AN: I own nothing.
This is inspired by a drabble I read a while ago but it is not copying it. It is simply inspired by it.
My first Avatar story, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. The AU part of this story is that Aang is dead. This is also my first AU story, however slightly it actually affects the events of the story except that it couldn't have happened without Aang being dead.
I'm rambling and not even sure that made sense, so on with the story! (Hey, last night I was singing the Beaver Song, so at least I'm being productive now.)
This was originally a oneshot, but it started getting extremely lengthy and it's just better as more than one chapter.
I can probably come up with some excuse for any OOCness, but still, it would be nice to have it pointed out. This thing will probably need intense editing anyway.
Third Person POV
No one knows what happened to her. No one really thought about it much.
There was always something else. Another city needs rebuilding, another person needs condolences, more congratulations had to be accepted.
The one person who would have remembered her, who would have made sure that attention was given to her, was dead and gone. And after a while, those she loved and who loved her thought of her as dead as well.
She was.
At least the part they knew.
They had brought her to the Water Tribe at first. Tried to take of her. But soon it was obvious that she couldn't stay there. Not with all those people. She was tortured every time someone looked at her, spoke to her, was with her.
They took turns visiting her, at least one person a day. They would never stay long, and the visits became shorter and shorter until they never came back.
She didn't notice.
And she never cared.
She was lost. Another casualty of the war that had claimed so many other lives in so many ways. She was injured, not just her body, but her mind.
She left and never came back.
They looked for her at first, but they couldn't search forever, not when there were other matters to attend to.
She didn't mind.
She liked being alone.
She liked her new home. It was quiet. Peaceful. She wasn't bothered here.
Until now.
*****
The Fire Lord surveyed the lands with an uncaring stare. It was pretty, he thought, but Zuko didn't really care about the prettiness of the landscape.
He was looking for her.
It was embarrassing, actually, that it had taken him this long. Having tracked a one hundred and twelve year old monk with supernatural powers for years, one would think finding a fifteen year old insane girl would be easy.
Obviously he had underestimated her.
Or she was simply too insane to do anything logically. Considering what had happened, that was probably the case.
He was fairly sure he had found her, though. After several months of research and intense questioning, it had taken a casual conversation with a random traveler to find the first hint of her he had had in weeks.
The traveler had mentioned how he passed by a shack in the hills. He said some other people had said that a woman, made insane by the war, lived there.
It had taken a while for Zuko to actually find this place, but he could see why Katara, even as insane as she probably was, would like this place.
There was a river that meandered its way through the hills and valleys, carving out a path that Zuko now followed. He had passed the closest village over an hour ago, and hadn't seen a single traveler besides himself.
He hadn't seen her much before she had disappeared. Somehow he had gotten cut out of the rotation of people that went to see her when she staying with the Water Tribe, probably since they didn't trust him.
He remembered how they had rejected him.
"Look," Sokka had said, "You're obviously not your father. We know that. But now that Aang's gone, there isn't a whole lot stopping you from doing whatever you want with this new power of yours. We know it, and we know you know it, so you're going to have to deal with the fact that we don't trust you."
It could have been said with more tact, but this was Sokka, and Zuko was thankful for his honesty.
Now he shocked himself by going after a woman driven insane by his own people's actions.
But it had to be done.
And it looked like he was the only one who was actually going to do it.
Sokka had gone back to his village and lived there happily, though he often traveled to talk to many people around the four nations who were looking to record the war and its events. His girlfriend Suki came sometimes, too.
Toph went back to her parents, and then left again not long after to travel as well. Zuko had heard rumors that she had joined with Sokka, but since he hadn't seen any of them in months, he didn't know what was rumor and what was fact.
And Aang was dead. Gone. Had his life drained by the energy it took to strip Ozai of his powers. He was hailed as the fallen savior, the hero. His body had been buried at the Air Temple where he had been raised one hundred years ago.
Zuko supposed that meant that there was a new Avatar out there somewhere, but he would climb that hurdle when he got there.
For now, he had a mission.
Find the one member of the group that didn't get what she deserved.
The rest were happy, or so he assumed. They had company, and weren't being tortured or killed, so it wasn't like they had any reason not to be happy.
But Katara. . . She was hurt. Well, they all had had at least scrapes and bruises, and she had the ability to heal herself, so he wasn't worried about that.
But she wasn't right in the head. He remembered those firsts few days after the battle.
She had seemed normal. Or at least as normal as a grief-stricken person can be. She spent most of her time in her temporary room in the Fire Nation Palace where they were all staying until they could figure out where to go from there. They heard crying coming from there, which was to be expected. She had just lost her best friend.
But then she never came out. They had to leave food for her, and she never made eye contact, never talked except for a small thank you. That was it.
They had to practically carry her out to start the journey back to the Water Tribe where she and Sokka had called home before meeting the Avatar. She was screeching and fighting to get away. Her brother's eyes were sad and full of pity for the insane person his sister had become.
The last Zuko had heard she had vanished and no one had found her yet.
Until now.
*****
It took Zuko about another half hour of travel on his rhino before he came to the round hut. It was small, and backed up to the hillside. It looked like it was held together by mud and had a roof of reeds and branches from the river and the forest on the other side of the river.
Zuko realized she had probably built it herself.
The door was a sheet of reeds hung in a gap wide enough for two people to squeeze through. As Zuko dismounted the rhino and walked over he wondered how he was supposed to knock on a door that would probably fall down if he touched it. He settled for calling out her name.
"Katara?" he called. There was no response except for some shuffling from within.
"Katara?" he called again. The shuffling stopped. He pushed some reeds carefully aside and stuck his head in. "Katar- Hey!"
Only his reflexes saved him from getting a large piece of wood in the head. He grabbed her wrist that held the thick, makeshift club over his head and brought it down between their faces. He gently pried it out of her fingers with his other hand and let it drop to the ground. Then, he looked at her.
Her hair was wild, like she hadn't brushed since escaping the Southern Water Tribe months ago. Her face, at the moment, was the same as it had been last time he had seen her, though the expression was different. She had the confused expression of a small child, and her eyes held fear. Her clothes were tattered, like they hadn't been washed in a while.
She was a wreck.
"Katara?" he said gently. "It's Zuko."
"Let go!" Her voice was scared and frightened.
"Katara, relax. I wouldn't hurt you. You know that."
"I said, let go!" Zuko heard less of a frightened tone and more of an angry one. Remembering what she could do when she was angry and sane, the idea of her angry and insane was enough to make him acquiesce and drop her wrist.
She took a step back, and for the first time, Zuko got to look at the hut that she called home.
The walls were lined with shelves that look like they were made out of branches stuck in the mud wall. There was a stump that grew to the side of the hut that looked like it had been there long before the hut had. She must have built her house around the stump. There looked like there was a pit in the center for a fire and a mat of reeds lay next to it.
The shelves were lined with jars and glasses, all full of water. Zuko didn't know where Katara had gotten them from, but there were probably at least fifty. They were a testament to how truly and deeply disturbed she was.
"Who are you?" she said. "And what do you want?"
"Katara, it's Zuko. Remember? I traveled with you, you helped me fight my insane sister."
The look on her face said blatantly that she did not remember. Zuko felt a surge of pity. This girl had been driven mad. Absolutely mad. More than he had thought.
She looked like his sister had after being defeated. By her.
But she looked even more pissed.
Which did not bode well for Zuko's life expectancy.
The water rattled in the jars, which proved that she still had the ability to do some serious damage. The insanity didn't take her ability to bend.
Which she proved when she used the water to blast Zuko out the reed door into his rhino. When his vision cleared, she was standing at the door, holding an easily defendable position and waiting for an attack.
As he made an attempt to stand up, he found himself frozen to a very pissed rhino. As he quickly defrosted himself, he saw that Katara had barely moved. She was waiting for him to attack, which he wouldn't. He was trying to convince her to trust him and somehow shooting a fireball at her didn't seem like the best way. Didn't he learn that years ago?
This time he saw the whip of water coming toward him and stopped it with a shield of fire. He cautiously walked toward her, keeping his hands in easy to see places.
"I want to help you," he said carefully.
"I don't need help!" she screeched. He was within three feet of her again.
"Yes, you do." He grabbed her around the waist and slung her over his shoulder.
"Hey! Put me down!" She started beating on his back with her fists. Zuko didn't know if she simply forgot she could bend the water of the river or what, but she didn't use any bending to try and break free.
She was strong, though. Zuko finally set her down on her feet beside the giant rhino. He kept a hold of her shoulders and looked into her face.
"Katara." She flinched from his grip on her shoulders. It was firm, but not tight enough to hurt her. Zuko had a feeling it wasn't the grip, but the contact. Zuko remembered the shell she seemed to withdraw into when anyone talked to her before they took her to the Southern Water Tribe. Sokka had told him once that she was crazed when the majority of the Southern Water Tribe tried to talk to her when they arrived.
"Katara, I'm going to let you go. But don't run away. Please. Then we just have to do this all over again. Okay?"
Her eyes were wide with the fear of a trapped animal. She nodded slowly, not blinking or changing her facial expression. Zuko slowly relaxed his fingers. Katara immediately backed up about three steps, relaxing from her scared animal state but bending water to her and holding it in front of her.
"Don't touch me," she said slowly. "Just don't."
"Okay. Got it."
There were a few moments of awkward silence. Katara's water swirled in front of her.
"Look, Katara, you can't live like this."
"You can't tell me what to do! I don't even know you!"
"Yes, you do! I'm your friend. We fought Azula together. We traveled together with everyone else. Toph? Sokka? You remember your brother, right?"
"I have no family. No friends. And I don't know you!" she spat at him. Zuko's eyes widened as he realized how deep the damage really was to her mind.
It was reminiscent of Jet, except Jet simply had amnesia. Katara's mind was not working right. Normal people do not put water in jars then put them on a shelf in a tiny hut they built themselves. It wasn't normal.
She had no clue what happened. No clue of her family, her friends. She didn't know why she was out in the middle of nowhere in a hut but she didn't really think about it either.
"Katara. Er. . . You need to come with me."
"I do not."
"I would like you to come with me."
"Why?" So she couldn't question her own situation of a life in a hut, but she could question his motives. Typical Katara. Some things never change.
"Because I want to help you."
"I told you, I don't need help!"
"Maybe not. But you could use it. It couldn't anything, right? If you want, I'll take you right back here. Anytime. But you have to come with me first. Deal?"
She looked at him critically. "Fine."