Born of Dark Water
A Katara centric one-shot inspired by Florence and the Machine's song "Landscape".
She has tried to ignore it for so long, the song that sings in her veins. She has tried to convince herself that she can be happy with the life that has been given to her. She knows that it is in her to be a good wife and mother to his children, but she is not quite sure it is what she wants. The waters that he knew growing up were not hers. They were warm, sweet streams that lapped at his feet and invited him in to play. They were calm and peaceful, a soothing balm to a boy's soul. Once upon a time, she had been that herself. A still lake upon which a man could sail and see the other shore. A man upon those docile waves knew that he would reach the other side safely, but that was her no longer. Something from the deeps had been stirred to life, roaring towards to the surface to break it and shatter it into a shower of icy droplets that stung and lacerated the skin it touched.
She is not quite sure when this change took place, but she has a suspicion it was when that great black iron beast of a ship made anchor on her little ice floe. It was then that she had felt the first quaking in her limbs, how they trembled as if caught in a gale. The world over she had traveled for a year, feeling the old lines of her people catching in her bones, ripping apart the frail tissues of her heart and lungs. She breathed and felt the holes open up and beg her to fill them with something different than what she had known as a girl. It was easy to forget at that time in the Southern Water Tribe that she was descended from an ancient people who had once been warriors and kings. The traces of long dead bending masters before her were still there though they slept fitfully.
At night she would slip out of bed and pad quietly out of the temple to the ocean. It hummed like a mother to her child, and Katara responded the only way she knew how to now. Her arms would raise of their own accord and the water would follow her movements. She would weave it into any shape that pleased her at the moment. She would make the waves thrash and collide violently against each other, whipping everything up into a white froth. When the moon was full, it was worse. It was not just the water she felt, but everyone on their small island. Their hearts beat like drums in her ears, and she knew that she needed to but squeeze her hand into a fist to end anyone of them. That sort of power was frightening and intoxicating. How many times had that little secret been on the tip of her tongue as Aang lay against her softly breathing? How would he understand? He had been afraid to wield a small flame, and its power was nothing in comparison to hers on those nights. Fire could burn you and leave you a pile of ashes, but she could kill a man from the inside out. He would die with no other sign than blood flecking his lips.
So she would let the water fall around her in a heavy rain and remember all too vividly the snows of her homeland. The South Pole was cruel and merciless to any outsider. It was what had kept them safe from the Fire Nation for so long. Those waters were old and fathomless and covetous. They would sneak upon you and pull you down into their dark depths if you let them or they might suddenly rise up in a storm and smash you to pieces to let your bones collect on the seafloor like an old woman hiding away her favorite jewels.
The longing was so strong that often she would find herself standing thigh deep in the water before she even knew it. It would lap and bite around the tender skin of her hips and beg her to submerge herself in it, to let it carry her away on its tide. Where would it take her she wondered? Anywhere she let it. Anywhere she wanted it to. That was the most frightening part. She knew that somehow she would wind up on the volcanic shores of the Fire Nation, drenched and half wild like a vengeful spirit. She would go there seeking a lighthouse whose light she could see stretching out across the black ocean though no one else could. Its siren call was only for her she knew. It awoke things in her best left alone, but she had never been one to do as she should or as she was told.
She was a daughter of ice and snow and rain born of such a place that no one but herself could imagine it.
It seems like it has been forever since I wrote anything for AtLA. I have been trying for a couple of months now to come up with something, but nothing clicked. This is certainly not my best, but it does feel good to at least finally write something. Please let me know what you thought. I'm a bit rusty at writing Katara. Does this seem OOC for her?