it flows through her veins like lightning
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It's a slow descent into something like madness, only nobody has the sense to call it that. / Katara, and how the blood in their veins drove her insane. / one-shot
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She goes to see Azula once, just once, to curb her curiosity. It's not every day you get the opportunity to meet a mad woman.
But then Katara's curiosity had always been rather morbid.
(This girl learned how to fight for a reason.)
"Well, if it isn't the little water tribe peasant." Azula sneers, still nasty in insanity.
"Good afternoon, Azula." Katara is stiffly polite, curiosity masked behind stony eyes.
"She has manners, the girl who bends blood." Azula's tone is mocking.
This comment tears through Katara's front. "How do you know about that?"
"A girl, or rather, a princess, has her ways." Azula is suddenly all smiles.
"And I don't bend it. I bent it." Katara declares defensively.
"There's hardly a difference, blood-bender." Azula's tone becomes indifferent, but her eyes remain malicious.
"There is to me." Katara protests. It becomes hard to remember that Azula is mad.
"Oh, get off your high ostrich-horse, blood-bender. Open your mind to the possibilities. The full moon calls you, why don't you answer?" Azula taunts her, a knowing smile on her face.
Disgust and fear wash over Katara's face and Azula throws her head back, laughing madly. Katara flees the cell.
Azula's words haunt her.
Katara tries to forget, but little things remind her. Healing lessons. Night time. Forests. Caves and victims and chains and puppets and innkeepers and firelight and scary stories and-
And everything. Her own heartbeat haunts her nightmares
.:.
A full moon is forecast. Fear courses through her veins.
As the moon rises, familiar sensations take over and she can feel blood thrumming through the veins of everyone around her.
"Open your mind to the possibilities. The full moon calls you, why don't you answer?"
Azula's question echoes through her mind like a song keeping time with the rhythm of hearts.
She's up all night, quietly twisting blood flows till all hearts beat as one; a steady ba-dum, ba-dum in the darkness. She doesn't realize what she's done until the job is finished and the thumping echoes through her head, united.
She thinks it's like a drum, beating out the sickening rhythm that declares war. But this war is on her sanity, and she is oh so outnumbered.
.:.
She feels it again, the night following the full moon. It scares her because she's only supposed to be able to bloodbend during the full moon. She checks to see if it still works.
The dead owl-chicken in front of her proves so. She inspects the corpse curiously - she can feel the blood slowly stilling in cooling veins. Her fingers slowly flow through the jerking movements once more, and the feeling of a thin vein snapping returns to her, the memory clear and sharp.
And then the moon sets as the sun begins its rise, the sky beginning to flood golden and Katara jerks out of her moonstruck state. She stares in horror at her fingers, still poised for bending mid-air and then her eyes find the bird and a dry sob chokes out of her throat.
She doesn't say a word to anyone and hopes it'll all go away soon. Somewhere around the middle of the cycle when the moon is new and nothing more than a sliver of silver in the sky, the thrumming is muted. She can still feel it, if she reaches, but heartbeats are not burning endless tracks through her mind. She gets five nights of respite.
In those five nights, the annual ghost story gathering takes place. Katara shakes on the fringes of the campfire and wonders if those stories are about her.
Then she returns to the constant night time rhythm.
She stops sleeping, somewhere along the line. Stops sleeping and starts sneaking out. She's pulled into a moon trance the second she twists a droplet of blood and then she is pulled under till Agni graces the sky.
There are rumours of her - a specter with sapphire eyes and an unnerving smile who steals hearts. A malevolent spirit who flows like water till her hand begins those halting, jerky movements. A haunt who pads on bare feet, stalking through the night, searching for victims to take.
.:.
Her laugh echoes through the forest as her victim falls. It occurs to her then that she and Azula are not so different. Strong benders, younger sisters and fighters.
They could be best friends, she decides, best friends with homicidal habits in side-by-side cells. Katara thinks it'd be lovely.
She almost wishes she was born in the Fire Nation. They could have been such great friends - driven by beliefs, using any mean to the desired end. Yes, she thinks, they are very similar indeed.
She knows, by then, that she is quite insane. It's so freeing that she wonders why she didn't try it earlier.
She's insane so she's allowed to do crazy things. Things that a sane person would call stupid or wrong, she calls them fun.
And besides, is it her fault that Yue calls her so?
.:.
They find out, eventually. It's Toph who figures it out. The five of them all gather around the latest victims body and Toph takes one look at Katara's stand-offish stance and makes her conclusion. Katara declares she has no idea what it is and storms back to the village quickly, and Toph quietly voices her assessment.
Aang doesn't believe it. He protests that Katara is just too good – kind and sweet and perfect, he says, but Sokka runs a hand through his hair in shocked acceptance.
Zuko's face grows stoney, his mind slowly mulling over the facts in a cooling shock.
"Let's ask her!" bursts Aang.
"Aang, it's clearly bloodbending. I remember what it feels like!" Toph protests.
"Well maybe it's someone else! I mean, if Hama could teach herself, then so could someone else!"
"Aang," says Zuko quietly, "This is Earth Kingdom land. There aren't any waterbenders around. Especially not ones held captive and starved of their element."
Aang glares. "Well I'm going to ask her." he declares.
Sokka's hands shake microscopically, betraying his façade of calm.
.:.
Aang's question hangs awkwardly in the air. She looks up with dull eyes from where she's been curled up on the bed in fetal position.
"Yes." She whispers and Aang's smile freezes on his face. "Yes. Yes. Yes!" her voice rises to a ringing yell as she stands. "It's me, damn it. What are you going to do?" Her face takes on her old stubborn look and Sokka looks to the floor.
With sad eyes, Toph bends up earthen hand cuffs. Zuko leads the broken Avatar and the Water Tribe Chief from the room.
.:.
Katara walks slowly through the halls of her new home, flanked on both sides by heavily armed guards.
"Why?" she croaks through her dry throat, coarse from screaming.
"I needed company." Azula shrugs.
"But why me?" Katara's blue eyes widen.
Azula smiles. "You were the most corruptible. It was eating at you anyways. I just suggested you give in."
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AN: I wrote this puppy quite a while ago, even before I'd seen Legend of Korra. Ergo, the bloodbending mythology is basically made up. Erm, yeah.
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