Steam Will Rise

2. Speak

When Katara was younger she'd often dreamed about her wedding day. As a princess of the Southern Water Tribe thinking about marriage was inevitable. Marrying and marrying well is what royals did. She was only eight years old when negotiations for a marriage contract between her and Hahn were being talked about. She had met the young prince several times before and he had always seemed nice enough.

They had a lot in common both being Water Tribe and they liked a lot of the same things. To eight year old Katara Hahn was perfect. He liked penguin sledding, ice skating, and in snowball fights he could hold his own against Sokka. He was funny and always shared his candy with her. What else could she ask for in a potential husband, and she was sure that he would become her husband.

She had no way of knowing that while she and Hahn played together their fathers were hammering out the details of their marriage alliance in the Northern Water Tribe throne room. Two years later she would find out for herself just why it was that her father didn't want her to marry Hahn or become a royal family member.

While her father and Pakku were still trying to hammer out the details of their marriage alliance she, Sokka, and Hahn were in the royal courtyard having a snowball fight. As usual she and Hahn were on one side and Sokka and Hahn's cousin Kumaglaq were on the other side a huge pile of snow lay in between them.

"Face it Hahn you're never going to win with a girl on your side." Sokka had taunted them.

"Yeah! You two are going down." Kumaglaq said siding with her brother. It was the wrong thing to do. Using her bending Katara formed the biggest snowball that she'd ever formed in her life from the snow that made up the huge mound in between the two groups and dropped it on top of Sokka and Kumaglaq.

"No fair using your bending." Sokka cried out when he'd dug himself out of all the snow.

Hahn and Kumaglaq looked at her as if she had grown a second head.

"You waterbend?" Hahn asked.

"Yes." Katara said but she didn't like the tone in Hahn's voice.

"You're a girl. Girls are forbidden from learning waterbending."

"Says who?" Katara wanted to know.

"Says my dad and he's the Chief."

"Well my dad is a Chief too and he says girls can waterbend."

"Not in the Northern Tribe. If you're a healer that's O.K., but girls bending is stupid they can't bend as good as boys and that's why their the healers. Girls take care of benders they don't become them."

"You really shouldn't have said that." Sokka warned him moments before she buried Hahn in an avalanche of snow.

It was the last time she visited the Northern Water Tribe and she and Hahn never did speak to each other again. Not long after that the negotiations between the two tribes broke down completely and the marriage was off. Katara hadn't been upset in the least bit she didn't want to marry Hahn or go to live in any place as backwards as the North Pole.

Her father told her not to worry that now she was free to marry whoever it was she wanted.

"What about Chief Pakku? She asked. "Won't he be mad at you because I don't want to marry his son?"

"He might be at first but he'll get over it. I'm sure he'll find someone else to marry that misogynistic little twerp.

So Katara had put Hahn and his father out of her mind, but when she woke up the next morning and went outside Wolf Cove was surrounded by ships from the Northern Water Tribe. At first she couldn't figure out why they were there, but it wasn't too long before she found out why. Pakku hadn't gotten over the fact that the South had broken the marriage contract. It was just another thing for her to feel guilty about, and she felt guiltier still when she found out why it was that Chief Pakku had sought so hard for his son to marry her.