Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

Push and Pull	By : AngelaBlythe Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Het - Male/Female > Katara/Zuko Views: 19400 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
A/N: Gosh! Does anyone know what happened to our precious FF.net?! I’d kinda like to know… Anyways, I actually updated about a week ago, but you guys didn’t get notified until yesterday-ish. I hope you guys like this, and thanks for the review. (PS – If you guys get the chance, I think you should watch DUNE, because Sting is SO fucking hot in that movie…just my advice…yah…)
PUSH AND PULL
CHAPTER 05: Captain Fong
Part I
Katara put her face in her hands as Zuko slumped to the ground at her feet. The ice club in her hand returned to her water skin and she snapped the cork closed with a sad sigh. She had hoped that Zuko would not notice she’d left until morning. That way she would at least have a few hours on him. But luck was not on her side… She could barely stand to look at him, she felt so sick over the incident. Had she meant to almost kiss him? Had that been her intention? No, but it had been her desire. How easy it would have been to kiss him, stay with him, rejoin Aang and Sokka when they met…how easy it would have been to forget about the promise…
Katara felt tears build in her eyes as she pushed him against the tree, feeling the lump that formed in the back of his head. He was going to hate her so much when he woke up. But that was better than him following her…tempting her. She couldn’t feel like that towards Zuko – whatever THAT was. It just wasn’t right, and something inside of her snapped when he’d tried to kiss her the other night. He was a PRINCE of the FIRE NATION. They were the enemy.
With a sigh, Katara hoisted her pack onto her shoulders. How long had it been since Zuko had stopped being the enemy? Was it when he stood with Aang, Sokka, Toph, and Katara against his sister? Was it before then even? Katara couldn’t lie to herself. It had been a long time since she’d thought of Zuko as evil, or as the enemy. He made her nervous. He made her unsure and crazy. …But she wasn’t sure if it was because she thought of him as an enemy. In fact, she was beginning to suspect it was because…and as much as the feeling scared her…it was almost as if…she was beginning to like him.
As she gave Zuko a final, backward glance into the night, it was hard to brush these thoughts to the back of her mind – these traitorous thoughts. He really hadn’t deserved what she had done to him. She had…she had done exactly what she accused him of doing. You’re just playing. It’s a cruel game… And I’m no good… Her nails bit into her palms. But she wasn’t playing a game. Life and death wasn’t a game. And it came down to the lives of thousands of people and the hurt pride of a Fire Prince. If she had to choose, she would choose the thousands of lives.
Katara traveled close to a stream – in case she was attacked she wanted more than just her water skin. But the stream was soon becoming a huge river. And the river was becoming a raging river. She thought it was a river from the mountains that fed into one of the lakes around Ba Sing Se. In that case, she would have to follow it up into the mountains. On the other side of the mountains would be the sea, and there she could find a port town with ships to take her to the North Pole. She knew that Water Tribe ships often bought supplies and weapons from the Earth Kingdom, and a port town would be a great place to do the trading.
Wanting to put as much distance as possible between her and Zuko (and Jeong Jeong and his Deserters), Katara walked into the morning, through the day, and to the next night. She had been careful to avoid any mud near the river, so no one could track her. She had tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, despite the fact that no one seemed to be around. She expected refugees to be traveling up to Ba Sing Se, but she saw no one. She couldn’t decide if this was encouraging or not.
Finally, when she decided it was time to rest, she was so tired she could barely hear the rushing river next to her. She had been foraging as she went, eating her fill of berries and nuts and mushrooms. She hadn’t wanted to take any supplies from Jeong Jeong and his Deserters, as they would no doubt need them more than she. The light of morning woke her and she started once again, feeling more tired than she had in her life. Following the river was turning out to be a fantastic idea – it was a straight path up into the mountains. But it was a steep path, and that wasn’t really something she enjoyed.
A few days later, as she crested the top of the mountain, she found she could see for miles and miles. The forest died to the west and was replaced by desert and eventually Ba Sing Se – though she couldn’t see the walls from where she was. To the South, East, and North was more forest. She couldn’t see the ocean, but she knew it was to the east. She just had to keep walking. She camped on the top of that mountain during the night, not lighting a fire for fear of someone noticing. She could see, in the distance, a clumping of fires – though they were far away. She assumed they were soldiers – though what side and why they were about was a mystery to her.
Morning broke on her the fourth day of her travels, and her nose was filled with the slight smell of burning. Looking off into the distance, she saw that there was a forest fire going where the group of fires had been last night. Had there been an attack? Katara packed her things together quickly and made for the eastern side of the mountain. There was no river on this side; in fact, she lost the river before she made it to the top of the mountain, as it was bending in a direction she didn’t want to follow.
The downhill journey was much more pleasant than the uphill, but Katara couldn’t help wishing she could have the river back. It made her feel a whole hell of a lot more secure to have it there. In fact, if she’d known what was going to happen next, she surely would have opted for endless uphill journeys with rivers than downhill without.
Part II
They caught her completely off guard. Several days alone in the forest had made her a little careless, not as attentive as she should have been. It was almost pathetic, because she didn’t even notice she was surrounded until her attackers fell on her. She shrieked as stone clamped around her hands, pinning them to her back. The force brought her to her knees. She struggled valiantly, managing only to fall on her shoulder and roll onto her back.
The solemn-faced, dark-uniformed earthbender was leaning over her. He gave her a blank look laced with confusion. She couldn’t say she recognized him, but his uniform was familiar. With a growl, Katara furrowed her brow. “Dai Li,” she spat, glaring.
The man raised an eyebrow. “You’re from the Water Tribe, are you not?”
Katara looked away from him.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said after a moment. For his part, he DID sound sincere.
What reason did he have to hurt her? He obviously didn’t know who she was. And even if he did know, why would he care? It wasn’t like she was spreading descent around Ba Sing Se. In fact, they were a long way away from Ba Sing Se…what WAS he doing out here? She wondered briefly if the fire she’d seen hours before had something to do with these Dai Li agents.
“She’s not what we’re looking for, Sir,” another agent said. “What do you want us to do with her?”
The man that had asked her if she was Water Tribe shook his head. “No, I’d like to know why she’s out here. And who she is.” He turned to her and frowned. “Sling her over the back of one of your ostrich horses. We’ll take her back to Ba Sing Se for interrogation.”
Katara jerked her head sharply at that. How many times would she be detained?! For all that was good, why couldn’t he have just said, ‘let her go’?
“No!” she shouted. She began to struggle when the second agent tossed her over his shoulder. “Damn you! Put me down! I don’t want to go back to Ba Sing freakin’ Se! Putmedown!Putmedown!Putmedown!”
A stone hand clamped over her mouth and she was flung over the back of an ostrich horse. After struggling for a moment, she fell down off the back of the animal, rolling to her knees. She managed to twist enough to flick the cork on her water skin, releasing her own hands with a stream of harsh water. Before she could run, however, the earth grumbled beneath her and captured her at the ankles. She pealed the rock away from her mouth, then used the water to whip and snapped at the ground around her feet. The stone shackles broke and she dashed away.
“Stop her!” a Dai Li agent barked. As skilled a waterbender as Katara was, with only a water skin and faced with highly trained earthbenders, she really didn’t fare well.
She was tripped up by the earth and tackled manually. She cried out as her hands were pinned down again, someone’s knee on the sensitive skin of her back. Whoever’s knee was in her back was heavy, and knocked the air out of her.
“Now stop that!” It was that man who’d questioned her earlier. He turned her over, standing above her. She glared viciously. “We said we didn’t want to hurt you. Do you really want to be treated like a prisoner?”
“I want you to let me go about my own business,” Katara countered. “I left Ba Sing Se; I don’t want to go back!”
The man looked at her harshly, as if he might be able to read her mind. Katara lifted herself into a sitting position, her hands still tied behind her back. “I’m not a threat,” she argued. “I just want to go home.”
The man above her frowned. “So you are from the Water Tribe,” he stated more than questioned.
She’d already used waterbending, so it really wasn’t any use hiding it. She nodded her head.
He gave her a speculative look. “If you answer my questions, I might let you go.”
Katara looked away. It was clear that she wouldn’t be able to escape again. There were too many, and they had every advantage over her. If she told him who she was he might recognize her and take her back to Ba Sing Se. But if she didn’t tell him anything he WOULD take her back to Ba Sing Se. With a frown she adjusted her hands. “First get this…rock off my hands.”
He raised an eyebrow. The rock formed around his hands and Katara massaged them gently against her chest.
“You look a little young to be traveling by yourself,” he said solemnly. “Are you a refugee?”
Katara shrugged. “Kind of. I travel around a lot.”
He gave her a hard look. “I’m within my every right to take you back to Ba Sing Se and give you to someone who will make you talk. You’d do well to remember that.”
With a shiver, Katara nodded her head. “I’m not really a refugee. I’m from the South Pole. I was traveling with friends, but we split up at Ba Sing Se, and now I’m going to the Northern Water Tribe.”
He frowned again. “Why do you have a Fire Nation pack? Before you lie, I recognize the design.”
With slumped shoulders, Katara said in a low voice. “I was captured by a group of firebenders about a week and a half ago. I stole this when I escaped.”
He raised a brow. “How’d you do that? From what I hear, the Fire Nation is…ruthless with prisoners.”
“I guess ‘escaped’ isn’t a great word,” Katara confessed. “I knew a few of them…from my travels. I convinced one to let me go…with an ice club…”
Katara could have sworn a smile pricked at the edges of the Dai Li agent’s lips. “So now you’re going home?” he asked.
She nodded, finally raising herself from the ground and brushing some of the dirt off her clothes. “Yes. I just want to go home.”
Smiling inwardly – she thought the man believed her – she tried her best to stay calm. But his dirty glare caused her to jump. “So why aren’t you going south?” He shook his head. “Too many things don’t add up, Water Tribe. I’m taking you back to Ba Sing Se. Maybe we’ll get a story out of you then.”
As much as Katara screamed and kicked and fought, they managed to get her bound and thrown on the back of an ostrich horse. She didn’t even have the energy for tears. She was just plain angry.
When night fell they camped around a single fire. There were only eight, and Katara was pretty sure that they were two different groups. Four of them were Dai Li, but four of them didn’t wear those uniforms. They seemed to be benders as well. For the life of her, Katara couldn’t fathom why they were out there. Weren’t Dai Li cultural police? Why would they even want to leave Ba Sing Se? Surely nothing outside the city’s massive walls concerned them…
One of the Dai Li – the one that tackled her – had tied her hands in front of her with rope. Katara wasn’t stupid enough to try any waterbending…but she could still plan. At least she wasn’t going to try anything drastic until she was closer to a river or lake or something. She was rather rankled that they’d bound her at all. Zuko would never tie her up… Katara sighed. Well, now he might. Why did he even care? Why wouldn’t he want her to leave? He’d said it a thousand times. She slowed him down.
She looked sharply at her captor – the one she thought was the leader. He had been the one to tackle/interrogate her. “What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.
He looked at her suspiciously, as if he didn’t know what she would do with it if she did have his name. Part of her didn’t blame him. The peoples of the Water Tribe were growing more and more rare to see. They had reputations as being witches. It was true that waterbenders had the propensity to lean towards mysticism, but being a witch was ridiculous.
“Fong,” he replied. “Captain Fong.” Then he looked at her with slight apprehension. “What’s yours?”
“Kanna,” she lied easily. “Well, Captain Fong, are you going to feed me or should I go forage. Either way you’ll have to untie my hands.”
Captain Fong frowned. “We ran out of supplies a few days ago.”
Katara patiently held her hands out in front of her, standing up. He snorted. “I don’t think so, Water Tribe. And I’ll escort you.”
Pursing her lips, Katara stalked off into the evening half-light, followed by a noisy Captain Fong. His Dai Li regalia clinked loudly, and his harsh footsteps told Katara he and his men probably didn’t rough it outside the city too often. After a while she found a healthy-looking peach-berry bush and knelt beside it to gather the thumb-sized berries in her skirt.
“What’s the Dai Li doing so far outside Ba Sing Se, Captain Fong?” she asked. Not looking at him.
When he didn’t answer, Katara shrugged. “It’s not like anything out here really concerns you… Certainly not the war…all the dying people… It’s not like you’re actually warriors…”
“Do you want to be gagged, Water Tribe?” he barked harshly.
Katara smiled to herself. “I want you to let me go. I don’t pose any threat to you or Ba Sing Se…or Ba Sing Se’s precious, fragile culture…”
Captain Fong snorted. “I think I’ll be the judge of that,” he said skeptically.
Katara, however, ignored him. “Oh! Leechey nuts!” she exclaimed, rising and going over to the roots of a nearby tree.
He led her back to the camp, where a fire had been started. It was then that she noticed several of the men were actually injured. With their armor off they were all considerably less intimidating. Katara scowled when she saw the burn marks. So they HAD been fighting with firebenders. Why was that?
She sighed heavily when she sat down, her food temporarily forgotten. “Captain Fong,” she said softly. He looked at her with suspicious eyes. “I can heal them,” she told him with a serious expression.
“We have our own medics,” he said harshly.
With a glance at the burns – she KNEW how painful they were – she shook her head. “No, I can heal them right now. They won’t even have scars.”
“What are you talking about, Water Tribe?” he said suspiciously.
She glared at him. “It’s obvious you’ve been fighting firebenders. Did you finally find out how much fire hurts, Captain Fong? How many men did you lose? I can heal their burns! You just have to trust me.”
For a long time he just looked at her, his eyes hard as agates. She was sure he was angry, but he walked over to her and began untying the ropes around her hands and wrists. Without so much as a thank you, Katara went over to the two soldiers. They eyed her with distrust as she inspected their wounds.
“Captain,” one of them asked, a look of semi-fear in his eyes.
Captain Fong, who had moved around to watch her (and probably to make sure she didn’t try to escape), nodded his head once. “I need my water skin,” she said shortly.
“No funny business,” Captain Fong said hardly as he tossed the blue water skin into her outstretched hand.
Catching it effortlessly, Katara unstopped the cork and bent the water out with a flourish, letting it rest in her hand. She saw the fear in the earthbender’s eyes when her hands began to glow. Flexing them slightly, she lowered her hands down to the burns on his chest and let the healing power flow out of her fingers. The shimmering on his chest subsided and the excess water dripped to the ground.
When she looked down at the earthbender soldier she saw his eyes were closed tight. She smiled tightly. “Well?” she asked. “How does if feel?”
A look of amazement painted Captain Fong’s face when she looked up at him. Then, turning back to her patient, she poked him in the chest where the burn had been. “Does that hurt?” she asked kindly.
The soldier flinched as she poked the newly healed flesh. “Yes.”
Katara nodded. “Good. It means it’s healed. You’ll be sore for a few days, but then you’ll be right as rain.”
Then she looked back up at Captain Fong’s disbelieving face. “Well,” she asked. “Who’s next?”
She healed the burns of the other soldier, then several painful looking gashes on a few other earthbenders before finally settling down to eat her peach-berries and leechey nuts. She was sitting contently before the fire when Captain Fong (who had since taken off his armor) sat down beside her. He was rock-like with a square jaw and harsh features. Like many earthbenders – who required enormous physical strength to bend their element – he was a large man, with skin just a few shades lighter than Katara’s.
He sat quietly for a moment, before looking at her doubtfully. “Where did you learn that?” he asked.
Katara shrugged. “Where did you learn earthbending?” she asked. “It’s just another facet of waterbending. Just like some earthbenders can manipulate crystals, some waterbenders can heal.”
He nodded.
Pursing her lips, Katara looked over at the captain. He looked to be in his early- to mid-twenties, though he held himself with a much more serious demeanor. “You’d never fought firebenders before, had you?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve lived in Ba Sing Se my whole life.”
“Why are you all out here?” she asked.
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t tell her. Then he ducked his head. “We were going off after a band of deserters – Dai Li agents that had gone renegade and were spreading descent. They got out of the city somehow. We lost them in the mountains and ran into a regiment of firebenders. Twenty were killed, and I was given an impromptu field promotion before Captain Lee fell. We’re trying to get back to Ba Sing Se…but those firebenders are still out there…as are the renegade agents.”
So that fire she’d seen a few nights before, that WAS the earthbenders fighting some firebenders. She looked into the fire apprehensively. It was possible that it was Azula’s people – or Azula herself. Either way, the mountains were far more treacherous than she’d originally thought. She suddenly wished that she had Zuko and his uncle… Shaking herself, she glanced over at Captain Fong. He was staring intently at the fire as well.
He shook his head in a disbelieving manner. “I just don’t understand…we were all told the war was minor…it barely involved us… But the Fire Nation is everywhere. We avoided two regiments before we ran into that one.”
Katara looked down. “Maybe…” she began, and then paused. “Maybe you should come with me to the North Pole,” she said softly. “If you saw what was happening, maybe took a Northern Water Tribe representative back to Ba Sing Se with you…maybe you could start convincing people about the seriousness of this war.”
Captain Fong’s eyes remained pinned to the fire. He seemed to be mulling it over. “I’m a soldier. I can’t just go running off. I’ll be called a deserter, too.”
With a sigh, Katara said, “Well, then let me go. I have to get to the North Pole.”
Captain Fong shook his head. “I can’t.”
Katara huffed. “Why not?”
He gave her a hard look. “Even if you weren’t a prisoner, I wouldn’t let you go walking around these woods with the Fire Nation creeping around every tree. It’s dangerous.”
Katara closed her eyes, willing he anger down. “I’m not afraid. Why does everyone insist on thinking I need to be protected all the time? I can take care of myself.”
Captain Fong snorted. “Kanna.” Katara jumped at the name, but he didn’t seem to notice. “My men and I took you down with relative ease. You wouldn’t stand a chance against a regiment of firebenders. Waterbender or not, you’re only one woman.”
Katara’s eyes went wide and she turned a little pink. He thought she was a woman? Then she smacked herself. What did that matter? She should be rather enraged. But…considering her track record…Azula…Zuko…and then Captain Fong…
Maybe he was right. Maybe she wouldn’t stand a chance against a regiment of firebenders, and maybe she shouldn’t be allowed to traipse about the woods (as Zuko said). But she still had a promise to keep!
“We can sort all this out in Ba Sing Se,” Captain Fong continued, oblivious to her conflicting emotions. “Then, maybe I can convince the Grand Secretary to let me dig up a regiment of soldiers and I can escort you to the North Pole myself.”
Katara sighed and looked away. “Captain Fong…I’ve already spoken to Grand Secretary Long Feng…several times. He doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say.”
“You’ve spoken with Long Feng?!” Captain Fong asked incredulously.
She turned to him, hands rest on her knees as she looked plaintively into his eyes. “Please, Captain Fong. I carry a very important message to Chief Arnook – something that could change the tide of the war. Long Feng has already made it clear that he doesn’t wish to listen… You have to let me go.”
Captain Fong frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Uncle…”
“Long Feng is your uncle?” she asked blandly. She looked away. “Why am I even trying?!” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“My mother’s brother,” he replied defensively. “He’s a great man!”
Katara just shook her head. “Fine. I’m tired. I can see you won’t change your mind. I’m going to sleep. Just forget I said anything.”
There was silence in which Katara knew Captain Fong was staring at her as she bundled herself in her sleeping skins. “Thank you for healing my soldiers, Kanna,” he said softly.
Katara just drew the sleeping skins around her shoulders.
- 4
- 5
- 6
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Push and Pull