1.) Slums
Grime was better left clinging to the gutters.
When they first moved into the apartment, she found it was just about the ugliest, grittiest little place in the city. It was only in the mere beginning of the first month during Ba Sing Se's early capture that the soldiers sought to justify their cruel endeavors by covering the back ways of a provocative-looking alley. Though that wasn't for the benefit of the soldiers themselves, the civilians not having to look at a practically condemned building covered in homeless and dancing poor folk may just have been. Hiding the eyesores of the city was beneficial to everyone except its residents.
Just beyond the garbage trough was where the gypsies sprung and danced for their money—was where Katara saw them that first time and felt a wave of relief in the fact that these shameless women were artists... and just artists. But on one hot summer afternoon, the day was spent breathing in the smoke and smog of a none-too-pretty pipeline obstructing the 'dazzle' of everything else going on. With the rats scurrying and the bugs and spiders dangling about, the lot of those whimsical performers packed up what little they had and cut loose, leaving the old dead end vacant and covered in wall sludge.
These times weren't good times.
In correspondence, Katara would always, always, have something to say in regards to her new home's unkempt corridors, its splintered tables. The comforts of walking in from a long day out in the shop could only be contested by the couple some hundred seedy merchants waltzing about, practically looking to grope a pretty lady arranging books, right? Letters to Suki mentioned the place being downright gruesome—the whole of it a winding hierarchy of street urchins, dancers, artisans and working people trying to save a scrap or two for dinner the next day. She was barely holding on down in the slums, with Zuko trying, trying, trying all the time, day and night, to set a steady course when they both knew there wasn't one to take.
That stupid boy was the only company Katara ever had besides a couple of accompanying dogs seeing her over down at the shop. By La, each and every night she wondered and questioned why she ever agreed to this—this city, this setting, this life. After returning from the book store, she'd slave over some pathetic little pot of rice and he'd come back in the same ridiculous getup—a lousy old apron—smelling like tea herbs and spices and plopping lazily on the nearest cushion before veritably passing out. And while rationing and living under the harshest of conditions were completely her forte, trying to survive in such a hopeless, filthy, creaky apartment governed by gold mongers was hardly something she could handle without a bit of life—on his end—to keep her going.
"Why are we even here, Zuko?" she asked one evening—scrubbing a leftover hunk of meat from a dish in that corner of hers, clinking porcelain and metal together when finally a turn of the heel had the woman facing him with a pleading look in her eye—"It's been months… " Months often turned into years and years turned into decades. If all she had to look forward to were decades of that same old undermining silence of his, well then… "We have to do something before we're stuck here."
But all Zuko had to say to that was, "We're already condemned"—a response met with the broken shards of something glass hitting the floor, an impulsive "We should be out there helping" coming from the waterbender and echoing through their small enclosure of a kitchen.
Nothing answered a quiet, annoyed "With what?" on the young prince's end, however. Normality askew (as they often argued with what to do, how to fight, where to go when their business here was "done") Katara turned, practically forcing herself to finish those dishes… left to her own devices and wondering about fallen friends, lost battles, cunning sisters, kings.
Four years, was it? Of all of the ruthless ends to stories, both hers and those of her friends, never once did she believe she would be condemned—as he so eloquently put it—to the trash mines of a downtrodden city. In four years, the Fire Nation had taken the world under an iron fist, with a guard stationed at the base of every governmental building, with a following so ridiculously fierce that even she knew a battle sought would be lost in the end.
Quietly placing the last dish among its perch in the rack, Katara breathed, and thought, and through every question of faith, humanity and common good she was left to wonder… Where had the world gone from their ideals?
Buried in the slums?
"I don't know."
Not sure if this constitutes as a drabble series. It's sequential but... y'know, these aren't really 'chapters' per se. :x I don't usually write fic, so yeah. Whatevs. Gonna try to update weekly so enjoy, I guess?