I do not own any of the characters portrayed in the following story and will not seek financial gain from their usage. All characters and settings in the Avatar: the Last Airbender universe are the property of Nickelodeon Studios and its affiliates. I am just a fan!
Please enjoy and review! This is my first story on this site and I look forward to sharing it with you guys. Warning: It will be a relatively dark tale and later chapters will contain sexual situations.
Prologue
The news came in the middle of the night. Frightened voices could barely be heard streaming from beyond the doorway where her guards were stationed. Her hearing was not what it used to be, but Hama still caught enough of the hurried conversations to understand. The war was over and the Fire Nation stood defeated. The wizened old waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe let a vindictive smirk spread across her ancient face. After all this time, finally there would be a chance for vengeance. The deaths of her friends and family and fellow benders, the annihilation of her entire culture, would be repaid tenfold; at long last, things would be set right. The Fire Nation and all its people would feel a hundred years worth of pain and misery. Judgment would be swift and unrelenting. And if the whispered rumors were true, it was thanks to the Avatar, master of all the elements.
"Fire Lord Ozai is dead," one voice had muttered in a terrified whisper. "A friend of my cousin was with the armada. He saw the Avatar cut him in half."
"I heard the Avatar flung him into a mountain and buried him alive," said another, who sounded more awestruck than terrified.
"No, no, no. Ozai's alive. He escaped just when the Avatar was about to strike the final blow. He's somewhere in the Earth Kingdom right now, preparing a counter-attack," chimed in a third voice, but she was quickly drowned out by a chorus of denials and accusations of "wishful thinking" and "damned conspiracy theories."
None of it mattered to Hama. One thing was certain: the war was over and every single one of her captors was on the losing side. Before this was over, the furious prisoner would make the guards wish they had put her to death instead of throwing her behind these cruel, metal bars. But Hama was patient. She had waited in this cramped cell for weeks after Katara and her friends, the Avatar among them, helped the Fire Nation villagers imprison her. She could wait a few more days.
And she did wait. The hours turned into days, the days into weeks, and the weeks into months. Where were the Earth Kingdom soldiers and her brothers and sisters from the Northern Tribe? Where was dear, naïve, infuriating Katara and her fool brother? Where was the Avatar? Where was her absolution?!
Nothing seemed to change. The same guards meandered into her quarters. They fed her the same disgusting food in the same filthy bowls. She had to endure the same infuriating humiliation every time nature called. Three firebenders stood ready to incinerate her at a moment's notice as another chained her hands behind her back and held her roughly as her urine stained the floor. A final man scrubbed away furiously as the trickle fell, intent on ensuring that no trace of liquid remained. The soldiers often joked that they drew straws to see who would get that illustrious duty. Hama had once taken some measure of delight in splattering the unfortunate soldier with her stream, but she had been beaten fiercely afterward and did not try it again.
Time went by torturously slowly as the indignities she suffered mounted. Eventually, she learned that the Avatar and the new Fire Lord were allies. Friends! The Fire Nation would not be punished but forgiven, their myriad crimes forgotten in the name of peace. Hama cried out in raging agony but the angry tears did not come. The room was kept so dry and she was allowed so little water to drink that she was almost constantly dehydrated.
Her soiled and tattered rags offered little protection from the chill or cruel roughness of the floor as she thrashed against it. Lost in her madness, she did not care that she bruised and cut her arms. It was only later that she noticed the small pool of blood on the stone. Her maddened eyes glinted as she tried to bend the crimson puddle to her will. She managed only to make it bubble and shift an inch or so. She cursed beneath her breath as she looked up and out through the slitted window that provided her with her sole source of sunlight and fresh air.
The opening was not large enough for her to slide through even if she had been able to reach it. But it did afford her a view of the sky. The palest sliver of the waxing moon hung in the obsidian tapestry, a crescent island adrift in a sea of stars. Why had she not thought of this before? Full moons had come and gone many times throughout her imprisonment. Upon Katara's and the villagers' advisement, when those nights came, the guards stayed far away so as to be out of Hama's range. She could only bloodbend during the full moon and she could not bloodbend those she could not see.
So while she could feel the power coursing through her, she never had the option to use it. But her own blood...that was always with her. The sight of the moon stilled her rage and her face was set in calm determination. She stared at that small stain of sanguine hope and smiled. She cuddled up into her sleeping corner and closed her eyes. For the first time in a long time, she slept peacefully throughout the night.
Two weeks passed and Hama endured her beatings and humiliations better than she ever had before and more than she originally thought possible. She smiled as she slurped up the grime that passed for food in the prison, delighting in the warmth that filled her stomach as it went down. She ignored the barbs and taunts flung at her by the guards. She even tried to chat amicably with them when they came for the daily ritual of ensuring she did not use her piss to kill every last one of them. And at the end of every day, she would rest, free from nightmares and pain. The last thing she beheld each night before closing her eyes was the moon, growing larger and brighter.
The night of the full moon began like any other. Her jailors tended to her early in the morning and when dusk came to smother the light from the world they retreated far behind their steel doors and walls. But that would not save them, not tonight. When the beautiful silver rays of the full moon streamed through her window, bathing her in their rejuvenating light, Hama laughed. Loudly and fiercely she laughed until tears of joy streamed down her crevassed face. She laughed until her aged body shook. She laughed until she could barely breathe.
And then she took her arm in her mouth and chewed. She punctured the leathery skin easily and tasted the hot metallic flow, but it was not enough. She tore and mauled at her flesh, wincing and shaking from the agony, but her hatred gave her strength and rage deadened her pain. Finally, her blood was flowing freely from the weeping gash she had torn from her flesh. She reached out and her own blood rose from the wound and from the floor where so much of it had fallen. Her arms flowed around her with the grace and fluidity of a river and soon her blood was shaped into a floating scythe.
Hama lunged forward, striking the bars of her cell with her blood. She clenched her hands into a tight fist, compressing the gory stream until it was sharper than a knife. Again and again it sliced against steel. As the waterbender continued to bleed, she added more and more blood to her crimson tool. The shrill sound of metal giving way drove her on until finally, the bar fell away. Emaciated and frail, Hama had little trouble slipping through the widened gap.
Shadows surrounded her as she walked slowly toward the door. Her blood flowed in ribbons all around her body. She merged them into one arrow shaped cudgel and used it to strike at the lock, shattering it with one fierce blow. The door opened and three guards looked up in horror as Hama entered. One of them, a firebender, stood and tried to immolate her in a torrent of flame. But before so much as smoke could leave his hand, it clenched and twisted at an unnatural angle. The man sputtered in shock as he tried in vain to regain control of his arm. With an almost lazy shrug of her shoulders, Hama sent him flying head first into a nearby wall. A sickening crunch accompanied the impact and the old woman could sense the blood begin to pour out of his mangled skull.
By now, the dead man's companions had grabbed their weapons and were rushing toward her. She sneered at them and lifted her outstretched hands. The pair were stopped dead in their tracks and began floating upward as the very blood in their veins pushed their bodies into the air. She laughed cruelly as both men were made to raise their blades and press them against each other's throats. They begged and pleaded and the younger one who could not have been more than eighteen, even cried.
Hama snarled. Their sickly mewls ended abruptly as she forced their arms to spasm. The steel of their swords cut through feeble flesh and their blood fell like rain. They fell to the floor in a lifeless heap just as the door opposite her entrance swung open. Three more men, all of them firebenders, streamed in and prepared to attack but they never got the chance.
Instead, they all began to scream in torturous agony. The sound was unearthly, the stuff of nightmares. But to Hama, it was the most lovely music she had ever heard. As she made the blood in their veins boil and the fluids in their stomachs expand and cut through the elastic lining of their guts and bowels, she pictured the firebenders who had killed her father and stolen her away so long ago. This was justice; bloody, painful, cruel justice.
By now, the alarms were sounding and men and women were flying in all directions. The fools who attempted to stop her met grisly ends. The more clever among them tried to flee. Tried. She took control of the bodies of three female guards who had ran at the sight of her and forced their faces up against a steam pipe that ran along the top of the wall. It was designed to spread heat throughout the guard quarters, but Hama knew how to put it to better use. She increased the pressure and heat of the steam within the iron tubing until it burst, bathing their terrified faces in a superheated fog that melted the flesh from their bones.
Eventually, Hama found the exit. A trail of mutilated corpses filled the dilapidated and unassuming building behind her. Before her, was the sea. Her prison sat on a small and secluded island, bereft of trees or natural beauty. But the reflection of the moon on the surface of the sea was all the beauty she needed. Hama walked down to the beach and cooed in contentment as the cool sand soothed her ragged and bare feet. The tides came up to kiss her flesh, welcoming her with their healing and tender embrace. She smiled down at the bloody wound on her arm and stilled the bleeding through sheer force of will.
The elderly waterbender silently thanked the moon as her silver hair, caught in a refreshing and salty gust of wind, streamed behind her. This was freedom. For the second time in her long life she had escaped imprisonment. Hama vowed then and there on that silent, windswept beach that she would die before ever again she allowed herself to be caged like an animal. Her jaw clenched in resolute determination. She had work to do. The Fire Nation had ruined her life and they would suffer. But it was the Avatar and his friends that had robbed her of her rightful chance at vengeance. They too would pay. They would do more than pay; they would mourn the days of their births.
Cackling in glee and with nothing except retribution on her mind, Hama leaped forward into the surf and rocketed away on the surface of the water. Her gnarled hands sent up plumes of ocean spray as she jetted forward at an alarming pace. The moon above her, the ocean at her feet, and the blood - so much blood - on her hands, made Hama smile. She had not felt such happiness in a long time. And her enemies were about to discover that they had never felt true pain.