1. Chapter 1

A gift to **like a dove**, and inspired by her Zutara Month collection of _break it open, 7. Wonderland. _

**No Promise of Summer**

Zuko awoke, as always, in a freezing cell.

The Waterbending girl, his guard, always insisted that "cell" was an ungenerous term. There's a mat for him, with thick furs piled high so he doesn't have to feel the floor, with more furs to serve as blankets; a small lamp; and a wash basin, filled every morning and evening with water. He got a change of clothes, since his old ones were unsuited and his boot had fallen off in the snow when he was taken.

Still, Zuko prefers the term. He's a prisoner. Prisoners have cells. This is a small room, albeit in a primitive snow hut. He would melt it down and run, but the South Pole is as good as the Boiling Rock. It's freezing, with no natural resources. If he did manage to steal a fishing pole and perhaps a pot and a knife, he could easily fall asleep and never wake up, still covered in frost, Firebending or not.

The girl calls herself the chief's daughter, and her brother is the chief's son, which would make the peasants actually royalty. This requirement doesn't seem to matter much to them. The girl and boy change shifts to guard him, along with other tribespeople, the boy hunts to bring back meat for everyone (he gets the smallest share), and the girl does daily chores and heals his rope burns from yanking too hard. Her hands are rough and chapped and not at all soft and delicate like a lady's hands, and her hair is the same, wild and untamed.

He doesn't see much of anyone—they mostly bring in clean water, his meals, or empty his chamber pot—and he doesn't care to. He just wants to leave.

Of course, he can't. He's a trade for "peace." He's given to these peasants as appeasement—they will hold him hostage to keep his father in check. He knows his father, though. The Fire Lord doesn't give a rat-weasel's ass about him. If they had captured Azula, then they'd still be negotiating, but no, he'd said yes immediately and probably threw a banquet rejoicing the non-return of his son.

He still can't believe he got captured. He traveled here to look for the Avatar, and as he was stupidly wandering off by himself, thinking he could handle anything, the girl had frozen his feet, and the boy had tackled him, tying him with strong rope. Then, just as Zuko was going to burn his bonds off, the boy had raised his stupid toy and knocked him out, just like that.

The elder, "Gran Gran," had given him warmer clothes and stuck him in that cell. The "warriors" were about to leave, the result that their village would be vulnerable without them. So they wrote the Fire Lord, somehow (and left the "defenseless" part out), and got back the answer. So, satisfied, the men left, and Zuko stayed. End.

The girl tried to be kind to him while she talked to him, but he refused to speak with her.

"My name is Katara." She first told him as she set down a bowl of Agni-knew-what in front of him. "What is yours?"

He turned away from her as she tried to get him to talk about his family, the Water Tribe, and how he was doing, but she gave up and walked away.

Zuko didn't know where his uncle or his ship was. Maybe they tried searching for him, but they couldn't find him. That was the likely answer.

He hated this damn place. He hated the cold, the wind, the food, the endless plain of snow. He would never get a chance to leave.


	2. Chapter 2

**No Promise of Summer**

"You don't work, you don't eat."

Zuko glares at the girl. "That's never been an issue before."

She tosses her head proudly, her braid slapping her back, as arrogant as his sister. "That's what Gran Gran says. You've been sulking enough, and if you don't move around, you won't look very great. You'll start easy, don't worry."

"What if I really don't help you peasants?" Zuko challenges. "You can't have a dead Prince as hostage."

The girl narrows her eyes, and Zuko thinks he has her beat, but she shoots back with a note of triumph in her voice, "Well, we don't have to tell the Fire Lord you're dead; we're not exactly sending weekly reports, and he's not either. Do you honestly think that the Fire Lord would send some people over to traipse around in the cold South Pole in the snow to check up on you? They left us alone once the raids were over, so there!" She glares at him.

He glowers at the girl. "What will I be doing?"

She smirks. "You'll have the esteemed pleasure of working under me, _Prince_ _Zuko_." Her tone mocks his title and sharply snapping the last syllable of his name like tossing a wet towel on a tile floor. If peasants knew what tile was.

"Under me, huh?" He can't resist taunting her. Every advantage he has, he takes. "You will never get a man if you dominate like that, princess, or you may arouse him if he likes that sort of thing."

Her cheeks flush bright red, but it's not due to the constant cold, and she upends his bowl of wash water on his head. "You sexist, _filthy_—"

"Katara!" A woman's voice calls. "Get that man out of that hut so you can start your chores! There's laundry to be washed, clothes to be mended, and lunch to be cooked!"

Katara glares at him and looks as if she very much wants to kick him in the unmentionables, but she sweetly calls out the flap, "Okay, Gran Gran."

* * *

They start with laundry. Katara shoves a woven basket towards him and the tub of water with a disgusting piece of brown soap nearby. It's slippery and feels so unlike the smooth, sweetly-scented, pearly-white, and oval-shaped bars that the Palace had and even different from the box-like shapes of unscented soap on the ship.

"What is this stuff?"

"It's soap. And you call _us_ stupid."

He rankles and dunks a pair of pants into the freezing cold water, shivering. "No, peasant. What's it _made_ out of?"

"Seal fat. Now _scrub_, if you _know_ how."

"From _animals_?" He shudders and wants to shove it away from him as far as possible, if only he didn't have to touch it. "_Disgusting_."

"Where did you think soap came from? Do you scrub with sand?" the girl asks while starting on carefully washing a coat, a parka. There's a proper name for it, but Zuko doesn't remember or really care.

"Sand? Where in _Agni_ did you get that notion?"

The girl flushes again. "When we had traders, before the raid, they told us that they scrubbed with sand in the rivers and creeks. We do it sometimes on the spring, when its warmer—it's a bit abrasive, but it gets the dirt off."

"Ridiculous." He's never heard of such a thing. "We have nice soap. Scented. It's molded sometimes into shapes, like seashells or flames. _Not_ made from dead animals."

The girl is finishing the parka as she rolls her eyes. "How do you know how your soap is made?"

Zuko pretends that his own red cheeks are from the cold, despite that the ice house is surprisingly warm. "I heard my country makes it from ashes."

Her nose scrunches up. "Ugh. I hope it's _wood_ ashes."

It takes a minute for him to catch on to her meaning. "Don't be barbaric."

"I wouldn't put it past you people. And we're not here to talk about soap—you haven't started to wash _one_ thing, and I'm already _halfway_ done! Get going."

They wash in silence. The girl finishes before he does, predictably, and starts to Waterbend them dry in front of the fireplace. The dirty water goes back into the tub.

"You're not going to use that for the next batch, are you?"

She glares at him when her control of the water wavers at his sudden question. "Don't be _stupid_. Now let me concentrate."

"Do I have to dry? I guess I can use my Firebending." He's eager to at least do something more than heat up the air around him, even though that is draining his most of his energy.

"You'll burn them with your Firebending." She turns away. "You finish your job, and when you're done, you can start on the mending."

"Mending?"

"Do I have to teach you how to sew?" She throws up her hands in the air with annoyance, and water splashes directly onto him and some of the dry clothes.

She swears loudly and starts again, but smirks again when he picks up the foulest piece of clothing yet—a pair of disgusting, smelly, woolen socks. He swears he feels slime before he quickly drops them into the wash tub.

"Uggghhh...are these your socks, peasant?"

She Waterbends soapy water at his head, this time, not one drop landing on the dry clothes. "Those are my brother's, and you'll be in charge of his clothes with _that_ attitude."

When he finally finishes, she's starting to dry his batch of clothes and gestures to another woven basket full of clothes. "That's mending. Leave the skins; I'll do those."

Zuko nods and trudges over the basket. He knows how mending works—you thread a needle and...sew. The girl looks over and sighs. "You have to tie a loose knot before you actually start. Otherwise the stitches will come apart." Zuko nods and tries again—his stitches are a bit on the large side, but they're not falling apart. The girl is finishing up the drying and is taking up one of the parkas.

Then she chews it. It's the most peculiar thing he's ever seen. Zuko puts down the pants and stares.

She glares at him again. "_What_?"

"Are you starving or something?"

"I am doing this because it is getting dry and formless, and this is the way my people make the skin soft again. Otherwise, it would get stiff and cracked and would fall apart and would be _useless_. So stop staring at me; you're bothering me."

She continues once Zuko averts his gaze. His stomach is growling steadily, and judging by his internal clock, it's almost noon, and he's been up since a little over dawn.

Zuko groans when the elder pops in and calls that the girl should be making lunch now. "Do you do this stuff every day?"

The girl's eyes flash, and to his surprise, instead of complaining about his "spoiled prince attitude," she kicks at one of the fur rugs in what appears to be frustration. "Yes. _Every_ day. And after this, we will get started on cleaning the dishes, hopefully getting Sokka away from '_warrior training'_ the three year olds to go fishing, then preparing dinner."

"Wait, what's he doing now?"

The girl looks annoyed that he apparently wasn't paying attention._ "He's_ trying to train three year old who just want to penguin sled and go to the bathroom, and when that lasts, oh, about _ten_ minutes, he goes off and practices his _stupid_ boomerang! And he _misses_, the, the—_oh! _While _I—"_

Her brother then pops in at the most inappropriate moment. "Hey, Katara, can you add less salt to the sea prunes?"

Zuko finds himself oh-so-casually letting the hearth fire shoot out to dance across the boy's boots without burning them. He shrieks like a noblewoman when encountering a spider-fly and runs out the door as fast as he can.

The girl is staring at him with something akin to approval and also confusion in her eyes. "Well. Why don't we get started on lunch?"


	3. Chapter 3

**No Promise of Summer**

Zuko had always been a vivid dreamer, and his "trip" to the Southern Water Tribe didn't change it. He dreamed of ice slowly spreading over his body, starting at his toes. The ice looked fragile enough, but as he struggled, it only pressed down harder and refused to melt. As it began to coat his mouth and nose, his eyes frantically darted around, landing on the girl, a smirk on her face that reminded him eerily of Azula. She brought her hands down and spoke in a snarl, "It will be too cold for you in the South, Prince Zuko."

He thankfully woke up just before the Waterbender killed him and hurriedly sat up. Still used to seeing red and black and metal, he shook his head and sighed only frigid white and occasional traces of blue flitted in his vision. Get used to it. You're stuck here.

He pulled on his parka—really, it was a hand-me-down from the girl's brother, since none of the Tribe would part with their husband's, brother's, or son's clothing. It was a little tight on him, but the biggest annoyance was the boy whining about having to share clothes with a Firebender.

"Get up. We have more chores to do," the girl peeked her head in again.

* * *

Zuko found that the more he worked, the more his mind did, too.

Well, it wandered, really—like a trained Komodo rhino released into the wilderness, confused but slowly learning the ropes of survival. He did his chores without complaint. Prince Zuko would have liked to think he was pulling the enemy into a false sense of security or testing his uncle's battle strategy of "quiet observance." But really, he was pulling up questions and answering them.

The biggest was, of course, how to escape. It would be simple. There were no warriors, except for that pitiful Water Tribe boy with his weapons that were handled more like toys in his clumsy hands or the untrained Waterbender who still looked amazed if she managed to hold up a water sphere for more than five seconds. They had caught him by surprise, true, but he wouldn't allow it again. He'd sneak out during the night out of his small tent—club his guard over the head or jab a pressure point—and run for it. They had no advanced security, no alarm, nothing.

But if he did manage—where would he go? There was nothing but open tundra for miles and the wide sea for more. He could steal a canoe and a few choice supplies—the latter, carefully, over the course of a few weeks. Zuko didn't know how to paddle a Water Tribe canoe, and he was worried his physical strength was finishing day after day of doing nothing but domestic chores. He knew nothing about catching fish—but how hard could it be? Didn't you just bait a hook and wait? But even though he had laughed at the boy for being an incompetent oaf when he came back with little to no fishing (if the girl went with him, there was a little more), there was something inside that admitted it wasn't all it took.

It would be easy enough to find his uncle and crew—a few questions about the Dragon of the West and an old Fire Navy ship—but there was always something. Zuko knew his luck wasn't _that_ easy.

The thought of escaping was growing and growing. It was a definite possibility. He could do it. But he needed more planning.

That didn't stop him from pocketing a spare fish hook left on the table.

* * *

Zuko also realized his Firebending needed work. He used Firebending for hearing himself up to withstand the cold—"Cold?" the girl always laughed. "It's not even winter yet! Wait until the blizzards!"—and subtly through drying the clothes and dishes. But he needed Firebending practice—something to release his energy.

He stole a candle or two—made out of seal-whale blubber—to practice his meditation in his tent, but he needed more. Zuko was trying to keep his meditation secret, even though the reflection of constant rising and falling light through his tent was raising a few questions. He couldn't ask for practice—they still didn't trust him not to melt down their precious ice houses or char their children. The fact that he was instructed to stay inside and do women's work with the girl was proof enough.

The girl—somehow her face formed in his mind. Could she be useful? The girl wanted to learn Waterbending, and she never will properly. The elders tried to tell and sometimes show her other moves their Waterbending ancestors did, but the girl was swamped in chores and unsuccessful attempts. Unless a Waterbending master suddenly arrived in the dreary village, or she made it to the North Pole without being captured, robbed, sold, killed, or detected, she was never going to reach full potential. The girl didn't even know how to heal or create ice with proper control. There was no way—

Zuko chuckled to himself as he finished the last batch of clothes. Even if he was stuck in the South Pole forever—and if he ever got out to practice—he'd be luckier than the girl. He knew bending forms, control exercises, how the advanced forms looked, meditation, and more. The girl had nothing...unless he told her.

He wasn't a Waterbender, but he knew he could manage.

Now to convince the girl...


End file.
