To the ends of this lost world

You have marched and you have sworn

To a tainted crown of thorns

~Whereabouts Unknown, Rise Against


Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown


-sifting through the snow-


"Stop playing around," Sokka hisses. Katara lets her bubble of water hover over her brother's head for a heartbeat before the water - the fish swimming inside included - drops onto his head.

"I actually caught something, Master Fish-catcher," Katara says, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at him. At nearly seventeen, she supposes she shouldn't ever feel the need to make faces at her older brother, but that's Sokka for you, she supposes.

"Well, just stop with your water magic and let me spear that fi-"

"It's not water magic!"

"What do you want me to call it then? Water voodoo?"

"Waterbending would suffice, thank you ver-"

"Katara! The fish is getting awa- hey! You just pushed it further away!"

"I wouldn't want the poor fish to lose brain cells like I am just by being near you."

"Why do you care about the fish's intelli-"

"Sokka, did you see that?"

As Sokka continues to huff, and Katara repeats her question, with a note of something creeping into her voice that makes Sokka pause and scan the horizon.

"I don't see anything."

"I could've sworn I saw red," Katara says softly, tendrils of fear running through her and gripping her organs.

"No." Sokka's eyes have gone wide and he scans the horizon again, actually looking this time. Blots of black and dots of orange and red draw slowly, slowly closer.

The color red has never done anything good for Katara. Red is the color of blood. Red is the color the man who killed her mother was wearing. Red is the color of fire.

"Take us back to shore." Sokka shakes Katara roughly when he sees her start to go rigid. "Now, Katara!"

Katara closes her eyes briefly and takes a deep breath to steady herself before pushing back on the water with both hands. Sokka stabs his spear into the ice and crouches, gripping the spear to avoid being flung into the water. The slab of ice they'd been using as a raft is propelled back to shore. Sokka steps off the ice and onto the tundra quickly, pulling Katara along with him. Katara feels like her veins have been iced over and her movements are twice as slow as they would usually be.

"Melt the ice. If they pass by here they'll notice it's unnatural," Sokka says curtly to his sister. He pulls his spear out of the ice and Katara nods. In a swooping downwards gesture the makeshift raft is dispersed into the ocean.

"Should I-" Katara starts, and Sokka quickly cuts her off.

"Don't try to bend us a ice mobile or something. We're close enough to the village."

They both break into a run. The frozen tundra gives away to sloping hills of snow and ice, but they both push on; Katara disrupting the snow behind them every so often to cover their tracks. When they finally arrive at the village, pink-faced and breathing hard, at least a dozen people rush towards them. Sokka catches his breath after a few moments and straightens up, waving a hand to silence everyone.

"We saw Fire Nation ships."

Of course, since the past three years, it's no longer been the Fire Nation, but the Phoenix Empire, ruled by Phoenix King Ozai.

"Ozai's finally decided to get rid of us?" one of the women asks, grabbing her son's hand.

"Looks like it," Sokka says grimly. The Southern Water Tribe - nothing but a group of old women, mothers, and young children with tents arranged in a semi-circle - had been left alone after the last Southern Raid that had failed to kill Katara, the real target, and instead took her mother. The rest of the Hundred Year War had passed by with the Fire Nation acting as if the Southern Water Tribe didn't even exist. A twenty something group of women and children with one boy who thinks he's a warrior and a waterbender who can barely catch fish (a waterbender that the Fire Nation thought they had killed) didn't exactly terrify.

Now, though, Katara thinks that Sokka's as good of a warrior as any of the men that left to the Hundred Year War, and Gran-gran tells her that she's at least half as good as the master waterbenders captured in the early Southern Raids.

"Why now?" someone else asks, and murmuring starts up; all of the women reach for their children.

Gran-gran pokes her way from the back of the group to the front. "It doesn't matter," she says, and glances at Sokka. He nods. "We're going into lockdown."

"Immediately start making preparations," Katara says to the suddenly quiet tribe. She musters as much strength as she can into her words. "We're leaving in twenty minutes."

Everyone knows the procedure by heart, having practiced every month on Sokka's orders. There was always a lot of grumbling involved but as everyone now swiftly packs up the tents, necessary blankets, clothes, and food, Katara thinks that it was the best idea Sokka ever had. Within fifteen minutes, everyone is shouldering huge tiger seal packs.

"Let's go!" Sokka shouts, starting the procession towards their designated safe area. Katara hangs back for a few minutes, melting the ice barriers that are not so much for keeping Fire Nation as for keeping the tribe's children from getting lost. She makes two swooping arcs with her arms and then raises both of them, causing the top layer of snow to flutter into the air. Katara lets the flakes hang there for a few heartbeats before she slowly lowers her hands. The snow settles and all traces of the village are covered.

"Katara! Hurry up!" Sokka calls. Black flakes of snow are starting to blow their way, and cold fear seizes Katara's heart. Suddenly Katara is eight years old and hears her mother telling her to go get Dad, I'll be alright, everything is okay, sees the Fire Nation soldiers fighting off the tribe's men, feels the ashen snow settle on her hair-

-and then hears Sokka calling her name again. Katara doesn't bother picking off the black flakes that have fluttered onto her head and she turns and runs to catch up to the other villagers. Everyone moves on silently, looking over their shoulders with concern every so often, and Katara walks backwards practically the whole time, manipulating the snow to cover their trail. She feels someone bump into her leg just as the latest stretch of snow is floating back to the ground.

"Katara?"

The ground becomes bumpier and there are small, jutting structures of ice starting to appear in their path. The children call this place the Forest of Teeth.

"Yeah, Essa?"

"The Fire Nation won't kill my mommy, right?"

Essa is the youngest of the children at seven, and although she's smarter than she should be for her age, she still lacks inhibition. Essa realizes her mistake and quickly tries to amend with a meek, "Sorry, Katara, I shouldn't say that to you."

"It's okay, Essa," Katara says to the little girl, forcing a smile, "your mother's very strong and can protect herself, and me and Sokka will be there too. Your mother will be safe."

Katara will not let another child end up like her, and Essa is more similar to Katara than the little girl realizes. Katara watches as the snow flutters unnaturally fast when Essa waves her arms.

She feels Essa hug her legs just as they enter the shadow of a small mountain-like structure of ice. It's not the biggest ice formation in the Forest of Teeth, but still big enough to shelter everyone. Sokka, ever the strategizer, had argued that taking refuge under the biggest possible ice mountain would be too obvious.

"Everyone, take your places!" he shouts from the head of the group. "Only light unpacking. Measure out rationed portions for about a week. We don't know how long the Fire Nation will be here." Everyone scatters and Essa runs off to join her mother, leaving only Sokka and Katara standing across from each other.

"Be careful," Sokka says to her. "And remember-"

"-to only reveal my bending when absolutely necessary," Katara finishes for him. "I know."


"You peasants thought you could hide from us."

The lazy, self-assured voice comes from somewhere outside of their enclosure. Everyone's expressions tighten and harden, and all of the women reach for their weapons. Katara wants to laugh. She knows they're all decent fighters, but if the Fire Nation found them in the Forest of Teeth - within two hours, no less - then the tribe may as well be extinct.

Katara used to know hope but now her minds automatically thinks of what will happen to them. Will the tribe be killed on the spot? Burned slowly? Taken as slaves? With an insane father-daughter pair commanding these soldiers, they've no doubt been given creative ideas to deal with prisoners.

Katara hears several pairs of soft footsteps against the snow, so quiet that she's sure it's something she only picks up on because of her waterbending. She feels her heart start to pump erratically in her chest. Whoever it is moves silently towards the right and draws closer and closer to the tribe's hideout. Katara crouches lower into her fighting stance. There are one; two more collective steps, and then they all completely stop.

A whole wall of ice shatters inwards.

There's a battle cry from Sokka and all of the tribe's women charge forward, various weapons clutched in their hands.

As the icy mist from the fragmented wall clears the tribespeople meet the first line of Fire Nation soldiers. The leader of the soldiers, a girl - probably only a few years older than Sokka - with long, dark hair in a partial topknot, bursts out laughing.

Katara grips her spear more tightly and pushes on with the rest of her people. The blur of blue and red lasts only for a few minutes before everyone but Katara and Sokka have their hands bound behind their backs with handcuffs made from rock. The Fire Nation soldiers drag out the children from their hiding spots and gesture for a small group of men in green to bind their hands.

Katara and Sokka stand back to back, weapons held out towards the soldiers pressing in on them in a circle.

"Drop your weapons," one of them says gruffly. Katara meets Sokka's eye for a moment and she sees resignation. Her spear hits the snow seconds after Sokka's boomerang falls. Two earthbenders fall out of formation to secure their hands behind their backs.

"Captain June?" the soldier with the gruff voice says.

"Well, that was easy," the girl says, amusement flickering in her eyes. "We thought you might have bigger numbers, or just put up a better fight, I guess. The Fire Lord even insisted we bring along the Dai Li." She gestures towards the earthbenders and then pets the animal she's riding on. "Good thing I talked her out of bringing along more shirsus. Nyla was more than enough."

Katara looks around nervously. While the women have their hands bound like herself, the soldiers all have knifes trained at the bases of the children's throats. Katara clenches her teeth and glares at this Captain June, willing her to stop talking nonsense and get to the point. June leisurely gets off her shirsu.

"Now, which one of you is the last waterbender?"

Everyone in the tribe is careful not to look at Katara. Katara's heart starts beating faster in alarm. The Fire Nation is supposed think they killed the last waterbender when that soldier took Kya's life.

"My mother was the last waterbender," Sokka says, his voice fierce. "Your soldiers killed her in the last Southern Raid!"

Katara's mind races.

"Oh, but she wasn't the last waterbender, was she?" June walks around, appraising all of the tribes people. "The Southern prisoners at the Boiling Rock have been most informative."

Oh, Katara thinks stupidly. Of course. Images of her father being burned and tortured spin in her mind.

"When the man who told us finally broke," June continues, "he said that the waterbender was actually a little girl." June's gaze lands on Katara. Katara feels her heart stop. "Of course, that was three years ago."

June edges closer to Katara and whispers loud enough that Sokka can hear: "Here's the deal. You prove that you're the waterbender - something that idiot who killed your mother forgot to ask of her -, you come with us, and no one in your tribe is hurt. You resist, or try to be some sort of hero and use your bending against us, and we take everyone to the Fire Nation to be sold into slavery," June tilts her head towards the children with knives at their throats, "and maybe my soldiers' hands will slip."

Katara hopes that her glare can burn a hole in June's pretty face.

"Katara-" Sokka starts, but he's cut off by Katara herself.

"Fine."

Katara avoids looking at Sokka as a Dai Li agent steps forward and removes the rock around Katara's wrists. Katara stands tall and bends up a rivulet of water from the snow beneath her feet and the Dai Li agent immediately binds her hands again. The water drops midair and splashes onto her.

"You're taking my sister, at least let me say goodbye to her," Sokka says to June, speaking through his clenched teeth. "Or are you afraid that a peasant is going to attack you?"

After he glances at June, one of the Dai Li agents frees Sokka with a flick. Sokka rushes towards Katara and crushes her to his chest, with the top of Katara's head barely grazing his chin. Katara only feels numb.

"I'm so sorry," Sokka says softly, pulling away slightly. Katara looks down at the snow underneath her feet. Then he whispers, "I'll find you, Katara."

Katara's gaze snaps up. "Don't. You have to keep the tribe safe, okay? That's your first priority, not me. I'll hold my own." There's no change in Sokka's expression and Katara would shake him if her hands weren't bound. She hisses urgently, "Do you hear me, Sokka? Keep everyone else safe." Katara doesn't know whether she should risk her next words, but then says them anyway, "Especially Essa."

"My soldiers' hands are getting tired," June sing-songs from atop her shirsu.

Sokka starts to pull away. "Essa?"

"She's like me," Katara says, trying to move her lips as little as possible.

Sokka's eye widen in understanding. June sings another warning and Katara takes a few steps back.

"I love you."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was going to happen anyway."

Two soldiers come towards Katara and grab her elbows on either side and start walking her away. Katara looks back, just once, and sees with alarm that some of the soldiers are staying behind.

"You said you'd leave my tribe alone!" Katara turns her glare to June. "Why are your soldiers staying? You got what you wanted!"

"A few weeks of close monitoring never hurt anybody," she shrugs.

All Katara hears is just try to step out of line, waterbender.


XxX


(A/N) Reviews are always appreciated! I have the first five chapters of this already written, so you can expect regular updating. There's not much Zutara in the beginning, but after all of the world-setting-up stuff, it'll get there eventually.