The Pawn |Katara

TWENTY-FOUR

The moon was almost full on the night Akira along with Katara set off to find the hiding place of the team of people who had ambushed and injured about a dozen nobles and had killed Akemi. The light was plenty and even one who had had no knowledge of the area would have managed to navigate themselves around the fields and down the path. But Akira had not chosen to take the path. He had chosen to cut way through the fields, to ride unseen in case his movements were tracked and by morning someone attempted to set on his tail. He rode and rode, until the exhaustion seemed to truly set in a couple of hours later. 

It had been rather late when they had set off but now it was even later, and Katara had started to lean on him more and more as the time passed. He doubted she meant for it to happen. They were both tired, and at the first sign of an area with lower vegetation, he urged his giant eel hound to stop underneath a large tree bearing fruit. Katara leaned back as they stopped.

"Why have we stopped?" she softly asked.

Akira unmounted and turned to face her, a hand already outstreched to help her down. She took it, her confusion evident and betrayed by her furrowed brows even as she accepted his help. 

"We'll stop here for the night," he explained. She slid off, reached the ground with a thud. She nodded in thanks for his help and walked off, let his hand fall as she looked to the tree. 

"Apples," she murmured. Akira hummed without looking as he reached to take his bag. When he turned to see her, she had climbed up the lower branches of the tree to grab an apple. She jumped off moments later, holding two fruit, one she handed over to him. 

"I have taken provisions with me," he told her even as he accepted the fruit. Katara shrugged, watched him as he sat down. He looked around for a while before he turned back to her. "It is not safe to light a fire here."

"It's not cold anyway," she waved him off. The giant eel hound, as if knowing it wouldn't be moving for a while, sat down. Katara looked at it for a while longer and then slowly walked over to Akira, sank down beside him. She let out a small sigh as she leaned her head against the trunk of the apple tree and closed her eyes. 

Akira turned to face her. The moonlight provided him with enough light he had no need to light a fire to take in her features properly. Her eyes were closed and the stunning blue was locked behind her eyelids, making it impossible for him to take a glimpse of it, but that didn't take anything away from her beauty. He let his gaze travel from her high cheekbones to the arch of her nose, then to her lips, slightly open as she breathed in and out, a bit chapped along the edges. He had never thought he would be in such close proximity with her, and a few days ago, he had never thought he wanted to. Once, years ago, when he had been tasked with the order to set free their allies and had ended up breaking them out of prison, he had wanted her approval and her trust. Nothing much had changed since then, although he had the feeling he had both already. 

He had been prepared to leave on his own tonight, complete Mai's orders and get back before anyone would realise he had been gone. That was what he was good at, staying by the sidelines, passing like smoke through thin air, unnoticeable until you started to feel lightheaded. He had not expected he would be having company, but it was welcome nonetheless. He was greatful, in a way. Had Katara not been there, he was sure he would have fallen into the habit of thinking of Akemi, replaying their happy memories or the last time he had seen her before the attack. But now he had a distraction, someone to keep him company and prevent him from turning to his thoughts again. Of all the people that could have followed him, he liked that it was her. 

Katara's story was one everyone around the world knew. After the Avatar's win, stories of him and his companions had spread. He knew how Katara's mother had been killed in a Fire Nation raid when she had been young, that she had had to grow up sooner than most kids her age did, that she had had complete faith in Aang since the beginning, a faith that blossomed into something more with time and then was finally reduced to ashes when she realised this was not what she had really wanted. But that last part wasn't common knowleadge. Mai had told him about it, a night not too long ago.