Okay, so this is going to be a collection of side stories for my major project, Never the Last, usually one- or two-shots involving characters other than On Ji and from their perspectives. This first chapter was originally Chapter Four of NtL, but it occured to me that the way it was going and knowing myself, the fic was going to end up more Zutara than On Jaang, which I don't want to happen. And so this was born.
The Southern Raiders Part One: Black Snow
The day had so far been eventful, to say the least. Earlier that morning, Katara and Zuko had returned from their secret mission, and it wasn't long after that before On Ji finally got to meet Katara, her romantic rival, in person (it actually only took her half an hour to find them!). The interesting thing was, despite the jealousy factor On Ji and Katara became fast friends, and spent pretty much the entire day wandering around the Western Air Temple, just talking.
By the time they got back to camp (okay, found their way back to camp), it was already late in the evening. Zuko had apparently started a fire (On Ji took a moment to recognize him from the scar, since she had always seen him in pictures with a proper topknot), and a pot of boiling water was sitting over it while Sokka tapped his foot.
"I can't believe this Katara. You finally come back, and instead of cooking again, you take disappear and take forever to return. Now Suki's cooking dinner again!" He practically exploded. Suki stood up behind him.
"What was that about my cooking Sokka?" The warrior froze.
"... nothing dear."
"That's what I thought." Suki could be scary sometimes, but On Ji had to agree with Sokka. She was not looking forward to another meal from Suki, and she doubted anyone else was either. Except maybe Chit Zang. He ate anything. Katara and On Ji joined the rest of the group around the fire as Suki poured the thick yellow soup into bowls for everyone. An odd and unusual silence had fallen over them, until Aang decided to break it.
"So, Katara, Zuko, you guys said you'd tell us what you were up to all week over dinner. Mind sharing with the rest of us?" He asked anxiously, almost like a child asking for storytime. Katara looked at Zuko, and they nodded simultaneously.
"It started when Hawky came back from the news station." Katara started. "I was the nearest person, so he came to me..."
Katara looked towards the screeching sound coming from the canyon, and instinctively held out her arm as Hawky drew near. The bird had proven to be a very skilled messenger hawk, having been able to track them no matter where they went. It had provided her with an endless source of amusement, mocking Zuko for failing to do what a simply bird did so easily. Not entirely true of course, since he was excellent at tracking them, he was just never able to capture Aang. But now that was besides the point, he was with them. He said. Katara still didn't trust him, and she was keeping her word. Watching him like a hawk, and ensuring he didn't hurt one metaphorical hair on Aang's head. She reached for the tube attached to Hawky's back with her free hand, removing the piece of paper from it. Inside was a memo and newsletter that the Fire Navy sent out to all the platoons deployed at the time. It wasn't usually much good, but Hawky, after Zuko had told them the various insignias used by official messenger hawks, was their best spy in the Fire Nation. She twisted a small mechanism that Teo had come up with, automatically switching the insignia to the ordinary Fire Nation one.
"Okay Hawky, fly into town and pick us up a civilian newspaper." She flicked her arm, sending Hawky flying over the balcony and away. Then she unrolled the paper and took a look at it. After five minutes of reading, she dropped it, her hand covering her mouth in horror. The page she was on had one thing on it: a picture of a sea raven on a flag, with the caption "Southern Raiders to Renew Assaults on Southern Water Tribe."
Several hours passed, during which Katara read and re-read the paper, staring at the words. She remembered the last time the Southern Raiders came to her village. It was when she was very young, just a little girl, back when the village could actually be called a town. She had been playing with Sokka and a few other children in that day, having a snowball fight (she'd been winning, having the obvious advantage) when it began to snow. Black snow. The adults all recognized the signs, and rushed to battle, sending the younger ones to their homes. Katara had complied, but Sokka decided to stay, hidden behind a snow bank to watch the battle. She and her mother had hidden fearfully in their small hut, listening to the sounds of battle, when a man dressed in full Fire Navy gear sauntered in like he lived there. The only part of him that wasn't covered was his arm, which had a tattoo of a sea raven on it. He said that he knew there was a waterbender in the South Pole, and asked Kya where the bender was, as casualy as if he were talking about the weather. A tear slid down Katara's face as she remembered that horrible day.
At Kya's continued silence, the man's eyes narrowed for a second, but then his face was normal in a flash, and Katara wasn't sure it had ever changed at all.
"M'am, I know you're the Chief's wife and that you take care of matters in your quaint little village, so there's no reason to deny that you know. Now I know you must think I'm a villain for all my raiding, but please understand that I'm only doing my job. I take no pleasure in capturing members of your tribe, but I have a wife and six children that need feeding. So please, help me do my job and I'll leave your village alone." More silence. Katara almost spoke up, to end the violence before her daddy got hurt, but Kya's grip on her arm tightened, signaling her to stay quiet. "Alright then, if you won't tell me, I'll just have to take prisoners at random until we find your waterbender. Starting... with the girl." The woman's eyes widened.
"No! Please, I'll tell you what you want to know. The waterbender... is me. I'm the one you're looking for. Just... take me, and leave my daughter out of this." She pleaded. Katara gasped. Her mom wasn't a Waterbender, she was! She wanted to cry out, to tell the bad man that her mom was lying, that she was the Waterbender, but then the man smirked, and she stopped herself, terrified.
"Well that's a shame. You seem like such a nice lady, and young too. Unfortunately for you, my orders aren't to capture you, if you understand what I'm saying." The man's smile grew, but in a scary way, and he pulled his fist back as Kya pushed Katara away...
Katara stopped her mind from going any further. She didn't want to relive that horrible moment. The rest of it was painful enough. She was now crying openly, tears flowing down her cheeks. Her fist clenched around the paper, as sadness turned to anger. He broke his promise. The only solace that Katara had taken from that day was the knowledge that in her sacrifice, her mother had kept those horrible people from coming back to their tribe and killing more. But now, now that the Earth Kingdom had officially fallen, the Fire Nation was turning their attention to the Water Tribe, and they were going to start by sending the Southern Raiders back to the South Pole. Even assuming Pakku and the Waterbenders from the North Pole were still there, these were the men who had taken down dozens of Waterbenders throught the years, and had killed almost a dozen men of the tribe in that last raid, one that lasted for all of ten minutes. Her tribe was doomed. Unless she saved it.
"WHAT?!" Sokka shouted at the top of his lungs. Hakoda opened his mouth to add, but Sokka apparently wasn't finished. "Our village, OUR village, was going to be under attack and you didn't even bother to mention it to me? You couldn't have even bothered with a 'Hey Sokka, the village is doomed, want some soup?' Didn't it even remotely occur to you that that might be something I would want to know?" Katara stood up.
"You wouldn't understand Sokka. You weren't there when Mom died. You didn't watch him kill her in cold blood! You haven't had to deal with the guilt of your mother trading her life for yours for eight years! This was something I needed to do, alone. How could you ever understand that?. The only person who could is Zuko!" Simultaneously everyone's jaws dropped except for Chit Zang, Hakoda, and On Ji. Apparently this was a surprise.
"Since when do you identify with Zuko?" Aang asked. "Don't you hate him?" Now that, that wasn't news to On Ji. One of the stories she'd heard over and over again was the fall of Ba Sing Se and Zuko's betrayal, specifically of Katara.
"Since Ba Sing Se." Speak of the devil. Katara suddenly got a lot quieter. "When he told me how he lost his mother too. But also..." She trailed off, and Zuko picked it up from there.
"A while after Katara got the letter, I walked in on her packing up her stuff..."
Zuko had just passed off Aang for Earthbending training with Toph, and was now walking to his room to meditate. Ordinarily he would do so in the early morning, but due to the urgency of time dawn until two o' candle was spent in Firebending training, two to dusk was Earthbending, and Aang practiced his Water and Airbending at night. The poor kid didn't have quite as much energy as he normall did, but based on how his life had been since joining Team Avatar ('Team Avatar?' On Ji thought. 'Works a lot better than the Gaang.'), he would inevitably go on a life changing field trip with one of the other members soon and Aang would be able to get some extra rest. As he passed Katara's room though, he stopped short. There was an odd ruffling sound, like clothes being put into a bag. He frowned, and then knocked tentatively, knowing full well that Katara didn't trust him.
'Not like she has a reason to anyway.' He thought. Considering what he did last time she trusted him, he couldn't blame her. Still, they were companions, so if something was wrong he had to check on her. The sound stopped, and then there was another sound of something being pushed on a floor, then footsteps, and then the door opened. Katara stood on the other side, and glared when she realized who it was.
"What." It wasn't a question. It was a statement, which equivalted to "Say 'Nothing' and go away.'" Of course, Zuko didn't do that.
"I heard something odd, and was just making sure you were okay. No need to snap at me." Zuko replied, annoyed. True, she didn't like him, but that was no reason to be so rude.
"Well, I'm perfectly fine, and even if I wasn't I wouldn't want your help, so kindly leave." And with that she slammed the door in his face. Meaning literally in his face. The doors had nothing stopping them when they closed, you had to turn the lock when it was in a closed position to keep it from opening, so when she threw it forward, it went straight forward and slammed into his nose before retreating backwards into the neutral position, where the locked clicked in a particularly smug manner. Zuko brought his hand up to his nose in pain, checking to see if it was broken (it wasn't, and good thing too because the resident healer probably wouldn't do a thing about it). Most other people would have left, but not him. He didn't need Toph to know she was lying, because her eyes were puffy and red. She'd obviously been crying.
He retreated into the room across the hall and left the door open a crack, watching her door with his good eye. After about half an hour it opened, and Katara left, probably to get dinner started. After her footsteps had faded away, he pulled the door open and slipped across the hall into her room. Once inside, he remembered hearing something being pushed across the floor, and immediately walked over the her bed, getting on his knees and looking under it. Her duffel bag was there. Well, that also answered the question of the mysterious ruffling, since it looked full and packed, so she was obviously planning on going somewhere. He then stood up, and scanned the room for any indication of where she might be going. A crumpled up piece of paper, obviously from Hawky because only the militaries used paper in the Fire Nation as it was cheaper than parchment but far lower quality, had been tossed in the corner, seeming oddly out of place to belong in the room of the neat and tidy Miss Perfect. It was doubly strange because they were supposed to pass around military documents as soon as they arrived, and Katara had been the one to suggest that in the first place. He walked over and picked it up, opening it up and smoothing it out. It appeared to be a page from the Navy newsletter. He scanned the article, and sighed. Yep, his fears were confirmed. Time for another field trip.
Katara said almost nothing during dinner, eating quietly and staring into the fire when she was done. Only Zuko and Hakoda seemed to notice though, since it had been almost non-stop training since the adventure at the Boiling Rock, and everyone was starving, particularly Aang. However, both could tell she didn't want to talk about it (and the former already knew what it was about anyway) so they left it alone. After dinner, Aang took flight to practice his Airbending while everyone else went to bed. Everyone else except, that is, Zuko, and probably Katara. He made like he was going to bed, but once he was sure everyone else was already fast asleep and Aang was long gone, he grabbed his bag and went back to the bison stables. Appa woke up immediately, his sensitive ears picking up Zuko's light footsteps, stared at him, and grunted.
"Yes Appa, again. Just bear with me on this one, it takes more than two to operate the airship." Appa grunted again, almost in a questioning manner. "It's Katara." Appa grunted one more time and then put his head back down, staying awake but displaying his discontent at being woken up in the middle of the night for the second time in a row and this time actually having to go somewhere. Zuko just sighed. "Listen to me, talking to you like you can talk back. I must be losing it." He shook his head and walked up to the bison's side, tossing the bag up into the saddle and then jumping in after it, before settling back to wait.
He didn't have to wait long, though, because just a few minutes later Katara came in, and he heard her voice when Appa grunted at her much like he had with the Prince.
"I'm sorry buddy, but there's something I have to do. I promise we'll stop right before we get there and then I'll let you sleep there." Appa looked at her, and looked at the hallway that lead to Zuko's room. There's was nothing else of importance in that particular wing of the Temple, so she understood what he was getting at. "No I am not bringing Zuko. Just because Aang and Sokka had a life changing field trip with him doesn't mean I'm going to." She slung her bag on her shoulder, jumped up, grabbed the side of the saddle, and pulled herself over in one surprisingly agile movement.
"Yeah, you are." Zuko said.
"Zuko! What are you doing here?" She asked sharply, her voice raising slightly above a whisper.
"I found this in your room." He held up the piece of paper with the Southern Raiders picture on it. "Mean anything to you?" Katara suddenly got a very angry look on her face, one that people usually run from. Particularly on her, Suki, or Toph. Then again, they were three of the four most dangerous women on the planet (and the fourth is rather obvious).
"And what exactly where you doing in my room?" She demanded, her voice raising just an decible higher than before.
"You were obviously crying before, and like I said, I was just trying to make sure you were all right, which clearly you weren't if you're trying to sneak away on Appa. So let me ask you this. Why didn't you tell us about the Southern Raiders? You know we would have all gone to protect your village, so why go alone, and don't even try to deny that that's what you're doing." Her face became softer, and sadder.
"Personal demons. Nothing you'd understand."
"Try me."
"Okay, how's this. Knowing that my mother is dead because of me. Knowing that my life, my brother's, and my entire village's was ruined because of me. The last time the Southern Raiders came to my village it was to find me, and my mom sacrificed herself to save me. Their leader killed her right in front of me and laughed. Then my father and all the men of the village went off to war, leaving all of the children without their fathers, women to pray they don't become widows, parents not knowing if their children would come home safe and alive, all because of me. Can you understand that at all?" She was know shouting, not caring who might hear and come running, tears running down her face as she faced her guilt yet again. Zuko looked her straight in the eye.
"When I was seven my mother committed high treason by killing my grandfather and helping my father usurp the throne to save my life, resulting in her banishment and my belief that I had gotten her killed somehow. When I was thirteen I spoke out in a war room and had to fight my father in a duel. When I refused to fight him, he burned me in the face and banished me, forcing me to hunt the Avatar to earn back my honor and my throne. Two months ago I betrayed the only two people in the world who knew about my past and still trusted me, and cared about me." Katara's eyes widened in shock when she realized he was talking about her as well as Iroh. "Then one month ago I betrayed my father to help his enemies, tried to break my Uncle out of jail although he had already done it himself, and now find myself, in an ironic twist of fate, helping the Avatar kill my father instead of the other way around. So yeah, I know a thing or two about guilt and shame. Don't tell me I wouldn't understand." Katara blinked.
"You can come."
Aang gawked at Katara. "You let him come, just like that? I walked out on the entire world for a century and let it spiral into war with a tyrannical evil overlord- no offense Zuko- dominating nearly the entire world and leaving my entire people to be annihlated. Remember, we had that whole big talk about it?" Katara shook her head.
"It wasn't the guilt itself. It was living with it for so long. Zuko didn't need to tell me any more of it, he had me at his mother. I knew he could understand because in the same situation I know he would have done exactly the same thing. He knew what it was like to be responsible for something horrible happening to someone close to him. And... I hadn't given him a proper chance either. I knew he knew that he made a mistake in Ba Sing Se, I just didn't want to admit it. It was his way of making it up to me, of redeeming himself. I needed to forgive him."
"And I needed to be forgiven." Zuko finished.
I hope you enjoy the darker spin I put on Southern Raiders. I figured the most traumatic experience in Katara's life should've been... well, quite a bit more traumatic. I mean, it wasn't nearly as bad as Zuko's worst memories, and I would imagine the overwhelming guilt Aang felt about abandoning the world beat it too. And I like hurting my characters, especially using death to do it.
And yes, I brought both Hawky and the Candle Clocks back. Hawky, I figured, would've had to have found the Bei Fongs without any trouble since they are such high class individuals, and since messenger hawks have always been shown to be able to find their targets wherever they are (the one bird even found Zhao at the Yu Yan Archer base) I assume he would've been able to track the Gaang wherever. He was just always off screen because whenever they were anywhere they always sent him off to people with letters, and then when Zuko joined they started using him as a spy. As for the Candle Clocks, I figure Sokka took some stuff with him from the Northern Air Temple and just never had a chance to use them.