trans_9 | Gathering them in

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Gathering them in

While her room, the W.I.T.C.H. bus and the Sensoriums were all places that Katara tried out for her new puppy, Zhin still felt more at home in the Hydroponics bay. The flora had agreed with her, and the alien dog missed all of the friends she'd made. Some were still here but most were gone, either a pet of the crew or simply brought to a safer place. Zhin understood this, but likened the start of her new life with her owner as starting the moment she'd been brought to this place. Zhin was wise for one that had lived such a short life so far, but she also made Katara understand that she would not talk about the things she'd been through all at once. Katara respected this, and in turn Zhin accompanied Katara on the tasks she went through without complaint. One of those was meeting the guys right now: Sokka, Zuko, Toph and Mai. She'd asked to meet them in the Hydroponic bay, but if anyone else came, they'd have a sight.

She'd chosen particularly brighter spot in the bay, where the flora seemed to give off a bio luminescence all its own. Katara, for the occasion, was dressed in the glowing club clothing she'd bought on their offshore leave: a little expensive and certainly bright, but enough so that she could be seen, and the plantsuit was still underneath anyway. She had prepared several different foods for the guys too: some meat and fish for Sokka, fairly spicy food for Zuko and Mai, and a dish of vegetables and poultry for Toph. She laid all of this out on a tablecloth on the ground which Zhin helped her set up.

Now she would wait, and play host.

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Having never heard of the concept of fashionable lateness, Zuko is the first to arrive. He's looking a little more burnt than usual, but frankly, everyone can see he's healed from worse.

"You got one of the . . . what are they called?" he asks, looking at Zhin.

She didn't mind if the others were late, so long as they came.

Katara laughed. "Well, they call them alien puppies, but I don't know how accurate that actually is. In any case, I found this girl sitting about by herself, so I picked her. I didn't realize that some of these "pets" have pretty interesting powers of their own. Here, touch her paw."

If Zuko were to touch Zhin's paw, he'd feel her actual emotions, which is right now pretty pleased to meet a friend of her masters.

"Can she . . . does this go both ways?" asks Zuko, slightly unnerved by the prospect of something that can feel his emotions. Sometimes HE doesn't know what the hell he's feeling, so a dog that can . . . something's a little odd about that.

Regardless, he holds his hand out for the dog to sniff before petting it around the ears. All things considered, Zuko likes animals. They can be trained for loyalty and reliability, and are altogether much less complicated than people. Besides this, his mother had the biggest hand in teaching him how to interact with living things that weren't human, so there are good memories there.

"You made a feast," he says, looking at all the food. It's hardly an understatement.

"If you want to," Katara said. "But she can't read your thoughts so much as she can sense the emotion behind them. It's more like impressions, not clear, vivid pictures, but you can understand things just the same."

She nodded. "I'd been planning this since the trip, but after that Ohm attack, I wanted it to happen as soon as I can. There were so many things happening at one time, and I was really scared I was going to see one of you really hurt in the medical bay. I've already lost my mom and my home world Zuko...I can't lose any of you guys too. No matter what kind of peace of mind or training I've had, it would kill me."

She sighed. "And I feel like maybe I haven't made things easy with all my training, its a little hard to get a hold of me. But any of my teachers would have reminded me that the people I care about most, they come first. I'm hoping its not too late...I want to get to know you and Mai and everyone again."

"That was thoughtful of you."

Some of the food even looks close to spiced enough. He's gotta give her some credit.

"We've all got things to do," he agrees. "But I don't want to lose all contact with the only other people on this ship who knew what our world was like. Even if some of the memories aren't so great."

Zuko? Having trouble letting go? What would give anyone that impression?

"So what are you learning now?"

"I just miss all of you," Katara admitted. "I have friends on the ship, but they aren't the people that helped put me where I am today. I feel like we can't keep missing each other anymore, otherwise we might become strangers to each other. I really don't want that."

She nodded. No, even the memories she didn't like were ones worth keeping. She remembered how Zuko used to be: angry, violent, prone to going after Aang and intent on capturing. Seeing him now, she could see the man he was after the day of the Black Sun: reflective, repentant, wanting to help aid the Avatar. She just wished he had the memories of all they had been through together. That was the same person that would be the new Firelord, and one that Katara would help to the bitter end.

"Sword fighting and hand to hand combat," Katara said, petting Zhin. "In the last fight, the planet was made of water and there was a full moon, but it won't always be that way. I'm trying to learn to use my body to its full advantage if I'm ever in a situation where my bending is nullified. You could say that Ty Lee made me realize that."

"We could spar sometime. With or without bending."

He frowns. "I . . . have to get new swords first. My dao were sort of . . . blown up."

"Sometime, yeah," Katara said. "I've only just started, and I promised Sokka I'd train with him."

She raised her eyebrows. "Blown up? How?"

"The . . . spider-ohm, the ones that spit acid. The acid's flammable." He grins a malicious little grin. "So are the pouches where they store it before spitting."

The grin fades, because, uh, she's probably going to be mad at him for the next part. "I was pinned by one, so I set both my swords on fire and stabbed it, and it . . ." he shrugs. "Exploded."

He rubs the back of his neck. "Brainy and his forcefield saved me from getting even more damaged. I'm not going to do that again."

Katara's face changed here: she had remembered all too well the acid spit from the Ohm, and how it had disintegrated the limbs of some more civilian trying to escape. "I saw an Ohm do that to someone before," she said, her voice sounding grim. "It was horrible. I hope I never have to see something like that again."

Here, she winced. "That's the thing I hate the most about this fight: it was easier in our world not to kill. With the Ohm...its like there's no choice. They set fire to one place and were going to...hey wait, you exploded an Ohm? Are you crazy? You could have been killed! What were you thinking?"

And she took his hand, a desperate, scared look on her face. "Zuko, please be more careful next time! If anything happened to you..."

"I was thinking 'Hey, I want this Ohm to get off me,' actually."

He shrugs her hand off, not really wanting to think about the "what if's." "I've been in the Sensoriums ever since, fighting simulations of them so that that wouldn't happen again. They're weak against firebending, so I'm going to fight them a lot more. Every chance I get. I won't make the same mistakes next time."

Give those Ohm bastards a taste of home.

His expression hardens. "It doesn't matter to me. I'll kill as many of them as I can. They destroyed everything I've ever known, took my kingdom, my people from me. They don't deserve my pity."

Katara bit her lip anxiously, and Zhin whined, putting her head near Katara's hand to pet her. It seemed she knew when her owner was distressed.

What on earth could she tell Zuko? It was wrong to want to kill the Ohm even though they destroyed their home, and she bloodbended them during the Ohm fight? Zuko had been the one to help her seek revenge against her mothers killer: he'd done it with no compliant, with no reservations. She'd understood that Zuko's retribution was mingled with the firenation instinct to take revenge, something she had tried to avoid and failed. She wanted badly to believe that when she fought the Ohm, she was doing so to protect the people on the planet. It hadn't been rage, but necessity: they would have continued killing innocent people.

But it was Zuko she was concerned about now. In his eyes and in his voice, she could still see some of the firenation prince that chased the Avatar, and that was what scared her.

"It should matter Zuko," Katara finally said. "I know that its easy to hate the Ohm for what they've done, and I'm not saying we shouldn't fight them: we have to. We don't have a choice. But in this fight to stop them, its just as easy to lose yourself in the carnage, to become angry and start fighting for the wrong reasons. My fear is that they'll take your vengeance and twist it, trying to make you something not too different from how you were when you ran after Aang. Think about it. What would your uncle say, if he heard you talking like this?"

"Maybe he can tell me himself one day, if the Ohm haven't killed him."

He snorts. "It's not like they're beaming messages into my head, Katara." Unless . . . they are. With the strange things even the people on this ship can do with technology, it wouldn't surprise him, but this isn't the time to get paranoid. "And I'm not going to lose myself. I'm just not going to forget why I fight."

Katara lowered her head. She hadn't thought of that, and would really have preferred not to, when it came down to it. Iroh had seemed too larger than life to have been killed by the Ohm somehow, and she wanted to believe that he would just have to be repodded.

"We can't know that for sure," Katara said, "And even so, think of what we would say. He was always big on you finding your own path using the strength within. I...well, I can't say much about it since it never happened to you, but you find a way outside of anger and hate."

Not that she had the details, since the person who dis was the one that actually went with Zuko: someone Katara hoped was also podded.

Zuko doesn't want to think about it either, especially now that he's said it.

"What other path do we have? You said it yourself, the Ohm don't give us a choice. It's kill them, or watch them kill more innocent people. What do you want from me here?"

"Plenty," Katara replied. "It's easy to get angry about the Ohm and want to jump into fighting them. Trust me, you're not the only one that's been training to fight them. A little while ago, I ran through a simulation of an attacking Ohm that the Seer prepared. I failed the first time, and won the second when I was shown how I had to take them on. The thing was, it was violent and aggressive, something that I try to avoid if I'm in battle. I'm not saying its easy, to put away angry feelings when you fight the Ohm. But I do know that we're here for a reason, and learned the things we learned for a reason too. Anytime we fight, our conscience has to be clear of the things that could change who we are."

She closed her eyes. "I want you to not have the Ohm change you to who you were before, Zuko. I could tell you what you became, but I know it wouldn't make sense since you don't remember it. I CAN say that you become a better man, a leader people can be proud to follow. I don't want you to lose that."

He's silent, considering her words for a while.

"I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to like them. And I AM going to kill them, as much for what they've done as to keep them from doing the same to other people."

He pauses, thoughtful.

"Are you worried I'll make this about hating the Ohm, more than protecting other people? Because I can't stop myself from hating them, but I don't want to fall into that trap, where hate is more important than life."

That's not him. It took a while to learn it, but he has.

Katara took some time to formulate her own answer. She understood exactly what Zuko was saying, and she knew all too well why she was worried too: part of it was what he'd just said, about possible losing oneself in the killing. What concerned her, what was the thing she didn't like thinking about, was what would happen to them afterward.

"I've heard a lot of different opinions from people on the ship," she said. "Many of them are reacting pretty badly to what the Ohm's done and what they did to the planet we were just on. I'm not saying we shouldn't want to stop them from doing this to anyone else. It's just when it becomes about revenge...it can change people. I just don't want the Ohm changing the good things about the people on this ship. It can be pretty easy to have fear, and have it turn to anger."

She was thinking all too much about the Yeerk incident here.

Zuko scratches the back of his head, looking confused and sheepish.

"I really do wish Uncle was here," he says, after a while. "I could really use his advice." He chuckles, in the way that one laughs when something really isn't amusing. "It's funny, isn't it? The only time he's not around is the time when I'm actually willing to listen to him."

That was something that he and Katara would definitely agreed on. She had remembered Zuko's uncle Iroh at first as just a concerned family member looking after the Prince. From their encounter at the Northern Water Tribe to Ba Sing Se, she realized that he was much more than that. He had guided Zuko onto the path he was now, the path he would eventually assume at the end of the war. She'd SEEN what he was able to do too.

"The fact that you're the way you are is proof he's not really gone," Katara said. "You don't know it yet, but your uncle became a big part in saving our world. That we don't lose hope, that we keep trying to help others: its the proof of exactly how well you learned from him, and what we learned too."

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Gathering them in

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