Katara bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. She was in a dangerously good mood and she knew it; for once she had girls her age to talk to, not just her obnoxious brother. They'd spent the morning having a laid out feast of a breakfast by remote village standards, then casually gathering supplies and laughing about Sokka's earlier 'girls can't fight' commentary. It felt… nice.
"She's definitely really stressed—I don't know what that prince guy did, but nobody could be happy or act normal while they're that angry," Katara murmured, adjusting the strap on one of the baskets Suki was buying for their provisions. "I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she's not usually this insufferable."
Suki let out a sigh with a quiet laugh. "You must be really desperate to want to make friends with someone like her," she said, and when Katara looked a bit taken aback she rattled, "uh, not saying you're bad at it, just isolated?"
"So isolated," Sokka breathed. "And I am super bad at girl talk."
"Hopefully not as bad as you are at fighting," Suki teased him, but he just shrugged. "You are improving quickly, though."
"Nah, my girl talk is still garbage," he said with a dismissive wave, not really looking.
"That's not what I—" Suki started, but saw the knowing look on Katara's face. "Very funny," she flatly stated. "Katara, would you mind if I steal him away again? It's feeling like a good time to throw him to the ground a bit."
"Oh? I don't mind." Katara said. She did. But it wasn't Sokka she would miss.
Inside, Raven had crossed her arms and was still glaring at the bench. "Do you people even know what a cushion is?" she demanded of the elder, who took it in patient stride.
"We have a few small ones for sitting at the shrine," the woman said. "For Avatar Kyoshi. They are not for sleeping," she added gently.
Raven made a strangled noise. One of the warriors at the door snorted before catching herself, earning a sharp glare.
"Ah, hold on one moment," Sokka held up a finger to Suki. He had been fussing with pulling something large and fluffy out of one of their traveling bags. "Crisis management," he explained, doing nothing to help the girls understand. "Before she incinerates that old granny."
He scooped up his feed bedroll and marched across the road, dodging a pair of waddling, giggling girls hunting for Aang.
"Sokka—?" Katara started, but he was already through the doorway.
The two warriors tensed, but Suki had told them to treat him as… a guest? An apprentice? A training dummy? It was unclear except that he was generally allowed. They let him pass despite not having even put all the makeup on yet.
Raven turned as he entered, eyebrow arched so high it might escape her forehead. "What do you want, water boy?"
Sokka plunked his bedroll down on the bench with a solid fwump and unfurled it in one dramatic motion. It was well used but frankly luxuriously comfortable given it was natural fur and very supple leather, but to a noble girl it looked off-puttingly rustic and tribal, so she wrinkled her nose.
"There," he said, dusting his hands off. "Oh stop, I just washed it before packing it up." And he suddenly reached down to bat a dried leaf off it.
Raven looked at the bedroll. Then at him. Then back at the bedroll, as if it might be a trap.
"If it stinks of boy sweat, you will regret this," she began, giving him a side-eye as she leaned down to inspect it, prodding with a finger, then several more times like she was checking for prickle snakes or other traps, until finally she dared get close enough to sniff it. What followed was the sight of her cautiously sitting upon it like it might leap up and snap in place like a bear trap.
Her shoulders eased as she turned to lay down and test it. Slowly, maintaining as much dignity as possible, she stretched her legs out and lay back, cloak pooling around her and arms crossed as soon as they could be.
"…acceptable," she declared, staring at the ceiling. "Better than expected." She flicked a glance at Sokka. "Very well. I will make every effort to avoid lighting you on fire."
As if that were a particularly generous vow.
Sokka brightened, then seemed to realize what he'd just traded. "Wait, just me specifically, or—"
Raven closed her eyes. "Don't push it."
Outside, Sokka shuffled back across the street, now bedroll-less, looking very pleased with himself despite that. Katara tried to arrange her face into something that wasn't a full-on grin, he legitimately solved the problem, but giving him credit bothered her for some reason, so she just didn't.
"You're confusing, Sokka," Suki told him frankly as he rejoined them. "You were a jerk when you got here—"
"Hey! Fair—but, hey!"
"—and started belittling girls," she continued over him, "but that was really nice of you, what you did there."
Sokka scratched the back of his head, cheeks coloring with no Kyoshi paint to hide under. "I mean… if we're not gonna fight her and she's gonna help keep those Fire Nation goons at bay," he muttered, and shrugged. "Might as well try to get along."
"Where is my brother?" Katara said with mock incredulity. "Actually, they can keep him. I like you better," she said as she finally felt like he'd earned having her smile at him again.
Suki huffed out a laugh despite herself. "If we're all going out of our way to get along with her, I guess she's a little funny," she conceded, glancing back toward the house. "Don't push it," she qouted, shaking her head. "Pretty sure she has a sense of humor somewhere in all that snooty sass. I hope. She was joking, right?"
Katara and Sokka both just shrugged.
-
As soon as Katara had the chance, she gathered a wide array of mostly just fish upon a wood platter, squared her shoulders, and marched into the little house where Raven was quartered.
Everyone was being nice, and it seemed to be working, so she was going to swoop in for the kill.
Inside, the air was dim and warm compared to the bright street. Someone had lit a small brazier; it scented the room with faint incense over smoke and salt which almost drowned out the village's permeating aroma of fishmongering. The benchy bed lay under the window, unfit for torture with Sokka's fluffy bedding atop it.
She looked like a very large, very lumpy cocoon, if she was still in there, and if she hadn't yet transformed into a giant moth.
Sokka's bedroll was enough to swallow relatively tiny Raven whole. Fur and leather were heaped into a long burrito of Water Tribe craftsmanship, cinched once around the middle with Raven's burgundy cloak for good measure, and propped halfway up the wall in the corner, likely so she could see the whole room without needing to leave the nest. The only sign there was a person inside at all was a single small dark gap near what must be the "head" end.
Katara stopped in the doorway and blinked. One of the Kyoshi warriors at the door coughed into her fist to hide a smile.
"Um," Katara ventured. "Raven?"
From inside the cocoon came a few awkward snorts and sniffles before a muffled, hoarse reply. "If you are here to take this back, prepare to perish."
Katara snorted before she could stop herself. "No repossession, I promise. I brought food. I hope you like fish?"
"I don't."
"Oh. Well, there's these things..."
She lifted the simple wooden tray in her hands. The village had a vast assortment of fish prepared in various ways, but there was a set of four spicy looking golden-brown rice balls that smelled richly of roasted poultry. There was a pause, a yawn came forth from the cocoon, clicking shut along with some mildly crazy sounding grumbling. The fur finally shifted a little as Katara leaned in close enough that it felt weird.
Katara noticed that the warriors were finally eased back against the wall. They just gave her a look like it wasn't their problem, until finally pale, delicate fingers with more than a little dirt under the otherwise polished and manicured nails emerged from the dark hole near where Katara suspected Raven's head should be. Raven gingerly plucked one of the golden fried balls and it was taken into the darkness, never to be seen again, then she took the rest rather quite rapidly.
"I take it you had a rough day, or week... or month, maybe?" Katara said, not wanting to pry but wanting to sympathize at the very least. She crossed the room, set the tray on a low stool near the bench, and sat cross-legged on the floor just in front of the beleaguered noble girl.
Raven just let out a crestfallen little chirp.
"I can go away if you want, I won't be upset," Katara offered, although it wasn't entirely true.
"No, no. Everything hurts," Raven muttered from within the roll. "Climbing, fighting, falling, being elbowed by that bi—." She briefly paused, and sighed. "Nngh. Too tired to think of something nicer to say. That bitch put a bruise on me that feels like it goes all the way to my core."
"Er... that's awful, but she did think you were trying to kill her friends," Katara nervously tried to defend Suki, but not too emphatically.
"I know... I'm just mad. All the time. Even when I dream, I'm so angry," Raven deflated as she spoke, and leaned forward enough that Katara could see the moody overcast light from the window glinting off her hazel-green eyes in a single stripe.
"Oh..." Katara quietly offered, but took a deep breath and darkly said. "I know what that feels like. It's horrible. Just remembering how it felt hurts."
The cocoon was very still.
"If you ever want to talk about it—" Katara started, but didn't feel the need to say more.
There was a tiny, put-upon sigh. "You and your brother are lovely people," Raven said like it was an admission. "I've decided to avoid lighting you on fire as well."
Katara gave a single laugh. She wasn't really glad that she was so correct about her assumption that Raven wasn't just wild violent maniac, but hurting terribly. At least that's how it seemed to her.
"Those crunchy things weren't awful," Raven admitted.
The tension in the room had ebbed away, with the warriors listening openly now, fans put away entirely, and by their faces Katara could tell they were at least a little affected by how miserable Raven sounded, despite her minorly injuring two of their comrades. Katara wrapped her arms around her knees like she needed to give herself a hug.
"I wanted to thank you properly," she said quietly. "For what you did at my village. Even if you had... other reasons. If you hadn't driven those soldiers away, I don't know what would have happened. I wish—" Katara's emotions took away her speech for a moment. "I wish someone like you had been there the last time we were raided too."
There was a long silence inside the bedroll. When Raven spoke again, her voice had lost some of its lazy dryness.
"He probably would have killed you," she said. "He's not the type to show mercy, especially not to lovely girls like you."
Katara's fingers tightened, and she wouldn't admit it but properly shivered all over at the thought of being captured and executed by some ruthless Fire Nation soldier. She knew all about that sort of thing. "I'll keep that in mind," she could only scarcely whisper.
Katara thought of Prince Zuko on the ice, shouting, fire roaring around him. She also thought of him turning his back on Sokka rather than finishing him off, really being much less than lethal with her brother when he didn't have to be, more than once.
"He could have killed my brother," she offered. "But he didn't."
"I don't know why he did that," Raven said in a tired tone like she just didn't really want to hear anything approaching support of her betrothed.
Katara stared at the woven floor mat she was sitting upon for a moment, jaw clenched. "I don't want to leave you behind," she said. The honesty surprised even her. "Not with someone like him coming. If it gets bad, I hope you'll come with us."
For a moment there was no sound at all from the fur roll. Even the brazier seemed to crackle more quietly.
"You are very strange," Raven said at last. "You barely know me. I could be lying about everything. I could be leading you into a trap."
"You could," Katara said. "But my gut says you are not. And my gut led me to freeing the Avatar a couple days ago, so I'm not ignoring it," she went on almost flippantly like she knew it sounded silly, but still believed it.
Raven let out a soft huff that might have been a laugh. "My plan does not go much further than: find Zuko, make him pay for what he did, and—" Her voice turned thin around the words, as if she was holding back more than she was saying. "I don't even want to think of what happens after that. My father will be furious. At least he's too busy right now to notice I'm gone." And she finally slid partially from the cocoon, languidly freeing her head but letting her cheek drift and press awkwardly against the wall.
"So," Katara said, seizing on something lighter before her chest got any tighter, "I really like your hair."
Raven just stared off into space, not quite at Katara. "Mmm," she possibly affirmed, but glanced briefly at her too. "Yours is weird but I like it."
"Uh... thanks?" Katara couldn't help but chuckle.
There was another pause, a different sort of quiet this time as Raven let her face distort further while she slowly slid down the wall, lips parted like it was too much work to close them before she finally forced herself to say, "why are you all being so nice to me?" and for the first time there was no arrogance at all in it, only wary bafflement. "I was taught the water tribes were... uh... brutish, uncivilized, dimwitted. You raid each other for women, eat only raw meat, beat people for using fire just to cook. That sort of thing."
Heat flared in Katara's cheeks. "What?!" she snapped before she could stop herself. "All the Fire Nation does is attack us then sail away again. How could they know what the Southern Water Tribe is even like?!"
Raven raised an eyebrow at how steamed Katara immediately was, and felt no desire to defend what she had been taught, "Nobody back home has ever been as nice to me as you're being now. Honestly I don't care if you're really cannibals or whatever."
"We do not EAT people!" Katara very deliberately told Raven, utterly aghast.
Raven shrugged before taking a very deep breath, trying and failing to calm herself before quietly saying, "you know, you remind me of someone dear to me." And her voice cracked as all the light that remained drained from her.
Katara opened her mouth, ready to ask more, when the door banged inward hard enough to rattle the frame.
Suki and Sokka skidded in almost on top of each other. Suki's fans were already in her hands; Sokka was rapidly searching about his person before producing his boomerang to silently smile with glee that he hadn't lost it yet. Both were breathing hard, Suki's face dead serious.
"Katara!" Sokka blurted. "And Raven in particular! We have a problem."
"The fog," Suki cut in, eyes flicking around the room, already counting bodies and exits. "It was too thick to see, but we heard the engines. A Fire Nation warship just grounded on the beach. Soldiers are already advancing on the village."
The bedroll flung into the air, actually splatting against the ceiling briefly as any sign that Raven was exhausted vanished. Landing in a crouch on the floor, she stood slowly, trying not to emit any flames on accident as she gritted her teeth. Her hair was a messed halo around her face, her eyes wide and suddenly very awake.
"Where?" she demanded, already reaching for her boots. "From the north cove or the harbor mouth?"
"Straight at the main harbor down the road," Suki said. "Couldn't get a good look, but definitely Fire Nation."
Raven's jaw set. The tired, complaining girl from a moment ago was gone. All that remained was hard, bright intent. "Good," she said. "Then he will not be hard to find."