Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The last Airbender
The day begins in the darkness, as it usually does in the winter. The winds are cold and biting as Katara leaves the safety of her home to collect the washing rags from Pop Pop and Gran Gran's house. Her mother is expecting her in around five minutes so she makes sure to hurry, not stopping to notice how the horizon darkens, smog and thick black smoke smothering the air.
Katara huffs as she gets to Gran Gran's house with time to spare. Her lungs are burning—she's only five so she hasn't been doing much running—and her cheeks are flushed but she's grinning as she slips into the igloo, flipping the tent flaps open.
"Katara—no!" Her Gran Gran screams.
Her heart stutters in her chest as she takes in the scene. Her grandfather—beloved Pop Pop with a smile on his face and sparkling blue eyes—is slumped on the ground, sticky red blood surrounding his head in a bloodied halo.
She knows, instinctually, instantly, that he's dead.
Katara doesn't know how to feel about that so she puts the image away in her mind, keeping the shock and the rage and the debilitating fear deep inside her mind, to be touched and prodded and cajoled later.
And then she sees her grandmother, struggling, against the grip of an unknown man, clad in dark oranges and fiery reds and deep, smothering black, an ugly smile twisting a pale face. Her long hair is loose against her throat and Katara is suddenly aware of how Gran Gran would let her play with the long white strands whenever she was resting, a pleased smile on her face.
"Gran Gran?" Katara's voice is small in the cramped igloo and she knows her hands are trembling in her gloves, her face is turning white with shock. Katara can feel the moment the unknown man with the strange colors and pale face turns his eyes on her because it burns her skin.
"Run!" Her grandmother screams, thrashing against the man's rough hands and biting metal. "Leave!"
And in this moment, as Katara feels the burning of the man's gaze—those yellow, yellow eyes holding her captive—she knows she must move, she must leave this place if she wants to live but, but this is her grandmother.
And father had always taught her to put family first, even at the cost of your own life.
But Katara also knows she is small.
Her hands are too tiny to make any damage, her body too soft and pliant, not like her father's or even her mother's and there is nothing she could even possibly hope to do against the strange man.
"Gran Gran—"Katara makes a hesitant motion, a split second decision really, to move her foot and suddenly something on the floor—the ice floor—moves.
The strange man doesn't notice it at first but Gran Gran does.
As Katara stares into the desperate blue eyes, she realizes, somewhere deep down, that Gran Gran is begging her to stop that. But Katara, as young as she is, doesn't realize that something is wrong with the picture—her emotions are running too high, her mouth is dry in fear, her fingers trembling—and so the movement of the ice floor only accumulates, turning into a solid, icy wall.
"…A waterbender?" The strange man's voice is harsh, so different to the lulling voices of her tribe, and it terrifies Katara to hear it, so alien in such a familiar setting. The man's gaze swivels away from the tiny, rudimentary ice wall and fixes on her Gran Gran's wide, scared blue eyes and snarls.
"You told us all the waterbenders were dead, witch!"
"Katara run—"But the man—or is it soldier? Katara thinks dazedly for she recognizes the bloodlust and lines of war on his pale, unknown face—slams an iron-coated fist into the elderly woman's mouth, blood splattering the floor around them. Her grandmother's eyes roll back in her head and her body slumps, all movement seeming to have stopped—only the quiet heaving of her chest remains.
"Grandmother!" Katara's voice screeches, arches across the air and creates an explosion of ice and water and fury that leaves the strange man wincing, grinding his teeth to keep his ground against the tiny girl.
There are tears that are running down her face and her breath is coming in harsh pants as she turns to run, suddenly struck by the feeling that she was prey despite the fact that she had obviously thrown him with her ice display.
The man yells out something garbled—a little like a war cry, a little like an enraged scream of fury—and hurls himself at her.
Katara, frantic and tired from water made the water move (you, a little voice whispers, you did that) turns to the tent flaps, her breath catching in her throat and her legs burning as she scuttles, trips and tries to escape the iron grip that descends on her neck.
"Little runt." The man's breath is hot on her cheeks and neck and Katara feels like an animal—trapped and caught by the one thing she should have known better than to provoke.
"Argh!" She screams something at him, trying desperately to kick out at his jaw, his leg, something, but her movements are in vain as he hauls her up in his arms, securing her hands behind her.
When he drags her out of the hut, kicking and screaming and crying, the panic in her chest only escalates when she sees the destruction that is being reaped around her.
"See that," There is a strange sort of cruel pride that lines his voice and Katara screeches against his tight grip, desperate to get free and run, "That's what traitors like you get."
There is smoke coming from the igloos that are crushed under the strange, unknown metal from the strange pale men and people screaming from houses. Katara sees Old Man Arruk and his oldest grandson Nokkuk running from a lash of fire—fire! Her mind screams, fire at the south pole—and she watches, momentarily frozen in the man's arms as the she watches them gunned down by the burning heat, watches their skin sizzle and cook under the thick smog of black smoke.
And then someone calls out for her—a familiar voice—and Katara feels fear like ice freeze her lungs and heart as she watches her mother, eyes glistening with rage and bright, bright fear, stumble towards them, her braid fluttering in the wind.
"Katara!"
"Mom!"
The soldier, momentarily stilled by the destruction and Katara's first comprehensible words, is just as quick to snap back into action, weaving into a pattern of fighting that has Katara wincing at the half-hearted blows the water tribe men are giving him.
Katara knows they see her—their chief's daughter—in his arms and still. Silently, furiously, she curses the soldier for the knowledge he has against her tribe. She knows that no man in the water tribe would ever even think of harming one of their kin—let alone a little girl—and she knows the soldier uses this against them, ready to burn, to maim at their hesitance.
"Katara!" Her mother screams again across the battlefield and Katara sees her father stumble away from a dying soldier, catching her mother by the elbow.
Katara cannot hear the words that form on his lips, but she can see them and it is with such pain that she can make out the syllables of: "Where is she?"
Her mother points, half-stumbling, half-ripping bone knives across the pale men, blood splattering across her throat and Katara catches her father's eyes.
"No!" Her father roars and for a moment, the battlefield stills under the weight of his words. Her father is a chief—someone who ordains the highest obedience—and his words have penance for those who disobey him. But much too soon, the world is back in action, the soldiers weaving patterns of fire and burning heat across her home.
"Mom!" Katara screams again, thrashing once more against the hold of the soldier who gripped her too tight. "Mom!"
Her father and mother are weaving a path of destruction, desperation heavy in their gazes as the soldier takes her further and further away, back towards the ships that Katara can see are unloading more and more of them.
They are like tiny, black ants—the ones Gran Gran told her about—running in lines, ready to destroy and kill. For the first time since Katara learned the word 'evil' she finally knows, deep in her heart, her veins, what it means as she watches these pale men, these strange, violent soldiers, unleash havoc and pain and destruction on her home.
"What did we do?" Katara howls into the night air and the grip on her neck tightens further. "What did we do to you?"
"Shut up." The soldier's reply is quick and brutal and she feels him move, swiping at the face of another one of her clansmen. For a terrifying moment, Katara thinks she sees a smile curl at his lips and it's only reinforced when he slides a thick sword through the soft skin of one of her tribesmen's throats.
Tulak, she thinks as she watches the light leave his dark gray eyes and his body slump to the ice, still warm. Tulak, she thinks and remembers how he would give her piggy back rides and play with her brother and fish with their father. Tulak, she thinks, tears in her eyes and pain ripping from her lips, and she knows, deep in her heart, that no matter what or who these soldiers are, she will never forgive them for this.
What happens next is all in a blur and even years later when Katara looks back on these first, painful, raw memories, she cannot remember much more than hoarse yelling, aching fingers and rough hands.
Her mother screams for her once more and Katara shouts something garbled back, the soldier having had enough of her loud cries and screams for help. Katara can see her father, slashing through a soldier, uncaring when he caught a hit to the collarbone, blood dripping down his navy parka.
"Katara!" He screams for her again and something aching and burning roils within her and she stretches out, as if to catch his hands, despite him being across an entire frozen battlefield, helpless.
'Father!' She wants to scream as the soldier's hand comes down on her mouth, stifling her voice. 'Mother!' She wants to yell as she sees Kya, her mother, standing strong and fierce against a legion of pale men, her eyes wild for her daughter.
But then the soldier drags her further away, cutting through another clansmen and she sees a warship closer than she'd like.
A muffled yell comes from not too far away and the soldier jerks and instinctually, Katara knows that something will happen. Her body tenses in preparation for something, anything, but still unable to move away when—
A hand crashes down on her neck and the light dims from her eyes, the world fading away in screams and tiny, pinprick black spots, her heart beating in fear—where will he take me?
Sokka is no fool.
Sokka is no fool and so when his father and mother, splattered in blood, return to their home, eyes blank and void, he knows something is wrong. The fighting had stopped hours ago, but still, Sokka remained quiet and barely breathing in his hiding spot. Only when the igloo flaps opened and he heard the familiar scuffing of his parents' warm seal-boots did he dare to move, lifting his head from the carved-out hiding place Gran-Gran had made for provisions and extra storage.
"Mom? Dad?" He asks tentatively, escaping from the hatch, locking it behind him quickly. "What's wrong?"
He watches, taking in familiar figures and slow steps as his parents stand, shifting, on the ice floor. His mother doesn't move instantly and only when his father nudges her does she go to sit on the floor, cradling her head in her hands. As she begins to weep, harsh, hiccupping sobs wracking her body, alarm fills Sokka's chest.
"Mom?" He asks again, a little hysterically.
Sokka has not seen his mother cry since the birth of his sister and these wretched sobs and stuttering gasps of pain are so different compared to the warm, happy tears that slipped out of her warm gray eyes, her hands moving softly on his sister's pudgy newborn skin.
"Sokka." It is his father's voice that stops him in his tracks as he moves to comfort his mother. There is strength in his father's voice, strength that carries through the air and settles in Sokka's bones like a familiar blanket. He raises his eyes to face his father and nearly falls when he sees his father sink down to his knees.
His parents are crumbling and for once, Sokka knows there is no joke he can make to make the pain go away. He stands there, his heart beating heavy in his throat, and watches as his father can only stare at the ice-floor, his fingers picking at the edges of the pelts that Gran-Gran had helped glean from seal hides.
Sokka opens his mouth to ask the question again when his father raises those blank, deadened blue eyes—so similar to his own—to him and answers it before the words can escape his mouth.
"They took your sister."
Horror rises within him, sharp and real, before burning anger replaces it.
His little sister—little Katara with the blue eyes and soft brown hair and gentle smile—gone.
His little sister, whom, just yesterday was nagging him to 'eat properly Sokka; don't get a fishbone stuck in your throat'.
Sokka is no fool.
Pain, sharp, twisted, and malicious, burns throughout his body, and he thinks, he vows to hunt the soldiers down for this. Because they have taken away Katara—his innocent little sister, his best friend—and that cannot go unpunished.
Enjoy! Tell me your thoughts :) I hope I do this fandom justice because literally, this is my childhood.