Katara was expecting many things when the jail's door swung open on rusty iron hinges. Torture equipment, for one - racks, wheels, other sick arrays of bloodied cold metal made for only one purpose. Chains hanging heavy ready for her to be put in them. Perhaps a fireplace or a tower of embers stuck through with glowing white-hot prods ready to burn a confession out of someone.

What she was not expecting was to see someone whose funeral she had attended a mere two weeks ago.

He lifted his head, squinting against the sudden light of the open door. There was a new cut on his lip, and his nose was a little bloodied; his hair hung into his face in lanky unwashed strands and tumbled into tangles down his shoulders. Looking away from his face was difficult, but adrenaline at least guided her to assess all of the situation. He was chained peculiarly. Ankles seemed sensible enough, each shackle separately chained to the wall. His hands were dangling mid-air, out to his side, limp in the restraints that went to the ceiling. And hooks - two of them, awful and brutish, had speared the meat of his shoulders, holding him up in a test of endurance. There was blood both fresh and new in the holes they tore, and threatened to tear more if he dared to try to lay down or even rest against the stone wall behind him.

Despite wanting to scream, her voice came out small and trembling. "...Zuko?"

A crooked, sad little smile. "Evening, Katara."

"Ah, yes, the happy reunion," drawled the gaoler. "I'm sure you two have quite a lot to talk about." The man walked in even, measured steps, his long emerald cloak fluttering behind him. The gold embroidery at his shoulders flashed even in the low lamplight: feathers at his shoulders, showing a man respected among all of the Goshawk Queen's army. "Maybe you can give the Firelord an update on how his troops have fared at the latest battles. Perhaps mention the massive losses at Sincheon? I understand that the Fire Nation battalion suffered not only a defeat, but the death of nine-tenths of its men... all because Water Tribe and traitor Earth Kingdom forces dragged their feet. Especially the Water Tribe. Apparently Sifu Katara's father was their leader. I'm sure she might have some... insight."

Katara's head was still full of numb buzzing - the static of shock that was clouding her senses - but apparently Zuko's wasn't. He gave a laugh that was more of a grunt than any true expression of entertainment. "So obvious it's pathetic."

"Well then, Firelord." The man said, sneering as he reached out to catch Zuko's chin in his hand. "Perhaps Sifu Katara would like to remind you how if you simply sign the surrender, this undue suffering can finally come to a close."

"Go to hell," Zuko snarled back. In response the man pulled him forwards, and the hooks in his shoulders caught - dragged - cut into fresh skin - but he was so determined to not give the gaoler any satisfaction that all he did was make a low noise deep in his throat, even as he curled his upper lip in disgust. Katara could barely see the subtle movement of his jaw, but one moment more and he found the strength to spit in the gaoler's face.

The other man let him go with a hard shove that made Zuko's chains rattle as he stumbled. And he delicately sopped up the saliva from his face with his beautiful cloak before turning to the both of them. "Leave her here for awhile; there are still more preparations for the Queen's visit. Come along, quickly, now!" He sounded rather annoyingly schoolteacherlike, and the guards swarmed Katara, locking her into chains with her hands pressed together behind her back. Then as quick as they came, they withdrew, standing at attention in a row by the entrance.

Zuko was still taking a few heavy breaths to help him with the pain of the meathooks in his shoulders, eyes shut and head dropped to rest his chin on his chest. When he finally spoke, he didn't lift his head, and had he not sounded so overwhelmingly exhausted, Katara was sure his tone would have been sad and wounded. "I don't even get a hello back?"

"No! I mean - of course you do, it's just -" Katara drew a sharp breath in through her teeth. "Your funeral, and - " She knew she couldn't help the trembling sneaking into her voice. "We all thought you were dead. All of us."

The little laugh he gave was relieved. "Was it nice, at least?"

"What?"

"My funeral." He half lifted his head as he spoke, seeming too tired to do much more than that.

"It, um..." Katara blinked rapidly. "It was. The entire city's still all white and crimson for it. Aang gave a... a very nice speech, and all the people are still mourning for you, and oh Spirits," she said, quickly blundering into a finish as she looked up and blinked hard. Every little detail was starting to be monumentally overwhelming. Her hands were shaking, making the chains around them rattle. "I'm sorry. It's just - it doesn't seem real yet. It doesn't seem real."

"You mean that you were so sure I was dead, you can't even look at me now." His voice was awfully small in such a large cell.

"No, no, it's not like that! It's just - "

"You don't have to apologize."

"That's not like it at all! I promise! And I'm sure you know it -"

"- don't blame you at all -"

"- you've got to know it's wrong to think that -"

They were talking over each other, suddenly overlapping and scrambling to argue in circles. Abruptly they were jolted out of it by shields clanking together as loud as cymbals. In the ensuing silence, the gaoler once again cleared his throat for attention. "How lucky you two are," he purred. "Her Highness has graced us with her presence early today. Now. Guards, collect them, if you would." Once again the uniformed soldiers came to collect them, keeping most of the chains in place; she heard Zuko cry out as the hooks were ripped from his shoulders. The soldiers all but had to hold him up even as he tried unsuccessfully to keep his feet under him.

"Zuko?" Her voice, high-pitched in worry, cut through the clatter of the guards' uniforms well enough for him to lift his head. "Zuko - when was the last time they gave you anything to eat - or drink?"

"Can't remember," he answered dutifully but breathlessly.

Even without her years of studying healing, Katara knew that was a bad answer to such a question. "...Slept? I'm guessing you also can't remember."

"Mmn. A longer can't remember, though."

She bit her bottom lip in frustration and worry even as the guards continued to drag them along. At least the haze and static of the shock was fading from her mind, ebbing away to just a feeling of dull dread. This was a situation that absolutely could not end well, and currently, she had no idea how to get out of it. Katara wasn't naturally inclined to panic, but if she was, now would be the time for it...

There were fanfares as they were dragged from the long, dark corridor out into the light. It was blindingly bright, mirrored lanterns making the light multiply and dance around them. The soldiers were all in the same emerald green uniform, some wearing feather-shoulder embroidery and some not. And they were all looking to the center of the room where a woman, thin and tall, was pulling her cloak around herself - a cloak made of very many pieces of metal attached to velvet, each bit of metal pounded thin and long in the shape of a feather. But there was something else. Something that made her speak up, even as they were dragged to stand opposite the opulently-dressed woman.

"Zuko - " Her whisper was urgent, weaving between the guards like a well-placed blade. "Do you feel that?"

He didn't say anything, just one emphatic nod yes.

At the very least it made her feel a little less insane. There was something intangible humming in the room, in their heads, on the tip of their tongue making their teeth ache and itch. Maybe they had felt licks of it before - at the Spirit Oasis, perhaps, or around Aang deep in meditation. This was harsher and more oddly animate. More importantly, this felt like something that didn't want to be there.

The woman opened up her cloak wide, making all of the little feathers clatter and chime, showing off how even its velvet lining had rich embroidery showing every single feather of her false wings. Then she let it drop, chiming, to rest behind her; it lingered and made its way down the steps behind her in a lazy train. The rest of the room had fallen silent enough for them to hear every small noise of the rich cloak, and every footstep of its wearer.

"The Goshawk Queen." Katara murmured mostly to herself - the whisper hung in the air, fiercely angry.

After a long moment of silence the woman laughed, and smiled. She wasn't young enough to be freely called pretty, but she was far from ugly, even losing the transient beauty of youth. Her smile seemed a little too wide as she strutted towards them. "You may simply call me 'your highness', you know. Better to get into the practice of it now, I think. Then you can teach your father when I capture him." She stopped directly in front of Katara, folding her slim hands in front of her. "So this is Chief Hakoda's darling little daughter Katara, then, hm? I suppose I should be calling you princess." A quick glance up and down - one that was piercing enough to make Katara feel inexplicably naked and bare. "I'm not all that impressed, I have to say. I expected the Avatar to have better taste in lovers -"

"We're friends!" Katara barked out. "N-Nothing - nothing more -"

"Oh, so perhaps it's the other one the Avatar has been drooling over?" The woman leisurely let a finger roll open to point at Zuko. "That would explain things. Aang's effeminate weak will." And suddenly she was before Zuko, looking him up and down. "Though again, I'm not impressed. A thousand years of incest on a tiny island will bring you such mongrels as this -"

She had been reaching out for Zuko's face, as if to lift his chin up and inspect him like cattle. But in one quick, animal movement, he snapped at her, teeth clacking against teeth, a sudden spurt of energy he had been saving for some base act of defiance. As her hand snapped back, she frowned, curling her lip. "Mongrels and mad dogs, it seems." A sigh, and then she turned her back on them, instead motioning to one of her advisors. "I believe I asked you to break him, but leave his mind intact."

"Oh, it is, my queen," he answered quickly. "He's, ah, he's just play-acting -"

"He damn well better be." Her voice was scathingly cold, and her frown terrible. But it inexplicably morphed into a coy smile. "Now, then. Gentlemen... I believe you're here for the show, are you not? A quick demonstration of my powers and I am sure your doubts about joining my cause will be erased. Then we can count on you and your noble houses to be here - to be part of our glorious crusade against the Fire Nation, wherein we will finally be paid what we owe!" Her voice swelled to a crescendo, and the room burst out in applause. Even the well-dressed, slightly nervous-looking nobility politely clapped.

"Zuko?" Katara looked over to him anxiously, mostly to confirm that he hadn't actually collapsed while being held up by his jailers. He was still there, barely standing, shoulders trembling. "Zuko, I've got a bad feeling about this..."

"I've got a worse one." Katara couldn't quite tell if that was a joke gone awry, but it came out with exhausted and groaning fatalism.

In any case the strange feeling in the air was growing heavier, thicker, almost sizzling on their lips with every breath. Making a great show of it, the Goshawk Queen spread her arms, furling her cloak, and then in one smooth motion whipped it off. The metal feathers chattered and clattered as she shook them, and finally, she threw it up into the air. It did not fall down. Instead it stuck there, as if it had been whirled and stuck against an invisible wall. All at once the metal feathers hit each other, rapidly vibrating, and suddenly it was not just small metallic sounds: first windchimes and bells reverberating nonsensically from the small metal feathers, then rushing water, crackling fire, the roar of a steam engine, and then suddenly thousands of human-like voices murmuring all at once, young and old, in every dialect, growing louder and louder - Katara started to shy away, and Zuko grimaced as it pounded on their ears, so loud it hurt -

Then it was silent.

Each metal feather stuck straight out from the cloth, looking like so many rows of needles. And they pierced... not the air, but something far different. Something that bled. Black dripped from the tip of each metal feather, spreading down and across until, finally, there was a portal, a great irregular thing of swirling tar. The Goshawk Queen smiled widely, stepping up to the portal and putting her hand against it. Suddenly the sticky black pitch scurried away to the very edges, leaving something as clear as water or even glass. Soft colors moved behind it, each crowding around it as if trying to see through from the other side.

"The spirit world," the Goshawk Queen announced with a flourish. "The key to our victory, you see. Now, if luck's with us, the Avatar is already meditating, and may witness this in person, but if not..." She held up her wrist, and the portal's clear surface stretched, deformed, and finally let free a jet of pure emerald: a goshawk spirit that landed on her wrist as soon as it came through. "We have witnesses. Many witnesses. Now..." She motioned, snapping her fingers with her free hand. "Bring the disfigured mutt here. And the girl there."

At least the guards were a little more gentle with her, Katara thought gloomily; they dragged Zuko along even as he tried to get his feet underneath him. The Goshawk Queen continued to point. "Before the portal, yes. Very good. And have him kneel." They forced Zuko down, even as he drew frustrated breaths in through his teeth. "Head up. As to see his face." Zuko actually grunted as one of the guards grabbed his hair and jerked his head back - he had been silent until that moment. "Excellent. Let us begin."

She reached out once more to tap the portal, and it shimmered, focusing into greater clarity. Innumerable spirits peered back at them, crowding anxiously to see the view, and the Queen smiled brightly back at them before addressing them directly. "Ah, Spirits... forgive the intrusion," she purred. "But do take note. I bear an important message for the Avatar... if he is not here already in disguise." Her eyes lingered on a spirit painted in saffron yellow strokes that looked suspiciously like Momo to Katara's eyes. "My demands are not extravagant. I merely ask that justice be done, and that the Fire Nation learn under my rule to never again become a war machine. Simple measures, such as taxes to cover reparations, and -"

"It's a trap!" Zuko's voice was strained, but he shouted above the Queen as loudly as he could. "She just wants you out in the open to kill you! Don't come for us, it's a trap, it's - " He was cut off with another grunt that became a wheeze. One of the guards had put a hand around his throat, and Katara could see him straining to breathe.

"How uncouth," the Queen cooed. "But not unplanned for." She took off one of her gloves in a sensuously languid motion, then the other. "Let him breathe. We do so want the Avatar to take heed for what is about to be pushed out of his lungs." Zuko was released, and immediately began gasping for breath while all but snarling at the Queen. "I imagine seeing a dead friend must be quite a shock. But really..." With his head held firmly in place, Zuko couldn't get away as she reached out to pet at his temple, curling a bit of hair around her finger. "We can do so much worse than just simple death. Oh, so much more interesting things."

Katara grit her teeth. With all the attention on Zuko and the Queen, it was just enough for her to waterbend, subtle enough over the noise of the spirit world leaking into reality. Just enough water from the air, from sweat, all around the room, and it could fit perfectly into the shackles that kept her cuffed. And if she could get rid of her shackles on her wrists, she could work around those on her legs - long enough to take a step was long enough to run. Toph had told her the basic theory of lockpicking one day, after she'd expressed amusement about how criminal and lawbringer had so many of the same skills. Water made an adequate pick. If she could snake it in - yes, just there - and force up the first tumbler (there, done) and then the second (spirits, this was easy, so much easier than she expected) and then the third - Katara bit her lip and looked down in concentration. The third, the fourth, but the fifth, the fifth was being tricky...

She looked up just in time to see the Queen's fingers twitching, holding up a piece of stone by Zuko's face. It looked pointed at one end - almost like a spade - the handle of the instrument, whatever it was, had been lovingly carved with birds of prey in flight, and the black granite was well-polished and gleaming -

The fifth tumbler fell out of place, and the lock remained closed -

"I think the Avatar needs a demonstration about how fates worse than death might start. So... Firelord, dear, smile for our audience, won't you?"

The stone was so close to his face, so close, and then her fingers moved and it was iinside/i -

The scream that ripped out of him was not the sort of sound anyone forgets. Even the soldiers would have dreams of it, waking up shaking and sweating in the middle of the night. There was something awful and primal about it as it rushed past his teeth, almost as if it followed the same trajectory the polished stone spade did. And the spade - well, in its own right, the granite and the carving was beautiful enough on its own, but something about the act was so brutally swift that it had its own perverse elegance. The golden amber iris of Zuko's eye shone in the light, same as the wet slickness of the rest of it, the perfect circle of the eye freed from its socket, the tangle of nerves that strung out behind it and unravelled in blood and gore as they went, the sudden blood gushing down Zuko's face and playing on all the little nooks and crannies of his burn as it did...

It was a spectacle, and from her smile, the Goshawk Queen knew it.

Katara answered his scream with her own. Suddenly the last part of the lock didn't matter, by some luck or grace it was in place and her handcuffs were gone and even if those and the chains were the only weapons she had, she would make do - bringing them up and around, kicking off the guards, stumbling, falling, catching herself and looping the chain around another guard's leg as she did. Zuko was still screaming, howling in pain in tones that caught the most primal and animal parts of her and put them alight with sympathy. The guards stepped away, and she was thinking too furiously to consider how odd it was that they would do so. Instead there was Zuko in pain, and her half-freed from chains, and she pushed and shoved in desperation even as she grabbed Zuko's shoulder and forced him up to his feet to run.

In the back of her mind she must have known the Goshawk Queen was laughing, but she didn't acknowledge it. She must have known the guards weren't following even as they rushed out. There wasn't space for that - there was room enough just for action, and just for that. She knocked over a few braziers as she went, but mostly she was focused on keeping Zuko with her, even as he desperately held his hands over where one of his eyes had been but no longer was. The blood seeping between his fingers left a clear mark of where they had gone. She must have known this, but she didn't acknowledge it. Instead she just ran, searching for water by desperate instinct. Zuko was trembling and unsteady, and at least when his legs finally gave out, she was able to pull him into one of the side rooms. He was gasping in pain, chest heaving - after so many weeks without proper food, it was plain to see how his lungs struggled against his ribs like two animals overgrown for their cages - but dehydration was more deadly, more immediate, and now he was losing blood as it ran down his face -

Some dignitary's quarters, she had to assume. There was water here, formerly in the pitcher, but now all in the shallow bowl on the nightstand after someone had washed their face. It wasn't the most pleasant, but it would do. A quick wave and the pure water floated in a bubble above the bowl, leaving soapscum behind, and she guided it back into the pitcher before grabbing the thing and offering it to Zuko's lips. He gulped it down with blind desperation, coming up gasping harder. One hand was still clamped over his burn - over where his eye had recently been removed.

"Do you think you can stand up? Even for a little while, just until -"

He shook his head no. He was still trembling from exhaustion, now mixed with flinching contortions out of pain.

"Just until I find something, some way to -"

"Go," he pleaded, voice thick and rasping. "Just go, Katara. There's a stream they use to - to get in and out -" He couldn't seem to think beyond that sentence, looping around to sincere begging once more. "Just igo/i."

She shook her head, hair flying in her face. "No, not without you. I'm not leaving without -"

"Please!" It burst out of him in a half-sob. For a moment he looked as if his free hand was reaching out for her before he corrected it and brought it down to grasp weakly at the stone floor in an attempt to steady himself. "...Please."

There was the clatter of armor down the hall. The adrenaline was buzzing in her head still. "I'll come back for you," she vowed. "With enough water from the steam. I'll be back here in no time. And we'll both get out of here. I promise. I ipromise./i" And then she stumbled to her feet, already racing out of the room down the empty corridor, taking the stairs down by twos and threes. Somewhere water was near, and getting nearer with each step. She would come back with it all around her, double handfuls ready to be relief for Zuko and whips for the rest. Then - then somewhere there had to be some tea. First, all the tea he could drink, while she healed him. Then bandages. And as soon as they were out of this place she'd hunt down congee, and fresh fruit, and roast duck - everything she vaguely remembered he liked to eat. Something in her mind stirred and then finally settled, like a restless cat having finally found a spot in the sun to sit in. Yes, that was a plan. Now that she had a plan, she could do this.

She must have known that the hallways were empty for a reason, but it didn't factor into her plans. So when she descended the last staircase, breathless and tense, she froze like a deer caught in a snare.

The Goshawk Queen stared her down, smiled, and started clapping. Deliberate, unkind applause. "What an excellent show, Sifu Katara. Ah, I forgot, I should say Princess, yes? Princess of a little village who has already spared all it can, yet refuses to see reason, even when its twin sister does."

"What? What do you..." And finally she saw two of the soldiers in the crowd blocking her from the small stream in the cave. Familiar faces. It tickled at the edge of her senses until she realized that their golden feather pauldrons, despite the recent embroidery to mark them of the Goshawk Queen's army, were of Northern Water Tribe make. "H... Hahn? Sangok?"

Two who had been lackluster teenagers had grown up into hard-eyed adults, apparently. Hahn was the first to speak. "The Fire Nation stole my fiancee from me."

"But Yue gave herself willingly, she -"

"The Fire Nation stole her from me," he repeated, voice full of cold fury - though an odd type, as if they were talking about a possession instead of a person. "And I intend to find some princeling or noble with a daughter who protects some sacred Fire Nation grove, and fully return the favor."

"We only want justice, Katara. Only what we're owed. You and your father can't see that, but the Goshawk Queen can, and -"

"Revenge. You only want revenge," Katara corrected.

"Exactly. And we're going to get it."

The Goshawk Queen was smiling broadly, even as Katara found herself locked in trying to glare Hahn down. "How charming," the Queen purred. "But let's move on, shall we? So much to do, so little time? Hm? Do come quietly, little Princess." Katara was about to raise her voice to argue and set in to struggle when the other woman continued. "Every act of defiance will become something your friend the Firelord has to pay. And I'd be quite happy to keep digging until I have ample proof that even inbred Fire Nation nobility have brains, and do so twitch and scream when you find them."

Katara went quietly.

Author's Notes: don't worry, I only intend to interrupt once!

As you may or may not know, I've been struggling hard the past few years with my health and specifically chronic pain. At some point I said I was in too much pain to write the stories I care about the most, and then that slowly has become over time to be not writing stories at all because of the comments of how my quality seems to slip. So understand that this is the story where I go 'screw it, I wanna WRITE'. Do I aim to make a coherent and entertaining tale? Definitely! But this is going to be less War and Peace, more paperback you picked up at the airport bookstore. It's self-indulgent to the max and if you go hunting for those master strokes to elevate it beyond the fanfiction of mere mortals, you're going to be disappointed. This is me, writing, because I want to write. It may be a little crap compared to my other stuff, so here's your warning. But if you're cool with that because, let's face it, even at my worst I still aim to make decent fanfic, here's a toast to you having fun reading what I've written!