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“How the fuck are we meant to steal a dragon?” Sokka asked, conveniently and concisely summing up Katara’s thoughts.
She didn’t even have the energy to pull him up on cursing in front of their resident twelve year old. How the fuck indeed.
“We’re not stealing a dragon,” Aang insisted.
“We have to steal it!” Sokka argued.
“We don’t exactly have another choice,” Katara sighed. “Look, Aang, I know you don’t like it, but this is the last one. We’re so close to being done.”
Aang just sighed and nodded, dropping down onto the grass next to them. It was a sunny day despite the winter chill, and the skies were clear in a way that Katara loved. Because when they weren’t clear, that meant thunder and lightning, and that usually meant Tashi, king of the gods and certified asshole. And Tashi meant Katara had to resist the urge to storm up to Olympus and deck him.
It was deeply unfortunate that Katara’s tried and tested method of fighting anyone she disagreed with couldn’t be extended to the gods, because they were, well, gods. Even if she desperately wanted to. Sending a literal preteen on a hero’s quest - twelve hero’s quests - wasn’t fair. Even if he was arguably the toughest preteen in the world, and you know, a demigod. And as much as Sokka loved to grumble about Katara dragging him along, she knew he preferred being able to have Aang’s back while the gods gave him tasks of increasing ridiculousness.
“We need a plan,” Sokka sighed, clearly regretting taking on the role of ‘plan guy’. The mumbled “how is this my life?” was probably not meant to be heard.
“I don’t like stealing,” Aang said, but his resolve was clearly wavering. He wanted this to be done as much as they did.
“Okay, step one,” Sokka said, not sounding nearly as confident as Katara would have liked, “we walk into hell.”
“Don’t tell me step two is ‘we steal the dragon’, please.”
“I’m trying here, Katara! Would you like to come up with the plan?”
She sighed, breath misting the air above her, and flopped onto her back on the ground to glare at the sky. “We should be smart about this. We can’t just charge in swinging swords. What do we know about the underworld?”
“Dragons, death and a super scary monarchy.”
That was an understatement.
The myths of the underworld ranged from scary to downright terrifying. The place was guarded by a three headed dragon - a three headed dragon that they somehow had to capture and bring back - and ruled by the god of the dead, Zuko. Apparently he had singlehandedly battled his Titan father and sister to even acquire the kingdom in the first place. Katara didn’t like their odds when he found out they were stealing his dragon.
“We’re screwed,” Sokka mumbled, burying his face in his hands. “We’re so so screwed. We’re gonna die fiery deaths, and then we’re gonna go straight back to the underworld because we’re dead and die even more fiery deaths.”
“Don’t worry, Sokka,” Aang said, ever the placating presence, placing a comforting hand on his arm. “We can only die once. The second time it’ll just be fiery suffering.”
“Thanks, buddy, I feel all better now.”
“No one is dying a fiery death,” Katara said resolutely, hoping that by saying it confidently enough it would somehow come true. “Come on, what can we figure out from the stories of the last people who went to the underworld?”
“It’s all sunshine and rainbows,” Sokka snarked. “Orpheus lost his girlfriend and went insane, Theseus and Perithous lost their memories and were damned, and Sisyphus got tortured for eternity.”
“Odysseus did it,” Aang pointed out.
“Odysseus wasn’t there to steal Lord Zuko’s pet dragon,” countered Sokka.
Then Aang suddenly jolted up and grinned. “We don’t have to steal it! We can do what Odysseus did!”
That got matching blank stares from Katara and Sokka.
“Uh... go down and talk to dead people?”
“No, we can just ask Zuko! To let us borrow the dragon!”
“You want us... to go down to hell... and ask the god of the dead to give us his dragon?”
“Yeah!”
“We’re gonna die,” Sokka mumbled. “We’re gonna die today.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Katara huffed, internally agreeing with him. “Look, at least it’s winter!”
“So we’ll die a little chilly?”
“No, it's winter so Lady Toph will be there! You know, the goddess of springtime and flowers and all that nice stuff? She’s probably a calming influence on him or something. You know what married couples are like!”
———
Aang’s determination to walk right into the palace and politely ask to borrow the godsdamned dragon did not falter. She honestly had to admire his dedication, even if it was probably about to doom them all.
Hell wasn’t... as hellish as she’d expected. Sure, it was dark and gloomy, but to be fair, it was also entirely underground. They didn’t have many options for natural light. The terrain was dark and ashy stone and soil, dotted with gnarled, half-dead looking trees, but plants were fighting their way up. Little vines and leaves clung stubbornly to rock and wood, faint splashes of green, but still undeniably there. All the flowers seemed to be white, like specks of ash scattered around.
It seemed like a good sign Lady Toph was here, and Katara was honestly looking forward to meeting her. They had met her mother, Poppy, the harvest goddess, a while ago. Katara wasn’t really Poppy’s biggest fan, what with all the ‘cursing the world into eternal winter’ that one time, but she seemed earnest enough when talking about her daughter. The spring goddess was blind, but her connection to the Earth was legendary. Poppy said she was a gentle girl, and a little fragile, but lovely all the same.
Katara would have taken her word for it if the sun god hadn’t burst into hysterical laughter as she said it.
The accounts of how she ended up ruling the underworld for half of the year were... mixed. Some people said that Zuko had seen her on one of the rare occasions he left his realm, fallen in love instantly and kidnapped her. Others said Toph wandered into the underworld by mistake and decided to stay. A singing nomad they met a while back swore up and down that he’d met them and they were married for tax purposes.
Whatever the truth was, she was married to the king of the dead and part time queen of hell, so her help would be great whatever happened. At least she couldn’t make their quest any harder.
———
This was seeming like a worse and worse idea with each step.
“We’re screwed,” Sokka muttered as they came to a stop in front of the palace walls. “It was great knowing you guys.”
The palace loomed - like a living thing made of red and gold and black, taller and larger than any building had any right to be. All towering arches and sheer walls, like impenetrable cliffs only broken up by crawling ivy and tiny sprigs of greenery pushing through cracks.
The wrought iron gates swung open unaided. That was not comforting at all.
“Come on, that’s basically a ‘welcome in’!” Aang encouraged.
“Sokka, before we die, I want you to know that I was the one who broke your first boomerang.”
“That’s fine, I tore Gran-gran’s favourite dress and blamed you.”
Aang ignored them, striding forward into the palace grounds. They followed more sedately, glancing furtively around. The grass here seemed greener, brighter. And somewhere around the corner, Katara could hear trickling water and quiet quacking.
The door inside was even larger, at the end of the worn stone path. Before the heavy steel and wood swung away, she noticed carvings of dragons, fire and... badgermoles?
“Who are you?”
There was a strangled yelp from Sokka, and Katara barely stifled her own as a pale girl in black appeared from the shadows inside. She very much fit in with the theme of darkness and general gloom, looking at them flatly.
“Hi,” Aang said, finally looking at least a little nervous. “I’m Aang, and this is Katara and Sokka. We’re uh, hoping to talk to Lord Zuko.”
She nodded, still not betraying a trace of emotion. “Follow me. I’m Mai.”
Mai.
Oh. Great.
Sokka made another vaguely squeaky noise. “Great! That’s- that’s- cool! Mai! Death goddess! Love that! Please don’t kill us!”
“I don’t kill people,” she said, sweeping ahead of them on silent feet. “People kill people. I just have to deal with them after that.”
No one could muster a response to that, so the trio just hurried after her. Katara was pretty sure they were all silently praying by now.
Mai stopped short at another impossibly enormous door, this one engraved with more dragons, badgermoles and... turtleducks? But she was more fixated on the dragons right now. Because there were lots of dragons, which was giving her the feeling Zuko really liked dragons, which probably meant he wouldn’t be too thrilled with the whole dragon-borrowing-slash-stealing thing.
Mai shoved the door open without ceremony. “You have visitors. Living ones.”
“Send them in,” a female voice called. Oh thank the gods.
Mai rolled her eyes and grumbled something about not getting paid enough to do this, disappearing to leave them to their fates.
“Thanks,” Sokka said faintly. “I guess we’ll see you when we die in ten minutes.”
“Good luck with Toph,” Mai called without turning back.
There was no time to process that, because then they were walking in and Aang, great and wise hero that he was, decided to open with ‘flameo’, and visibly immediately regretted it.
The ensuing silence was only broken by the sound of Sokka’s palm hitting his forehead.
The king and queen of hell looked exactly as intimidating as Katara had expected and more, and simultaneously absolutely nothing like any of the stories had prepared her for.
Toph had been described to them both as ‘an unstoppable force of nature who will obliterate you without hesitation’ and ‘a very sweet young girl’, and now, Katara realised, they weren’t as mutually exclusive as they had initially seemed. She was probably two heads shorter than Katara at minimum, dressed in soft green with actual flowers along her headband, and (though she doubted she could admit it and live) was frankly adorable. She also wore what looked like armour and a fierce but drily amused smirk. Despite her eyes not focusing on them, Katara felt like a bug under a glass, even when her head turned away to face Zuko.
And Zuko did not look amused at all, probably because ‘flameo’ was objectively the worst way to greet someone with a huge burn scar across half of their face. Katara’s first, and probably not very useful, thought was ‘oh I could definitely fight him’. The god of the dead oddly didn’t actually intimidate her as much as his wife, even as actual fire flickered from around him, and sat in his hair like a crown. His robes were black, grey and muted purple, and she guessed that had something to do with the harsh red and black so strongly associated with the realm under the rule of his Titan father, Ozai (who Zuko had very much beaten and thrown into Tartarus, she recalled. Maybe she should fear him a little).
But both of them looked... young. Barely older than Sokka and Katara, like teenagers - which they pretty much were in terms of immortality. And they probably seemed younger in that moment, because they were both half frozen in surprise at the group’s entrance. Then Toph grinned and leaned forward on her elbows.
“You’re either really stupid or the most confident man alive,” she said. “Either way, I like it.”
That seemed to snap Zuko out of it. “What do you want?” he asked, a little coldly but not harshly. “If you’re here for one of the dead, we can’t send them back.” Katara wondered how many visitors they got with that request.
“Actually, we had a different question,” Aang said, once again bright and chipper. “We’re on a quest- well, a bunch of quests, but this is the last one, and we thought it would really be best to ask you before we did anything down here-“
Zuko’s eyes narrowed a little, and his gaze seemed to sharpen on Aang, fixing on his robes and tattoos. “You’re the southern wind god’s champion.”
Aang blinked, then grinned widely. “Yeah, I’m Aang and, Gyatso is my father! He didn’t want me to have to do all these quests, but the others kind of insisted. And this is Sokka and Katara, they’re my friends and companions.”
Toph leaned back on her throne (which, Katara noted with slightly confused amusement, was bigger than Zuko’s), but kept her bare feet on the ground. “You’re all demigods. Who do we have to blame for the other ones?”
“Our mother is Kya,” Katara said, managing not to snap. No, she was not about to get offended by someone who looked like a blind twelve year old girl. “I can control water, but Sokka just got-“
“- incredible good looks and intelligence.”
“Yeah, you look amazing,” Toph deadpanned.
“Oh, thank yo-“
“I’m blind.”
“Oh. Right. Right. Yeah, I knew that.”
Zuko sighed heavily. “Why are you here again?”
Great, time to get incinerated by the gods themselves.
“Well,” Aang started slowly, “we were hoping to borrow your dragon.”
There was a long, long pause.
At least, Katara reasoned, they weren’t thrown into Tartarus on the spot.
“You want to… borrow… our dragon.” Zuko said slowly.
“Yes?” Aang confirmed hopefully.
Toph was very visibly enjoying the whole situation more than anyone else involved. “Well we can’t just let you walk out of the underworld with our dragon.”
“Not again,” Zuko muttered, clearly seeing this going in a direction he didn’t like.
“What if we-“
“We’re not doing the Orpheus thing again,” Zuko interrupted.
“Hey, we didn’t fuck that up, he did.”
“Because he loved her!”
“Because he was a dumbass!”
From their tones of voice, this was a disagreement they had regularly. Katara really wasn’t sure how to react to this, because they were getting really off track, but interrupting two of the most powerful beings alive seemed unwise.
Zuko sighed. “I’m just saying, we could have let them go. It wasn’t his fault.”
“It was entirely his fault,” Toph scoffed, throwing up her hands. “He literally turned around and broke the only rule!”
“Because he was in love with her!”
“Ugh, this is why you need me. You’d be letting everyone with a sob story back out into the overworld if you had your way.”
“They were different and you know it! He walked into hell for her!”
“I walked into hell for you and I’m not in love with you!”
Katara glanced helplessly over to Aang and Sokka, who both seemed to be sharing her thoughts of ‘get out of here before this turns into a public breakup’.
“You didn’t walk into hell for me, you came down here to avoid your mother!”
“I’m a proactive problem solver!”
“She cursed the world into eternal winter and almost killed half of the living population!”
“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”
“It was literally an ‘everyone’ problem, plus your mother tried to kill me-”
“- because you suck at communicating the fact that you haven’t maliciously kidnapped people’s daughters!”
“You’re the one who told her we were in love!”
“Okay, I’ll take the blame on that one,” Toph conceded. “But it was totally worth it to fuck with her.”
“But you’re married,” Katara blurted out before she could stop herself.
The gods turned back to them with a jolt like they’d forgotten they had an audience.
“For tax reasons,” Zuko said, like that in any way made sense.
Sokka spluttered. “You’re a god! And a king! Why are you paying taxes? Who do you even pay taxes to?”
“It stimulates the economy,” Zuko shrugged, “and if we didn’t pay taxes, it wouldn’t set a good example for citizens.”
Look, Katara had seen and heard a lot of weird things in her time. It was pretty much a given when accompanying a sort-of-demigod-or-possibly-actual-god on quests. But right now, she was prepared to wake up at their campsite and go tell Aang and Sokka about the crazy dream she had about the rulers of the underworld being married for tax purposes. Aang would laugh, and Sokka would blame it on the time they had to listen to a singing nomad perform ‘secret tunnel’ six times in a row.
She subtly pinched herself. Katara did not wake up.
“Don’t be reductive, Sparky,” Toph drawled. “We also got married so I could call myself the queen of hell.”
Another glance at Aang and Sokka confirmed that they were experiencing similar levels of mental breakdown trying to figure out what to do.
“So…” Aang started cautiously. “Uh, the dragon?”
“Oh, right,” Zuko said, “you... want to borrow the dragon.”
Toph was grinning in a way that made Katara nervous. “Sure,” she said. “Which one?”
———
There were three dragons. Well, debatably. Sokka vocally insisted that it was only one dragon, because it had one body and three heads, and Zuko vocally disagreed because it would be unfair to count them all as one dragon considering Ran, Shaw and Druk all had individual personalities and identities. Katara would have tried to stop Sokka from loudly arguing with a god, but Toph looked like she was very much revelling in the chaos.
The cause of the debate had come trotting into the room when Toph whistled, and promptly flopped down across Zuko’s lap and headbutted him with the leftmost head until he started scratching its belly. It really made the whole intimidation thing a lot less effective.
The dragon(s?) seemed unaware or entirely apathetic to the chaos.
“There’s only one body, so there’s only one heart, so it’s only one dragon!” Sokka insisted.
“They have three brains,” Zuko snapped. “There’s three separate dragons, they just have to share a body!”
Turning to Aang for help proved useless. “Do you think he’ll let me pet the dragons?” he asked quietly.
Sokka looked ready to grab a stick and start drawing diagrams, but Katara sharply tapped his shoulder. “This isn't the time, Sokka.” She turned to Zuko hopefully. “So can we please borrow the dragons?”
“Dragon,” Sokka corrected under his breath.
“How long do you need them for?” Zuko asked, now absentmindedly petting two of the heads while the third tried to wriggle under his hands.
“Well the gods weren’t super clear, but we’ll have them back as soon as possible,” Aang assured.
Honestly, Katara was a little shocked they’d gotten this far.
“You’ll have to do something for us,” Toph reasoned. “We can’t look like we’re going soft. Not me, anyway. Everyone down here knows Sparky’s a pushover.”
“I am not-”
“Shush, I’m negotiating.”
“What could we do for you?” Aang asked a little nervously.
Toph considered for a moment, then a sharp grin appeared on her face. Katara already did not like this idea.
———
“At least we got the dragons,” Aang said, with far too much optimism. Zuko had sent them off with a bag of dragon treats and a truly excessive amount of scrolls on dragon care (which Sokka was going through with a charcoal stick and changing every ‘dragons’ to ‘dragon’, because her brother clearly had a death wish). The dragon(s) in question were happily bounding around the fields, terrorising the local wildlife.
“I’m just saying, it could have been a lot worse,” Aang said calmly. “I mean, it’s just one job.”
“Right, and when we’re immediately murdered, we go straight back to the underworld to tell Toph it's all her fault,” Sokka said. “Win win.”
Katara couldn’t believe this was her life now. “We really should have just stolen the dragon.”