The Warrior's Gambit (Zutara)

XXVI

"Then marry him."

"I don't know if I want to stay here forever. I don't mind the Fire Nation, but it's not home. My home is the South. Plus, well, he hasn't danced with me...so..."

Sokka looked back, sighing hard. "I hate to see you hurt. And I get it. But, have you ever thought that home isn't a place, but a person?" When Katara didn't respond, Sokka touched her shoulder. "You know you can still talk to me about anything. I can't promise I won't punch Zuko, but I'm always here for you."

"You know the same goes here, right?"

Sokka pulled her in for a short hug. "Yeah, 'course," he said, but she got the feeling he was holding back.

He paused, sniffling.

"Are you...crying?"

"No. I smell something meaty and juicy, ooohhhh boy," Sokka said. She pulled back and could see Sokka's eyes shimmering under his mask.

"Go, you glutton," she teased and watched him lop off into the crowd.

7:30 PM

There was a table that people were altogether avoiding, Katara realized. People seemed to move around it, like oil and water. A lone participant sat there, seemingly amused by the revulsion that people felt, and Katara got the sense that she very much puppeted the control of this area without lifting a finger.

It was only on Katara's second pass by the table that she focused on the woman's dress enough to make a small gasp.

She'd recognized it as a Water Tribe from the moment she saw it, but she'd thought it was a Northern Water Tribe, and that perhaps this woman was a healer of some sort. She was very elderly, but did not seem frail. Even though her hands were gnarled, she looked like she could out-dance anyone here.

It was only on the second time she passed that she saw the curled design upon the bottom.

Undeniably Southern Water Tribe.

Katara stood there dumbly, trying to figure out which elder this was and how much of an idiot and incredibly rude tribe woman she'd been to not realize, nor to properly pay respects yet. She knew that the trip had taken a lot out of her Gran-Gran, so she was searching frantically through her mind to figure out who, besides her grandmother, could hold a space so easily and would have been well enough to make the trip?

But, the longer she stared at the embroidery from across the room (she did not want to be caught gawking, that would be far worse), she realized why it looked so off to her. It was the sort of embroidery her grandmother did, not the modern style or adjusted patterns she had been taught. Gran-Gran always laughed and said that old habits die hard; she'd been taught this way as a young adult girl and it was hard to shake her childhood method.

In an instant, Katara was sure she knew who this was.

Katara walked confidently to the table, ignoring the harsh whispers as people watched her do it. No one got more than a yard closer to the table, retaining a distance like she was some caged animal. Something feral and dangerous. She picked up on that sort of tension that rippled through the crowd.

"You knew my grandmother," Katara said in a rush at once, "You were her best friend."

Her grandmother rarely spoke of her time near Katara's age. The fact that she'd come from the North had been as much a shock as anything; plus, waterbenders had been slain all too quickly. She knew from her father that there had been one waterbender who had been taken for Iroh's choice, but no one had ever heard from her again. At least, no one in the South, that is.