Thank you to all of my lovely reviewers for your feedback. It means so much to hear that there are several of you interested in where this story is going. You guys are great. I hope you enjoy this next chapter just as much.
Warnings for sexual violence, general adult themes.
The day the Earth Kingdom fell, Katara smelled the smoke. Then, by mid-morning she saw it, rising in a plume that seemed endless, and every breath she drew tasted harsh of ash. She remembered standing close to Sokka, the two of them shivering in a watery swath of sunlight—stunned.
Though the Tribe had an inclination, it would be several weeks of blackened skies before they received a message that the world now belonged to the Fire Empire. And it would be another year after that before they accepted that the men who had left to join the war were never coming back.
Katara slept. Her head pulsed, and her body was alive with pain. She shivered, the cold of the ocean around her seeping into the ship's metal, and neither of the bodies pressed to her sides offered warmth. Her teeth chattered and the cold hurt her skin like teeth.
A commotion started, after how long she had no idea, and there, standing in the center of the room, was a Fire Empire soldier, flame burning in his open palm. In his free hand, he held the handle of a large metal cooking pot. He was not wearing a mask and in the dimness he looked almost human, with a nose crooked from too many battles, and huge eyebrows that bracketed his forehead like shadows. His mustache, fuzzy like a tundra moth caterpillar, obscured the top of his lip.
"Hands out," he ordered, voice booming in the dark.
With a feeling akin to horror, Katara watched as the soldier let his flame extinguish and began to walk the length of the room. He paused every few feet to slap a portion of rice into outstretched hands with a wooden spoon. When he came to her section, she copied Haru and extended her arms, head tucked downwards, and was rewarded with rice that must have been leftovers. It was cold and had begun to harden. Katara had few memories of rice—they had eaten it only after trade with Kaito and the few refugees dotting the Southeastern islands, but she'd had it enough to know that she was being fed unwanted scraps.
Still, she was ravenous, and shoveled rice into her mouth with her fingers. She chewed, grunted, swallowed. She stopped eating only to breathe. The handful of rice was gone quickly and she licked her hands clean, searching for stray grains she might have missed.
"How can they feed us like this? We aren't animals." Yet, she felt like one, and hated herself for it. Hated herself for searching for any fallen rice on the ground near her feet.
Haru had finished his portion long before she had. He scratched idly at a patch of dried blood on his knee.
"We're not animals, but they don't see us as people either. We're things to the Fire Empire. I'm a tool they can use to build their walls. And you've got it worse than I do. You're a woman—so you're already less than, but you're Water Tribe too."
Katara snapped her eyes shut, shuddering at the implication, at the memory it invoked—her son held upside down like a piece of garbage, something too soiled and dirty, the runt of an artic hen-fox litter, too insignificant to be allowed to live.
"How long have you been down here?" She had to change the subject, she could feel her eyes starting to tighten, to sting hot with tears. She was done crying. In the fetid darkness of the cargo hold, crying wouldn't do her any good.
"I'm not sure. Keeping track of days is hard. I just go by when they feed us, but they might not be feeding us every day, so I can't really say. But I think it's been over a week." Haru looked worse for the wear, worse than she did. His hair was stringy, his face shiny with sweat and grease. He was caked in blood and his own waste.
"They just sail around the world looking for people to add to their collections?"
Haru shook his head. "No. We were living on the Southeastern islands, not too far from the Southern Water Tribe. When the comet came and the Fire Empire started burning, those of us who could ran. There were only two places to go with the Earth Kingdom on fire. South or North. I went South." Haru drew a breath that shuddered out of him. "Every day since they caught me I've wished we had gone North."
Toward the back of the room, a group of women began to speak loudly. Someone sobbed. Katara could only catch the conversation in snatches, but it seemed one of the women had died at some point during the nighttime, and her body was beginning to stink. Katara couldn't conceive of how terrible it would be to be chained to a corpse and be forced to watch it slowly decompose. She had seen bodies before, but the South Pole was cold, and Water Tribe custom dictated that the bodies be dressed and wrapped to prepare them for their journey into the spirit world.
"Tell me about your family," she whispered, searching until she found Haru's hand. He was her sole comfort here. The Earth Kingdom woman to her left wouldn't speak to her, wouldn't speak to anyone, just lay there listless. She blinked and ate when food was offered, no more alive than a fish hibernating in the frozen sea.
"It was always just me and my mother. My father—he was captured by the Fire Empire a long time ago because he was an earthbender. So I stayed hidden and tried to live the best I could with my mom. But then, when the comet came, there was so much confusion. Everything was burning—the houses and the trees—you could hear the trees explode when they got too hot." He squeezed her hand tightly. Katara heard the wetness in his voice. "She'd been in the barn when it happened. I…I tried to get her out. I was going to use my bending, but she told me I had to escape. That…she was ready to be with my father. I…then she started to…oh god the screams."
Katara squeezed his hand back, and he held to her tight enough she thought he would crush her bones.
"I lost my mother," she said, softly. "I lost my father too."
"There's no happiness in this world, is there?"
Katara wanted to say that there could be. That there had been. That she had been happy in her life. She had felt love—the love of a man who prized her above all others, the love of a child who was precious as the sky and earth and sea.
"Could you tell me about your baby?" She remembered, the haunted look in Haru's eyes that first conversation, her own pain mirrored in eyes so much like Kaito and Hai's. "I had a son. His name was Hai and he was perfect. He had his father's eyes and even when he was wearing booties he would try to suck on his feet." The first time Hai had done that, she'd plucked his damp toes from his mouth, and thrust him at Sokka. He takes after you, I see. Sokka had beamed at her proudly. You're just jealous I can trim my toenails with my teeth.
"I had…she wasn't my daughter, not really, but she was to me. That day…when I lost my mother, I started running. I wasn't thinking of anything but how I could get somewhere safe, I was trying to listen for the stream, I knew if I could find it I could follow it to the ocean. I was following a path with some other people from my town and then I saw her. She was all alone, set off to the side of the footpath, wrapped in a green sarong. She was next to a bag of rice and a few bundles. She'd just been left there like she was too heavy and her family ditched her along with their supplies. She was a year old—I think, anyway—and when she saw me she reached out with her arms, begging me to take her, and I did. I took her with me and I named her Nuo and for years I raised her and she was mine as much as if she were a part of me."
Katara rested her head back against the wall. She felt the sea sloshing through it, felt the vastness of the ocean, the pull of the moon as it created waves. She wanted so badly to capture it, to use her bending to save the day. To rescue these poor people who were in need. But she had been too pathetic to be of use to her own family when they needed her. Haru was an earthbender in the middle of the ocean, he had an excuse. She was a waterbender surrounded by her element, and a few splashes, a few cracks in an iceberg, were the best she could do.
"I'm sorry about your daughter."
"I like to think that she's happy now." Haru closed his eyes, managed to smile. She wanted to see what he was imagining—a smiling little girl, her perfectly pleated hair tied behind her, laughing and twirling in Haru's arms beneath a smokeless sky. "That she's with my mother and my father. I hope I get to join them soon."
After an unknown days of travel, the door to the cargo hold opened, and the room filled with light. In the blinding brightness of real sunlight, Katara saw what had become of them. The metal floor was caked in blood and excrement, urine puddled and ran in rivulets toward where the door was hanging open. Her fellow captives were filthy, disheveled and sickly. They looked like walking corpses and it took a few moments for Katara to realize that she looked that way too. Her skin had tightened, stretched out over her bones as it had thinned from malnutrition. Her legs cramped and buckled from disuse.
"Welcome to the Southern Fire Empire," one of the soldiers said, grinning. "Take a good look. For some of you, this is the last thing you'll see."
She and Haru were immediately separated. The women were grouped together, chained together, while the men were led in a different direction, toward an elevated platform and a metal barracks. Hanging from one of the high poles of the platform was a noose. It waved in the wind morosely. Katara closed her eyes and didn't allow herself to think about it. Instead she thought of Haru, how he had looked as he was led away from her. His head held high, bony shoulders straight and his chest forward, like a Water Tribe warrior going into battle.
She tried to think of the dream she'd had the night before as they were marched to a wooden building not far from the port. In the distance, beyond the tree line, Katara saw the outlines of huge buildings jutting from the earth. Some were taller than the trees themselves, magnificent and imposing, bigger than she had ever imagined a house could be. In her dream, the instant Hai had been tossed overboard, Sokka had leapt in after him, and pulled him from the waters and swam them both to shore. Katara wanted to think that the spirits had sent her a vision to calm her, but she knew wet clothes were a death sentence in the Arctic Circle for an adult, let alone an infant who could not swim.
The women were led inside the wooden building. It was dry, clean, and smelled vaguely floral. The floor was wooden and the windows were made with glass, not ice. She had heard of glass from Kaito's stories, and she wished to touch it, to press her mouth to it and watch it steam.
"Good morning my beauties," an older woman descended from a wooden staircase. Her black hair was greying at the temples and her large bosom wobbled when she walked. "You can call me Auntie, let's get you cleaned up, shall we?"
Auntie bathed each of them personally. She bathed them gently. Katara was sat into a large tub of perfumed water and Auntie cooed at her, my lovely, my poor precious as she washed the blood and grime from her skin and hair. "Don't you worry honey," Auntie rubbed the inside of her thigh briefly before she scrubbed clinically, efficiently, between Katara's legs. "You'll be a pearl among oysters once I'm finished with you."
Katara did not want to be a pearl. She was a waterbender, forged from deadly tides and ragged pleats of ice. She was a creature of the icy tundra. She spent her life where men and animals alike could not survive.
Reaching deep within her, Katara grabbed ahold of the bath water and launched a tendril straight into Auntie's face. It struck her hard and sent her sprawling backwards. Her damp hair tumbled into her eyes. Katara had another wave of water ready and she breathed out softly, praying it would turn to ice.
She blinked and Auntie stared up at her, perplexed, her hands and legs frozen to the soaked wood beneath her. Katara spun on her heel and started running, but a fireball soared over her head and blocked her way.
"Now, now," Auntie said coolly. She steamed water from her hair and tied it back in place. "We'll just pretend that didn't happen, lovey. We'll put a few extra chains on you, obviously, but there's no need to clue the others in on your little secret. The captain had said one of the men thought you were a waterbender, but I told him he was mistaken. A real waterbender would never have been kept in the hold. Keep your bending to yourself, darling—we wouldn't want to affect your price."
Katara readied herself to fight again—better to die here, in combat, than in the bed of a Fire Empire man. But the smoke rising from Auntie's hands stopped her. She had seen two of her loved ones burned to death. As much as she wanted to join them, to do the honorable thing and die a warrior's death, she could not bear to let that fire scorch her flesh.
"I'm not something you can sell like a piece of jewelry. I'm a human being!" She shouted. Her anger sent waves of water sloshing from the tub.
"You're Water Tribe," Auntie said, leading her over to a huge closet. She pulled the door open and revealed more styles of fabric than Katara had ever seen. "You're much closer to a piece of jewelry than you think. Pretty, ornamental, but quite useless at the end of the day."
Auntie dressed her in a variety of styles. The fabrics were all unique—silken, smooth, almost polished—so different from the spun textures of walrus-oxen yarn or the innate softness of furs. The dresses Auntie tried on her each had a different pattern and different cuts. Some stopped above her knees, others just below her thighs, and the necklines all exposed her breasts. None were the practical ankle length dresses of the Water Tribe, designed to keep heat in. These were designed for a man's pleasure, to entice and enthrall the male mind.
"Oh." Auntie clasped her hands to her chest. "Oh yes, that's it. You look stunning."
Auntie chose a short dress for her, deeply crimson, and it flowed over her skin like fresh blood. The hem had slits in the sides that showed a long thigh each time she moved. The sleeves ended at her armpits and the neckline plunged downward like the peak of an iceberg.
Now that she was dressed, once again she found herself shackled, chained up in the main room with the other girls. They were all dressed finely, in reds and blacks and golds. Auntie had painted their faces, they were perfumed and lotioned, and no longer looked like emaciated prisoners of war.
No sooner were they dressed when men began to enter. Though Katara knew nothing of politics or the world outside the South Pole, she knew these were important men. Wealthy men. Dressed in fine silks and robes, not dyed animal skins. Many were portly, withered with age, inspecting each woman carefully, fat pouches of coins jingling from their waists. One man grabbed Katara by her jaw and forced it open to look at her teeth.
"Mmmhm," he hummed in amusement. "No sign of the rot in this one. Surprising, given she lives off animal fat like a beast."
"She is a true beauty," Auntie murmured. "Renowned among her tribe."
"Is she pure?" The man turned her chin to face him. He was tall, imposing, with thick sideburns that ended in the middle of his cheeks. His eyes, the same dark gold she saw in her nightmares, were like condensed flame.
Auntie sighed, world weary. "Unfortunately, no. There was some mention of a baby when they first found her. But she's still young. Very shapely. She could bear many children still."
"I've no use for Water Tribe halflings," the man spat. His thumb and index finger pressed further into her skin. "But I know someone who might. He's disgraced enough as it is already. Might as well throw a water bitch into the mix. It would be quite unbecoming of royalty to refuse such a generous gift. Even for a pathetic prince." He inspected her a bit longer. Trailed his hands down her sides, cupping roughly at her breasts. He seemed disappointed, angered, when she didn't flinch. What pain was this man's hands on her, when the Fire Empire had already stolen the loves of her life? Father, mother, husband, son, and brother, her virtue was of no consequence. "What's your asking price for her?"
"She's quite valuable. As a Water Tribe woman, she can attend to all domestic duties. Cooking, cleaning, I believe she even has knowledge of how to treat and prepare furs. She's more expensive than your typical Earth Kingdom woman, you understand."
"Yes, yes," the man swatted in Auntie's direction in anger. "The price is of no consequence. I've been sent here on an errand. I was told to spare no expense."
"In that case," smiled Auntie, "ten pounds of gold should do."
"For an impure Water Tribe woman? I may not have a budget, but you must mistake me for a fool."
Auntie blinked sweetly, but Katara thought she saw fear flicker in her amber eyes. She bowed, hands folded together, shifting minutely on her feet. "Oh never, Admiral. That is merely my starting price. There is always room to negotiate, of course."
The Admiral grunted. "I've ignored the laws broken by your little auction house here for several years now. And I expect that propriety won't be overlooked."
"I am eternally grateful for your discretion, Admiral. For you, five pounds, and free use of any girls when you pass through."
"Better," the Admiral sneered. He jerked his head at one of the soldiers waiting silently behind him. The soldier immediately opened a pouch at his hip and rifled through. He deposited a selection of golden coins into Auntie's hand. Then his eyes fell on Katara. "Get moving. We've got a few days journey ahead of us. I won't be slowed down by you."
"Where are you taking me?" She hissed, trying to dig her heels into the wooden floor, into the dirt, into whatever she could find that might keep her from going with him. When he felt her resistance, he pulled hard on the chain he was using to lead her, and sent her falling onto her face. Katara sputtered, feeling blood spurt from her nose onto the ground beneath her. She squeaked when the Admiral used a booted foot to roll her over. Then he pressed that booted foot into the center of her chest and pushed.
"I will not be spoken to with insolence by Water Tribe trash like you." He bent over her, face a few feet from hers. She could feel the heat of his breath. She could smell the ash and fire in his soul. "You might have been prized back in that frigid hovel you called home, but here you're nothing. You're a dog. You aren't human. You're the dirt on the bottom of my shoes. If your existence didn't serve me a purpose, I'd take pleasure in watching you burn."
Without warning he kissed her. Used one hand to pin her wrists to the earth. His mouth plundered, his tongue was scorching, and it was nothing like the careful kisses she and Kaito had shared. It was power and it was rage. It was the Fire Empire stealing the only thing left of her. And Katara opened her mouth, screaming, and bit down as hard as she could. Clamped her teeth down like snapping turtle-shark and tasted blood. And that was a relief to her, almost—to know that Fire Empire soldiers were at least human enough to bleed and kill.
"Ragr," the Admiral roared, a hot hand closing around her throat, fingers digging inwards, choking the life from her until she had to let his tongue go. "You little Water Tribe bitch." He spat, and blood shone in the corner of her mouth. "Oh you're too perfect. You're just the right fit. An impudent concubine for a washed up prince."