She rolled her eyes, "Like that's something to aspire to," she told him dryly. "I like how Zuko touches me."
Zuko grinned at her. "I like how I touch you too," he said, and proceeded to try to suck Katara's tongue out of her mouth.
Therefore, Sokka did the only reasonable thing he could under the circumstances. "Daaaaad! Make Zuko and Katara stop!"
It had been many years since Iroh had been at the palace and many more since he'd had a servant make his tea for him as a matter of course. But when he'd gotten Zuko alone, Katara had followed, virtually invisible in the best traditions and training of the servants of the palace.
She was so good at her job that Iroh was quite at pains to hide his startlement when she suddenly was there, pouring tea and effacing herself again. "Wait young lady," Iroh told her.
Her bow was not an iota out of place. "Your wish, General?" she asked.
"Sit," he told her. "I haven't needed or wanted a servant to make me tea for a very long time." It was a little unsettling to see the vibrant girl he had come to know over the past several months acting with the restraint and formality of a servant of the royal household.
Before he could speak, Zuko had reached over and tugged the girl onto his lap, settling her into a position that was sickeningly familiar. Every nuance was so like Ozai when he had felt like taunting Ursa with the presence of one of his concubines that Iroh felt a lurch in his stomach.
"Prince Zuko," he said chidingly, buying himself a little time to think on how to phrase things.
The girl spoke then. "Zuko," she said in exasperation. "That's how we got into that argument with Sokka."
"But I like holding you," complained his nephew.
That was when he saw the other nuances. While every move called to mind Ozai's casual dismissal of the value of other people, there was a tenderness in the way the prince held her to him, and a shift in the way the young man sat that bespoke a concern for her comfort as well. Even as his face was settled into a mien of indifference, smug amusement and a hint of cruelty, every move he made showed care and concern.
And Iroh knew what he had to say. "You are no longer with your father's court, Zuko," he said. "You no longer need to pretend that you desire to treat your young lady as your father does his concubines."
They both looked at him confused, but it was Zuko who understood first as he moved the girl off his lap and then wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into his side. Everything about him relaxed, and Iroh felt the last of his worry over his nephew's uncharacteristic appearance of easy cruelty dissipate. It was all a front, designed to get the young man through the rough seas that were the Fire Nation court. While there remained a certain veneer of ruthlessness to both young people, it had faded with the reassurance that they were safe among friends.
Aang wistfully looked at Katara, thinking that perhaps it was a good thing that he'd promised himself he'd give her up. Especially now. He shivered as he recalled the look on her face as she'd looked into the mind of the Dai Li officer. It had made him think of Azula. It was frightening.
"Av . . . Aang," she corrected herself. "I'm sorry. I know we were friends, before, but it's hard to remember sometimes."
"It's okay, Katara," Aang said. Then he looked at her and carefully broached the topic that had been bothering him. "When you looked into that Dai Li's mind, I'd never seen you look like that before," he told her. "You looked . . . " he didn't know how to say it without being insulting.
"Cruel?" she offered up with a calmness that unnerved Aang.
"Well . . . yeah."
"It's hard to explain," she said. "But it boils down to the fact that to use certain abilities, you have to be able to put aside your feelings. You have to . . . to want to use them and you have to make yourself not flinch." She shrugged then, and the way she did it seemed to so easily dismiss what she was implying that Aang couldn't stand it.
"If they're so horrible that you have to force yourself to do it, then why would you do it?" he demanded.
"Because I can both heal and fight," she said. "It means that when I'm fighting, the instinct is there to feel for the water in someone's body. The instinct to use that." She turned to him looking very serious. "I nearly killed Zuko once, just by accident when we were sparring, because I didn't know how to control that."
"You shouldn't have done it at all!"
"Not done what?" she snapped. "Learn to defend myself with my bending, or learn to heal with my bending?"
"You . . ." he trailed off, suddenly understanding why she'd learned how to bend someone's thoughts and their body. "But why did you use it on that Dai Li if it's so horrible?"
The look she gave him was one full of pity, and he hated it. He hated it because Katara had always been the one person he could rely on not to look at him like he was pathetic just because he didn't want to hurt anyone. "We didn't have time to waste on him. He wasn't going to tell us anything and no one was going to torture the answers out of him."
"Of course not!" Aang declared, horrified that such a barbaric idea would even cross his friend's mind.
"That's why I did it," she said gently. For a moment, Aang saw the girl he knew before underneath. "I didn't want him to be tortured, and I'll admit I have a bad habit of assuming that's the next step to be taken." She looked sad. "I don't like what I've had to do sometimes to survive, even if it was only made up by the Dai Li. It's still what I remember."
"I'm sorry," Aang said. He was startled as the regrets were chorused with another voice.
Zuko sat behind her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her shoulder. "It's my fault."
"No," Katara retorted, her old snappy nature visible, even through the grace her time in the Fire Nation court had given her. "If you want to blame someone in our little two-person history, blame your father for putting us both in a position where you had to make me your concubine, blame Yon Rha for kidnapping me or blame those servants who kept trying to kill me. If you want to really blame the person at fault, blame your sister and the Dai Li. Don't blame yourself."
"I love you," he told her, then briefly kissed her. Aang felt the jealousy twist in his gut again, but only a little. It was a lot less than before. How could he resent the way that they looked at each other? Determined to start over, he said, "Why don't I tell you guys what happened over the last couple months? At least you'll have an idea about what happened." Before either of them could say anything, he said, "So Katara was the one who found me and got me out of the iceberg. The first thing I asked was whether we could go penguin sledding."
Toph was, to be quite frank, getting creeped out by Katara. Before she'd been bossy and saccharine and had tried so hard to be everyone's mom that Toph had rebelled on the principle of not wanting more parents than she had.
But now, Katara reminded her of nothing so much as the servants back in Gaoling. The way she walked, the way she talked, the way she practically kowtowed to anyone who might be in authority over her, it was all upsetting. The only people she didn't act like that with were the other kids on board, but now she had a sort of air that it wasn't her responsibility. Sort of like the servants back home. They'd always had this strict set of things that they would do or not do, and anything beyond that was not their responsibility.
That said, something about the way she was watching Toph made the earthbender uneasy and after a few days of watching Katara smooch Zuko and creep around all stealth-servant-like, she'd had enough. "Okay, what is it, Sugar Queen?"
"I . . ." the other girl paused, then said, very carefully, "You were part of a rich family before, weren't you?"
"Yeah," Toph said warily. "What's your point?"
It all came out in a rush. "Zuko's still a spoiled brat in some ways, and I have to play body servant sometimes just to make him look reasonable. You haven't had one for a while, have you?"
Toph glared at her. "I don't need one, thanks. I'm not helpless."
"No, I guess not," Sweetness agreed too easily. "After all, you're not Zuko."
There was a trick here, but Toph couldn't quite see what it was. "Princey's helpless?"
With a snort, Katara plopped down next to Toph. "He is when it comes to clothes and getting his hair untangled."
"Really?" Toph asked.
The other girl made that sort of swishy sound people nodding their heads made. "Royals usually are. At least, in the Fire Nation they are. Take the tunic you're wearing," she said. "I mean, you can't even see and you've figured out that this way is the front," her hands were smoothly running over the tunic, a few quick tugs doing away with that bit that always seemed to catch Toph wrong when she was bending. "Zuko can't figure out which is the back, let alone how to tie it."
Every move was smooth, practiced, and Toph found herself relaxing in spite of herself. She let the pointless prattle wash over her.
Katara eventually left, and when Toph went to dinner that night, everyone was nicer and Aang even said she looked pretty.
She'd been manipulated by the other girl, but Toph felt better. Underneath all the servant weirdness was Katara's mothering urges. They were just coming out differently. Also, Katara had offered to massage her feet, and Toph really had kind of missed that from home.
Even better? It seemed that Zuko really didn't know how to dress himself. She'd been happily strutting up and down the deck, enjoying the fact that people really did think she was pretty (not that she'd ever tell anyone), when Zuko had run by, calling for Katara, trailed by the laughter of the Water Tribesmen that he couldn't figure out a shirt.
Hakoda had always known on some level that he'd come home to find his daughter different. The girl she was now, though? That was a whole different hunting ground.
Still, he could see glimpses of the old Katara sometimes, and the bending she could do was possibly the most impressive he'd ever seen. So he set himself to getting to know the new Katara better and tried not to give in to Sokka's demands that he separate her from her . . . betrothed.
It was hard, though. Not only was the boy Fire Nation, which was bad enough, he was Ozai's son. Which just meant there was bad blood there. Then there was the fact that the boy couldn't put on a shirt without Katara's help. Hakoda shook his head. His mother would have had his head on a pike if he'd been unable to dress himself by the time he was six.
In fact, everything he saw of the young man seemed to show someone with good intentions (which was a good thing, he thought, better good intentions than bad ones), but generally ineffectual.
Still, he tried to give the boy the benefit of the doubt and trust in Katara's judgment and the advice of her friends and the startlingly genial Dragon of the West. That was why, after a few days, he asked, "That sword on your back, can you use it?"
"My dao blades?" Zuko asked. "Yes."
Curious in spite of himself, Hakoda jerked his head towards the area on the deck they'd set aside for sparring. "Call me curious, but would you mind showing me how you handle a weapon?"
Looking a little intimidated, the boy just nodded and followed him out. Hakoda picked up the glaive that was his best weapon and ran the others off the sparring ring. Then he settled into a ready stance and nodded once. The boy took a deep breath, stepped forward and suddenly the single blade on his back was in his hands, and had become two swords.
Impressed despite himself, Hakoda said, "Begin."
Giving the boy no chance to prepare, he took the first attack, and was surprised at how easily he was repulsed. The counterattack was easy to push back, but it was obvious to any warrior of skill that Zuko was testing Hakoda as much as Hakoda was testing him. There was a pause, then they exchanged looks and suddenly the real fight began.
It was a marvellous challenge, both of them dancing back and forth, Hakoda trying to keep his distance for the best use of his polearm, Zuko closing the gap in order to use his swords. First blood, the traditional ending point of such a match, came simultaneously. They both froze, panting and grinning at each other, then Hakoda stepped back. He tossed the glaive to one of the other warriors and said, "You'll do."
So the boy couldn't figure out how to wear a shirt. Hakoda knew that his daughter had found a strong warrior with good intentions. And if he kept everyone else from suffering the depredations of Katara's need to mother everyone, including her own father, well, he'd throw his new son-in-law under that oncoming wagon with no regrets.
The End
At least until I feel like wandering into this AU 'verse again.
The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects: The Imagined Years
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