Southern Raiders alternate endings. Four of them. Need I say more? Well, okay then.

I really liked the dark tone "The Southern Raiders" set, kinda like that other Katara-centric episode, "The Puppet Master". Coincidence that two of the darker episodes in the series focuses on Katara? (shrugs). I don't really care to research right now, so you tell me.

Anyway, there was only one thing that could have made the episode any better for me (okay, there's probably several things, but you get what I'm saying...), and that would been to see that fierce determination Katara displayed actually put to practical use.

... And I guess "darker and edgier" has a lot of appeal to me, judging from my few other writs. Hence these four alternative endings/scenarios to "The Southern Raiders", each with their own chapter. I will attempt to avoid shipping, because that really is not my game, but exploring the character interactions and reactions in these different scenarios doesn't come without very subtle indications. Also note that I plan to make the chapters gradually more violent and bloody, but it is not the focus of this fic.

I don't think so at least.

We'll see, and maybe bump up the rating when that time comes.

Lastly, I would like for anyone who thinks characters are being OOC to tell me, and tell me just a little about why, as I tried quite hard to keep them in character.

Now I'll shut up. Enjoy.

Standard disclaimers apply: I do not support or encourage revenge murder.

"Do what you have to protect what matters to you, but remember that there are no heroes when death is for dinner."

- unknown

Scenario One: No White, No Black, No Grey

The absence of catharsis was disappointing. At least Katara wanted to feel mellow. That should be her reward, but life could be so cruel sometimes. Someplace in her heart, she had known she should not have expected anything but emptiness. Emptiness didn't sound like such a bad thing at the moment, however. It would certainly be more pleasant than the doubt: all the things she hadn't considered before swiftly taking off. All she had thought about was her revenge.

Aang's words kept echoing in her mind, and each time they did she thought of her mother. The monster had deserved to die by her hands, that was certain. Yet Aang wouldn't understand, and Katara was starting to fear that he might resent her. On further contemplation, she discarded that idea. Even as much as he believed she had done something wrong, Aang would still be... what? What was she to him?

He'd kissed her on the day of the Black Sun. They hadn't talked about that since then, and Katara didn't know what to think or do.

No, he wouldn't resent her. But Katara couldn't get the idea out of her head that maybe he would be scared of her. He was so innocent. And now, she was a murderer.

How was she supposed to act now: pretend as if nothing happened? If she could just talk to someone who had any experience besides herself, then she was sure she could quell this feeling of uncertainty, but who? Suki was a Kyoshi warrior, which on the other hand didn't mean anything. There was no way to be sure without asking, and Katara didn't like that idea.

She stole a glance at Zuko's back. He was holding Appa's reins and hadn't said much since they'd started flying back to camp. They had run all the way back to Appa when it was over, as if a bloodthirsty demon was in their heels. Katara's head had felt strangely detached from the unreal reality and at the same time she had been horrified. They had said something to each other, but what little Katara remembered wasn't much more than excited and delirious shouts and whispers about getting away, and great underwater dragon-snake, did she see what she just did to that old... they had both used some words they normally considered below them. And then they'd made their getaway on the flying bison, catching their breaths.

Zuko had been the only one supporting her in her vendetta, however ironic it seemed, and if there was anyone else on 'Team Avatar' who had ever killed before, Zuko was Katara's top suspect. Hadn't he killed general Zhao? The waterbender remembered that he had escaped his bonds back then in the North Pole, when Zhao had just fled after killing the Moon Spirit. Only Zuko ever came back.

Then again, did she really want to talk to him about her feelings? Katara wasn't sure, not anymore.

Sleep. It had been a whole day since she had last sleep and she exhausted, physically and emotionally, and sleep would make a terrific temporary answer to her plight. Unfortunately, it was still raining, and the patter of raindrops and the dampness kept her awake, and the cold made her shake in her coat. Must have been the cold, though it had rarely bothered her before. Katara closed her eyes and lay down, curling into a ball under her heavy, dark coat.

-convulsing red innards organs ice scream stretch red stink-

Her brown eyes shot wide open and the image disappeared. She took a testing sniff, catching a whiff of her clothes – that smell.

She sat up again. The shaking was getting worse. She told herself it was the rain that drenched her, drenched her despite her repeated and decreasingly productive efforts to bend her garments dry.

The shaking got much worse. At length, Zuko had to land Appa in the sea beneath them, and when she was unable to even freeze a platform for herself in the water, he held her hair gently in one hand and clutched the back of her coat in the other while she hung herself over the side of Appa's saddle and emptied herself into the water.

"It's alright. Just let it all out."

"Don't worry. Try to get some rest at least."

She didn't want him to see her like that. She was not weak, or so she had thought. Hadn't she properly demonstrated the full extent of her might already? She had, and she knew he acknowledged her, but Katara felt ashamed that he saw her in such a pathetic state. It seemed now there was a reason to care what the Fire Nation prince thought of her. Funny, considering how much pain he had caused her already, and continued to cause her even as her ally.

The rest of the way home they didn't speak much, but at last she fell in a restless sleep full of dreams she couldn't remember when she woke up again.

Zuko had landed them in a forest. He could have gotten them to the camp already, but he hadn't. She didn't care.

It had stopped raining, but the sky was still dark and overcast so they made a small campfire. Zuko looked like he might ask her something stupid, like 'are you okay?', so she pretended to go to sleep again, telling him to do so too. He hadn't had much sleep since their raid on the Southern Raiders. Katara huddled into Appa's warm fur and closed her eyes, but found little more rest than before, little more comfort from the giant bison than from the understandably cautious boy.

When the first pale rays of sun peered through the leaves she went to find her element. She undressed at a small creek and washed herself, not like she would usually – relaxing and nursing her body in a bed of animated crystal water – but knelt in the rocky stream and scrubbed her skin, not getting much cleaner for her trouble. The hair was worse and dripped light red-brown drops. The clothes went into the stream and bleed even more of the rusty color into the water, but wouldn't get clean. Large, ugly splotches and smear marks remained.

She reluctantly wore the barest minimum of the black garment long enough to steal some red at the first town they came across. Zuko was kind enough to keep his trap shut and just burn it when she asked him to.

- - - - -

The air was warm again, smelled faintly of salt, and the sun was setting. It was a gentle, golden sunset over a calm sea. The emptiness had finally settled in her, and she was thankful, but it would have been a lie to say she was happy. Zuko had dropped her off on the lone island with the lavish mansion to give her some time alone until he came back with the Avatar. Katara had changed back into her usual Water Tribe garb and was now sitting at the end of the pier, swinging her feat lightly in the water.

Two sets of footsteps on the creaking planks heralded their arrival: "Katara..." That was as much as he could manage before words failed the Avatar.

"She did what she had to." Zuko stated, sounding sure of what he said. Katara knew better, but appreciated his moral support, even if there was something decidedly amoral about it. Maybe the way he'd called Aang "Guru Goody-goody."

"... you didn't have to."

Katara looked at her hands, slender, lithe and agile. "Maybe not. But I did. Does that make me as bad as him, Aang?" Deadly, evil, murderous little hands...

Zuko was first to answer. "Of course not. You're nothing like that pathetic old man."

Aang likely kept his eyes on the ground, but Katara couldn't tell with her back to him. He answered after a few seconds of silence: "No. What you did goes against everything I believe in, and I think you made a mistake. But I know you, and I know you are good person."

Was she really? Aang wasn't exactly an unbiased judge of something like that. "But I killed a man."

"I forgive you." He said it so readily.

Katara paused. Then stood up, turned around and looked at Aang, the very picture of helpless, but he was sincerer. She looked him in his eyes and spoke, without venom or edge to her words. "You would forgive even the man who killed my mother. Your forgiveness means nothing."

His face crumbled. Zuko looked stunned. Her own words hit her, and she smacked a hand over her mouth, blurting: "I'm sorry! I didn't mean that, Aang."

"Yes you did," he said calmly and took a step away from her, avoiding eye contact.

She interrupted him before he could speak. "I mean - I didn't mean to hurt you, I..." she took a breath, clearing her thoughts and putting them back in order. How could she have said something so callous? She hadn't meant to hurt him, but still; it was the truth. "Don't tell me you forgive me."

The following silence was far beyond uncomfortable. Zuko broke it with a question that must have rankled him for far too long now, now sounding like he felt: "Katara, do you regret this?" When she just looked into the water without answering, he continued, faster. "You're not well, and anyone can see you didn't like any of this at all, and now it sounds like you're ashamed of yourself. I just want to know if I did the wrong thing when I tried to help you." Was that a hint of desperation in his voice?

"My actions are my own responsibility." The waterbender smiled, a little wryly, a little sadly, but it was a real smile. She was about to tell her erstwhile enemy that he was forgiven for the past, but after what she had just said to Aang, she wasn't sure how. She didn't want to speak the words 'forgive you' right after she'd practically forbidden the airbender to do the same. So she settled for going to Zuko and pull him into a hug that said everything. The scarred boy was too surprised to hug her back, and she'd let go of him before he had to respond in any way.

She didn't see Aang's reaction. Didn't think he might interpret her gesture incorrectly.

"But was it really worth it?" she heard the younger boy press on when she had let go of Zuko.

Katara turned around to face Aang and tossed her arms to her side. "What of it?" she asked, her smile loosing all its mirth. "I took Appa without permission and went behind your back. I used bloodbending, just... didn't even think about it. It didn't matter. I killed an old, empty man." The sardonic grimace had disappeared from her lips. "And it was easy. And one of the hardest things I have ever done."

The ease with which she had snuffed a life was frightening. Ironically, the way the unadulterated, brutal violence had made her physically ill afterwards comforted her; proved to herself that she had not stared into the abyss for too long yet. She had seen the darkness, and now she was sure she saw clearly.

She continued, all doubts abolished and her mind made up. "It wasn't worth it. It wasn't the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. And the reason I know this is because I know that if my father was here, he would have done the exact same thing." Katara also knew that her father wouldn't have wanted her to do it, instead of him. He wouldn't have wanted his child to be forced to do something so savage, would have tried to protect her from the war the same way he had tried to protect her that day, when she had followed him into their home...

"I thought about how Sokka could just let the past be past, and I think it's because he didn't see back then. He didn't see that man, so it's easier for him to think that the war took our mother away, just a faceless soldier with orders. He is wrong. It was very definitely a man, his name was Yon Rha, and now he has paid."

Aang understood, Katara could see. He still couldn't accept, though, and with the world on his shoulders sooner or later forcing him to do what she had done, one couldn't help pity him. It wasn't fair to him, this boy who was so good. The war wasn't fair to anybody. Katara's expression softened up.

"You don't have to convince yourself of anything but what you believe in right now, Aang. I don't want you to." He blinked, confused. "It's best this way, even if it will make it harder to kill Ozai. It has to be done, but just remember that we'll all be there for you. I'll be there." Not 'defeat' the Fire Lord, not anymore.

A deeper shadow crept over the boy's eyes, like something he had known all along finally surfaced his consciousness; had been forced to. "... Yes. Thanks."

With Aang having all too much to think about to say anything more and Zuko deciding to stay with the conflicted Avatar, she started walking to the mansion. It was getting late, and she might as well prepare dinner for all of them when the others arrived. When they had eaten, she would clear the air and tell Toph and Suki that she had killed her mother's murderer while she had been away. Or maybe she should do it before dinner and at least make sure things weren't too awkward between them before they ate. Either way, she wasn't going to pretend as if nothing had happened, nor was she going to let it come between her and her friends.

She drew circles in the air with her fingers, drawing water from the light sea-breeze. She wouldn't let her waterbending suffer from this experience the way Zuko's firebending had when he no longer had his hunt to drive him, fuel his flames. Yon Rha was not going to ruin any more for her after his death.

As she walked along the dirt path, Katara realized there was another thing Sokka didn't see that say. If dad had been faster when she'd followed him back then, she wouldn't have seen either.

Her burning corpse.

Heh, notice the bit of symbolism in the first part? Interpret as you want to.