"Okay. That's the best I can do." Katara pulled her hands away, bringing the water along with them; she would not meet his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Zuko looked down. The scar stood out pink and shiny against his skin, a star-shaped patch of discoloration slightly bigger than the span of his hand. It was yet another mark he would bear for the rest of his life, but it was easily covered, and as far as scars went he'd already had much worse.
"It's fine." He shrugged back into his shirt, wondering if there was anything he could say that could truly convince Katara that he meant it. "You saved my life; that was more than enough. Besides…" One of his hands brushed unconsciously over the newly-healed skin. "I think I've earned my scars."
Even as he spoke, Katara's eyes widened. "Zuko, you don't think you deserved—?"
"What? No! No, of course not. At least…" His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Not anymore." The day after the bandages had come off his third week at sea, he'd ordered every reflective surface removed from his ship, because whenever he'd looked in the mirror all he'd been able to see was his disgrace in his father's eyes. "I meant that I got them doing something that was worth the pain." He sighed. "At least this time I actually managed to save someone." Katara laid a hand on his shoulder.
The moment was broken by a knock on the door, and Zuko felt rather than saw Katara stiffen beside him. Over the week that they'd been here, Guan Yin had been in constant contact with those fragmented individuals who were all that remained of the Order of the White Lotus, who'd brought them piece of bad news after piece of bad news. Even though the airship fleet had fallen, Phoenix King Ozai had personally burned huge swathes of the Earth Kingdom to the ground. Broken and facing starvation, those few who remained in the coastal areas had only been able to surrender. Pakku, Bumi, and Jeong Jeong had fallen in the battle for Ba Sing Se. Zuko had officially been declared a traitor, and wanted posters bearing his face had gone up all over the Fire Nation.
The worst, however, had come only the day before. One of the younger and more able-bodied Order members had ventured to the burned-out husk that had once been a large swathe of the Earth Kingdom's farmland in a brave effort to find some clue as to the fate of those who'd worked to bring down the airship fleet.
He had come back with a black sword, hilt dulled by soot and singed with scorch marks, which had been resting in the ashes alongside the twisted remains of several airships and the bodies of soldiers in Fire Nation armor.
Katara had taken it wordlessly, holding it close as if the sword were a person she could hug, shoulders shaking and tears running down her face. Neither one of them had noticed the messenger leave.
Now, they exchanged a glance, steeling themselves with a determined nod before Katara turned back to the door. "Come in."
When Guan Yin pushed open the door, she was accompanied by a young man with shaggy brown hair and eyes of Fire Nation yellow. Though young, it was obvious why he had not joined the Order's siege on Ba Sing Se: his right arm was missing from the shoulder down, the empty sleeve hanging loosely at his side.
"This is my grandson, Shen." The man in question gave a quick bow, his left hand held against his chest.
Like most of the Order members they'd met thus far, he did not stand on ceremony after introductions were made, instead getting right to the point. "We've found some of your companions."
Zuko was forced to swallow a sudden lump in his throat at those words. On the second day of their stay, they had sat down with Guan Yin and given her a list of names, so long that the Order couldn't possibly have any hope of finding them all. Sokka, a warrior of the Southern Water Tribe. Toph Beifong, alias the Blind Bandit, a blind earthbender and Earth Kingdom noble. Suki of Kyoshi Island, leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. Mai, a Fire Nation noble. Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe. Haru, Teo, The Duke… friends they'd made along the way, people they'd lived with and trained with, yet hadn't even realized they'd miss. People who would inevitably have been either on the front lines, or caught in the crossfire.
Katara was less restrained; she was immediately at attention, her eyes shining with a mixture of anticipation and dread. "Who?" she demanded. "Who did you find?"
"A young woman from Kyoshi Island… and a warrior from the Southern Water Tribe. As far as we've learned, they were captured after taking down the Fire Nation airship fleet."
Even before he had finished, Katara had let out a gasp, tears spilling from her eyes and running unnoticed down her face. "They're alive," she whispered. "Thank Tui and La, they're alive."
Zuko, however, was frowning. "Was there anyone else captured with them?" he asked. "A blind earthbender, about twelve years old?"
"I'm sorry." Shen shook his head. "Those are the only two we know of so far."
The two of them exchanged an uneasy glance. "Maybe she escaped?" Katara suggested. "Toph wouldn't let herself get captured that easily."
"Without taking Sokka and Suki with her? Toph wouldn't leave her friends behind like that."
"We don't know the circumstances." Katara bit her lip. "Maybe they were separated. There might have been good reason."
"Yeah. Maybe." Even as he spoke the words, however, Zuko couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong—and he could see in her face that Katara had the same sense of foreboding.
"We have to focus on the people we have a chance of helping right now." Katara squeezed her eyes shut, but when she opened them a few seconds later they were perfectly dry. "Shen, did you find out where they're being held?"
"At the moment, they are being kept in the Caldera prison." Though he only paused for a few seconds, Shen's brief hesitation told them more than any of his words so far. "We think… that it is for the Phoenix King's convenience in having them interrogated."
Zuko's blood ran cold at those words; he knew all too well the cruelty of which his father was capable. "We have to get them out!"
Guan Yin nodded. "The Order of the White Lotus will help you in any way we can."
Pressing their bodies as close against the outer wall as they could manage, they stared up at the Fire Nation prison. Though it was the dead of night and they were dressed head to foot in black, it was impossible not to feel exposed and vulnerable in this open space in the middle of the city under a nearly full moon. Turning back, however, was not an option.
"I don't suppose you've managed to come up with a better plan."
"No."
The whispered conversation was one they'd already had multiple times, and which had come to the same conclusion every single time. Entering the prison undercover was out of the question: even if not for the fact that Zuko would be far too easily recognized, he'd already confirmed that this prison was run by a relatively small number of guards who all knew each other by name, and that, unlike at the Boiling Rock, they did not wear face-concealing helmets.
They had already thought of at least a dozen ways this plan could go wrong—and there were probably hundreds more that they hadn't thought of. They could be killed. They could get Sokka and Suki killed. They could end up getting captured themselves, and only add more fuel to the Phoenix King's interrogation…
"This is our last chance, if you think we should back out."
"No."
Meeting each other's eyes, they exchanged a nod.
Katara's thumb slipped down to the mouth of her waterskin. In a deceptively simple movement, she flicked the cork out and the water followed, and then they were running forward in tandem, riding along on a wave of ice that brought them up and over the edge of the balcony.
Immediately the guards rushed them, yelling to sound the alarm. One was taken out in seconds by a wave of water that froze him to the wall; the other shot a blast of fire, which Zuko blocked before sending him crashing against the opposite wall with a retaliating fireball.
"This way!" Katara followed as he pounded through the door, taking them down the right fork and to the staircase that would lead them to the high-security cells. Even as they ran Katara was replenishing her arsenal, pulling water from the very air as she followed him. The next two guards to round the corner were frozen to the wall almost as quickly as they appeared.
Zuko knew the layout of this place, and he knew the guard shifts. They had used this knowledge to their advantage in planning their attack; a dark hour in the middle of the night, when the number of guards would be at a minimum and those who were on patrol would be getting sleepy and inattentive, proved to be ideal. The near-full moon had been a risk, but they had deemed it a worthwhile one, as it bolstered Katara's strength.
All the precautions in the world, however, couldn't eliminate the danger of what they were doing. Even if they had planned every move in advance, Zuko couldn't help but wonder whether his father would be expecting them to try something like this, and put his own countermeasures in place.
That thought alone was enough to give him a burst of energy, and as the next guard came rushing at them Zuko didn't even bother firebending, but instead grabbed the man by the front of his uniform and slammed him bodily into the wall.
"The Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom prisoners who took down the airship fleet," he growled. When the man didn't answer, Zuko shook him, lifting him off his feet in the process. "Where are they?"
When the guard hesitated, Katara moved to stand beside him, brandishing a stream of water that drew the man's nervous gaze as it wove back and forth through the air. "Well?" Zuko had only heard her use that cold voice on two people: Yon Rha, and himself. It was still enough to send chills up and down his spine.
"Th-the lower levels," the guard sputtered at last. "Cell Block 3."
As soon as they had the information they needed, Zuko let go, and only barely managed to avoid the wave of ice that pinned the guard to the wall.
"Are you going to have enough to last you?" he asked as they resumed their sprint, this time down the nearest flight of stairs. Though he had long since re-thought his ideas of fire being the naturally superior element, he could not help but admit the advantage that firebenders always carried their element within themselves rather than having to draw it from their environment—an advantage that Katara did not share.
"Oh, don't worry about me," Katara said grimly. With a gesture, more water condensed at her fingertips. It wasn't much—not nearly enough to replenish her supply—but he knew firsthand what a skilled waterbender could do with even the smallest amount of liquid. "I'm not going to be running out of water anytime soon." Reassured, he gave her a brief nod and sprinted ahead, taking the lead as they wove their way through the prison that he already knew far too well.
"Cell Block 3 is a high security area," he shouted back to Katara as they ran. "There'll be at least four guards on duty, and they work in pairs."
"So do we." Katara's mouth was set in a determined line, her water hovering at her side and ready to lash out at the slightest provocation. Though forced to carry her element outside of herself, she still had the advantage: it was the middle of the night, the full moon only three days away. Zuko was far from helpless, however; what he wasn't granted by the environment he made up for in pure determination, and he could feel his inner fire burning at his fingertips, itching to be released.
At the bottom of the stairs, they eased their heads cautiously around the doorway to check for potential ambushers. Caution was wasted at this point, however; the second they came into sight, a pair of guards came running straight at them. Immediately they were back-to-back, months of training together paying off as they lashed out with fire and water, neither leaving any opening for the other to be attacked.
Within seconds, it was over. Both guards lay unconscious on the floor. They waited, Zuko's fist drawn back, Katara's water hovering in front of her in a long stream, but the second attack they were expecting did not come.
Zuko's gaze flicked over to Katara, and he could see his own unease mirrored in her blue eyes. "There should be another pair."
They continued to hold each other's eyes for a moment more, asking silent questions, but then exchanged a slight nod. They'd come too far to back out now. Slowly, in a cautious advance quite unlike their previous battle rush, they moved down the hallway, standing shoulder to shoulder, elements still held at the ready in preparation for any attack.
At the sound of footsteps coming toward them, both tensed, Zuko's fire flaring up in his hand. "Wait!" Still they remained in their fighting stances, eyes locked on the guard who came toward them out of the shadows, hands raised. "Please, I'm unarmed." She spread her palms and raised her hands slightly higher, as if to emphasize the point. "I want to help."
Zuko and Katara exchanged a wary glance. By unspoken agreement, they did not attack her, but neither did they lower their guard. "How do we know we can trust you?" Katara said at last. "For all we know you could be trying to lead us into some sort of trap."
"I'm afraid I can only give you my word—but I beg you, let me help." She turned to Zuko then, giving as much of a bow as she could manage with her hands in the air. "Please, my prince. This may be the only chance you have to get your friends out alive."
Zuko's hands dropped involuntarily, and he knew that the shock was showing on his face. No one had addressed him as "prince"—at least, not without some degree of irony—since he had walked out on his father on the Day of Black Sun. Of course, there was always the possibility that the guard was simply a good actor—but Zuko found himself believing what she said. Standing up straight, he gave her a brief nod.
"Are you sure about this?" Unlike him, Katara had not dropped her guard, nor had she taken her eyes from the woman before them. "We'd be trusting Sokka and Suki's lives to a complete stranger on nothing more than her word."
"I don't think that we have much of a choice. Maybe she is leading us into a trap—but I think she's sincere. Please, Katara," he added as he saw her conviction waver. "I think that we have to take this chance."
"Fine." Katara lowered her hands, her water retreating back into her pouch, and turned to the guard once more. "But if my brother gets hurt because of you, I promise I'll make you regret it."
"I understand. Now follow me." Turning with a gesture for them to follow, she started leading them down the hallway at a swift jog.
In spite of his earlier reassurances to Katara, however, Zuko had some questions of his own. "Who are you?" he asked the guard as she unlocked the heavy door that would take them into the next row of cells. "Why are you doing this?"
"My name is Ming." Once she had pulled the door open Zuko went through first, holding a flame aloft in his palm; Katara followed at his nod that the way was clear. "As for why I'm helping you… well, that's a bit more complicated." The door clanged shut behind them, leaving them with only Zuko's fire for light until Ming pulled out a small glowstone that she also held aloft. "General Iroh once showed me great kindness by warning me not to be here on the day he planned to escape. I think that he would want me to help you as well."
At the mention of the name, Zuko's heart seemed to skip a beat. "You knew my uncle?"
"Know him? Well, I suppose that I did know him, in a sense." She smiled. "It's rare to find a man who has such an appreciation for tea." Zuko couldn't help but let out a slight smile of his own; if ever he'd had any doubt as to her claim, it was now gone. "I am… truly sorry for your loss."
"I'm sorry too." It was all he could think to say.
"So what was the other reason?" Katara asked for him as she came up from behind, mercifully turning the conversation to another topic.
Ming stopped abruptly before a heavy cell door. For a few seconds, she simply stood there; she seemed to be thinking hard about her answer. When at last she did speak, her voice was quiet. "Ever since I was a little girl, I was taught to love and support my country. That this war was the Fire Nation's way of sharing our greatness with the world, and that the other nations only resisted because they were too primitive to appreciate a good thing when it was handed to them. That we were forcing our greatness on them for their own good."
What an amazing lie that was. Zuko swallowed as he recalled his own epiphany, arrived at only after many years of traveling the world, the pain of the Earth Kingdom citizens and the devastation of the Air Temples laid out bare for all to see. "So what made you realize…?"
"If we were really trying to help people," she said softly, her head hanging low on her neck, "we never would have treated them with such cruelty." She pushed open the door.
The cell that was revealed was one that he immediately identified as the type used to contain dangerous firebenders: twin sets of manacles hung from the walls, prohibitively heavy and set in such a way that the prisoners' hands could never move more than a few inches away from their own bodies, the palms pointed inward, so that they could not bend without burning themselves. It wasn't the chains that caught his attention, however, but the people they held, both of whom were slumped against their restraints but looked up as the door opened, cringing as the light hit their faces.
"SOKKA!" Immediately Katara pushed past both of them and was at her brother's side, holding a hand to the side of his face. "Sokka, are you hurt? What did they do to you?" Already she had her water out and was scanning his body, checking him from head to foot for hidden injuries.
"K-Katara?" He raised his head, shaking it slightly as if to clear it as Ming unlocked his shackles. A groan escaped him. "No, I have to be dreaming again…"
Meanwhile, Zuko had moved over to Suki's side of the cell and knelt in front of her. "Are you okay?"
Even as he said it, he cringed: once again, he had spoken without thinking. Though Suki didn't look like she'd been badly hurt, she was filthy and pale, and unless the light was playing tricks on him she had definitely lost weight since the last time he'd seen her—not to mention that the position she was in could not have been comfortable.
"Oh, I'm fine," she confessed rather sarcastically as Ming freed her as well. She rubbed her wrists as the shackles fell away, and Zuko could see that the skin there had been chafed raw. "I've just been enjoying my nice vacation in this luxury prison cell."
"Sorry. It was a stupid question." He tried to think of something better to ask. "Are you hurt?"
"Not badly." Suki pushed herself to her feet somewhat stiffly, but did not sway or lean against the wall. "I can still fight."
He nodded. "Good." He was about to tell her their escape plan when Katara spoke from behind him.
"Zuko, we have a problem."
Turning back to the other side of the cell, he saw to his dismay that Katara had to help Sokka to his feet; he was avoiding putting any weight on his left leg, and even the simple action of standing had left him gasping in pain, his eyes squeezed shut as if to block out the agony. It was clear that Sokka would not even be able to walk without help—much less run, as they had counted on being able to do when they'd made their plans to get the others out of this place.
"Sokka broke his leg while we were taking down the airship fleet," Suki explained grimly, before he could ask Ming. "Nobody bothered to treat it when we were brought in."
This necessitated a change in plans. Katara turned to Ming, her brother's arm still across her shoulders. "Is there any way we can get to a balcony or high window without having to fight past any of the guards?"
"I've already thought of that. Come with me."
Zuko moved to support Sokka's other side as Ming led them from the cell and through another locked door at the end of the hallway, which opened onto a small lift. It was obviously made to transport one or two people at a time, and even though they all miraculously managed to cram themselves inside, the mechanism groaned and creaked ominously under the strain of their combined weight.
It was a tense few minutes of waiting while Ming pulled on the rope to bring them up, her arms trembling with the exertion. Zuko wanted to offer his aid—less out of concern than because he wanted to speed the process up—but Sokka's arm around his shoulders and the crush of bodies pinning him against the wall prevented him.
When she had pulled the lift as high as it would go, Ming did not open the doors right away, but instead stood still and simply listened. Shouts and running footsteps reached them through the doors—Zuko tensed—but the other guards passed them by without stopping to check their hiding place. Ming waited a few minutes after their footsteps had faded before cautiously cracking the door open to peer outside.
Having affirmed that the coast was clear, she pulled the door open the rest of the way, and they all piled out, following her down yet another hallway as fast as they were able. Sokka was now clenching his teeth in pain and beads of sweat stood out against his forehead, which was far too pale under his tan. He leaned more heavily on Zuko the longer they walked.
"Ming, how much farther?" Katara asked. Judging by the strain in her voice, she was also supporting a substantial amount of her brother's weight.
"We're almost there." They continued to press forward, and even though they were probably only walking for a few minutes, it felt like much longer. Finally, Ming pulled open a door.
Cool night air washed over their faces, and everyone took a relieved breath at their first taste of freedom since they'd entered the stuffy prison. As they stepped out onto the balcony, Katara took out the bison whistle, bringing it to her lips and blowing hard before turning back to Ming.
"Thank you," she said from her position beneath Sokka's arm. "Thank you so much."
Ming nodded. "Now, I need you to take me out."
Katara's eyes widened briefly, but then she gave a determined nod. "You need a believable cover story." She shifted some of Sokka's weight onto Zuko, her hand moving downward to the mouth of her waterskin.
"Wait." Katara's hand froze in place, and everyone else turned to look at Zuko, who was using his free hand to dig clumsily into one of his pockets. Finally, he found what he was looking for and held it out to her: a White Lotus Pai Sho tile.
At the sight of the token, her eyes widened; she obviously knew what it meant. She did not, however, reach out to take it. "I don't think it would be wise for me to be seen with something like that." She smiled back at him. "But I'll be sure to buy my own set after this is over."
It was a puzzling answer, but Appa was flying up to the edge of the balcony, and shouts from the other guards were rising up below them: there was no time to ask what she meant. Instead, Zuko pocketed the tile, taking back his share of Sokka's weight in the process. "If anyone ever asks you for a game, say yes." Telling her was a risk, but there was no such thing as a safe course—not anymore. "Those who cling to the old ways will always find a friend."
"I'll be sure to remember that." She turned to Katara. "Do it."
Katara needed no further prompting. A wave of water shot out from her hands; Ming could not quite suppress a cry of surprise as her body was encased in ice and pinned to the wall. Looking back at her, Zuko gave her one last nod before helping Sokka onto Appa's back. Suki leaped aboard next, breathing hard from the exertion.
Wait a minute… Suki was out of breath?
This was the girl he'd once watched scramble up the side of a building and take out several guards in a row to get to the warden of the Boiling Rock, all without breaking a sweat. Zuko liked to think that he was in pretty good shape, but he'd barely been able to catch up with her—and he'd definitely been out of breath when he had. For Suki to be panting from a brief walk and a hop onto Appa's back… something about that wasn't right at all.
"Are you okay?" he asked quietly as Katara took the reins.
"I'm fine." At her defensiveness he backed off, hands outspread. Seeming to realize she'd snapped at him, Suki shook her head slightly by way of apology. "I'm fine," she repeated, though much less aggressively than before. "We should see what we can do for Sokka."
Sokka did seem to be the more badly hurt of the two; as soon as they'd gotten him onto the saddle he'd collapsed in place, trying to suppress his moans as he clutched his broken leg. Zuko had stayed by his side along with Suki, but was at a loss for what to do; Katara was the healer here, and she was currently at the reins. Zuko got up and moved to the front of the saddle.
"Is there anything else we can do to help Sokka?" he asked. "He's trying to hide it, but he's in a lot of pain."
"There's not much I can do until we get back on solid ground." Katara bit her lip. "I'm going to need more to work with than just the water." Nevertheless, she tossed him the reins before making her way to the back of the saddle and kneeling at Sokka's side, skimming water from the clouds as she went.
They flew the rest of the way to the safe house in silence. Zuko made sure to keep them above the clouds, navigating by starlight and only occasionally dipping down lower to make finer adjustments to their course. The waxing moon cast its pale, pure light over a colorless cloudscape, lending their environment an otherworldly quality that prohibited speaking and gave Zuko the feeling that they'd come to a place that humans were never meant to frequent. Briefly, he wondered if this was what it was like in the Spirit World.
The air up here was chilly, and the dampness from the clouds definitely didn't help. Before long the persistent wetness had permeated every layer of clothing he had on, and more than once Zuko found himself using his firebending to warm himself back up. Looking back, he saw that Katara had wrapped several layers' worth of blankets around Sokka, who was shivering violently even though his sister seemed completely unaffected. Suki was clutching a blanket around her shoulders as well.
Finally, after what seemed like a much longer time than their journey to the prison had taken, they made it back to Guan Yin's house. As Zuko brought Appa down to land, both Guan Yin and Shen came out to meet them.
"Were you followed?"
"Not that I know of." Zuko jumped down from the saddle, followed in short order by Suki, while Shen walked up Appa's tail to assist Katara in moving Sokka. "I did my best to keep us above the clouds on the way back."
Meanwhile, Katara was voicing her own concerns. "I'm going to need whatever medical supplies you can get," she called down from Appa's back as she and Shen each took up one of Sokka's arms and pulled him into a standing position. "Sokka's got a broken leg, and I'm going to need to set and splint it…"
Zuko, however, found that his attention was drawn back to Suki. She was supporting herself with a hand on Appa's side, and was still gasping for breath in spite of the fact that she'd spent at least half an hour sitting still. Looking more closely, Zuko saw to his alarm that beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead in spite of the cool night air. "Are you sure you're all right?" he asked in an undertone.
Suki looked at him then, and for the first time that night Zuko saw a spark of genuine fear in her eyes. "I don't… feel well," she confessed in a whisper.
She had barely completed the sentence before her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell forward unconscious.
Katara could only watch, as if in slow motion, as Suki went limp as a rag doll and collapsed in a dead faint.
"Suki?" In spite of his condition, Sokka was desperately trying to get to her. "SUKI!"
Zuko, meanwhile, was staring down in a panic at the unconscious girl in his arms. At least he had caught her in time to save her from cracking her head open against the ground, but unless they managed to find out what was wrong with her, and soon, that was hardly going to matter.
No, she thought in a moment of hopeless panic. No, this was not happening. They'd only just managed to get two of their friends back after they thought they'd lost everyone, and Katara was not about to let another person slip through their fingers—not if she had anything to say about it.
With that thought, her feeling of helplessness evaporated even if the panic did not. In that moment, Katara knew what she would have to do, and she did it: she took charge.
"Sokka, stay still!" She slipped out from under Sokka's arm, trusting Shen to support him on his own. "Shen, get him to a bed and make sure he doesn't try to move around. Zuko, I need you to get Suki inside—carefully. Guan Yin, I need a room, clean water, and medicine, now."
As Katara shouted out orders, everyone jumped to do as she said. Zuko first lowered Suki to the ground, where he carefully repositioned her unconscious body so he could carry her without hurting her further, before standing again with her held close against his chest so the jostling would be kept to a minimum. Once he was ready, Guan Yin led them to an empty room in the house, where she hastily laid out a pallet on the floor before leaving to get the other supplies Katara needed.
Without prompting, Zuko laid Suki down on top of the bedding. Katara had no water on her person—she had nearly emptied her waterskin during the battle in the prison, and used up the rest trying to make Sokka more comfortable on the way back—so she started by pulling up Suki's shirt to see if she could find any visual clues as to what was wrong with her.
As it turned out, she didn't need to look far. Katara hissed in sympathy when she saw the ugly bruises on Suki's abdomen, some of them an angry reddish color, others dark blue or yellow and probably several days old.
Zuko's eyes also widened at the sight of her injuries. "She said she was fine!" Panic crept into his voice at the words. "She told me she wasn't hurt badly!"
"She probably thought that she wasn't. Internal injuries don't always hurt." At that moment, Guan Yin chose to re-enter the room, and Katara gratefully accepted the bowl of water she had brought, instructing her to place the other supplies within easy reach. Already she was bending the water around her hands, placing them gently against Suki's skin to begin a more thorough assessment of the damage.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Zuko's voice was unusually quiet.
"Yes," she said without looking away from her work. "You can go and get Sokka to calm down so he doesn't hurt himself more—I know he's working himself into a panic right now—and while you're at it make sure he isn't hiding any life-threatening injuries as well." When he didn't move, instead giving her a look of questioning disbelief, Katara knew that it was because he didn't feel right leaving a friend without knowing for sure whether she was going to be okay, but she could not afford to be patient right now. "Well?" she snapped, pinning him with a glare. "I need space and she needs privacy. You'll only get in the way here, and I don't think Suki would appreciate you standing here staring if I have to start taking off the rest of her clothes." Thankfully, the words got her message across, and Zuko hastily got up and left the room.
Now, Katara could give her full concentration to the task before her. Suki was bleeding internally, and it looked as if it had been going on for at least half a day. She must have taken a hard blow to the stomach at some point over the course of her imprisonment—probably more than one, Katara thought with mounting anger. If Katara didn't manage to heal her, and soon, then she would—
No. Katara was not even going to let herself think it.
Time crawled by as she fought to repair the damage, encouraging ruptured tissue to knit back together, gently redirecting blood flow to ensure that all of the vital organs were getting what they needed. In spite of her rapid breathing, Suki seemed desperate for air, and Katara was helpless to get more into her lungs than her unconscious gasps were already taking in. Instead, she did the only thing she could and continued to work, single-mindedly, without breaks, to stop the blood loss that was at the root of the problem and to heal the tissues that had been damaged from lack of air.
The first rays of dawn had begun to filter in through the window by the time that Katara felt Suki's life was sufficiently out of danger for her to take a break. Groggily, she pushed herself to her feet, rubbing her eyes—it felt like grains of sand had lodged under her lids at some point over the course of the night—and was surprised to find herself swaying. She was alone in the room—Guan Yin had been in and out to bring her supplies, but the older woman must have needed her rest, and if Zuko knew what was good for him he hadn't left his post at Sokka's side.
The yawn that started as she pushed open the door didn't stop until she was halfway down the hallway. When she opened the door to the room where Guan Yin had told her they would put Sokka, she saw that her brother was laid out on top of some bedding that was similar to what Guan Yin had prepared for Suki, and that he seemed to have given into exhaustion and fallen asleep, though his face was still set in a grimace of pain. Zuko was there as well, sitting in a chair on the far side of the room, head leaning back against the wall and a series of light snores emanating from his open mouth.
"I thought it would be best if your friend got some rest." She started; she hadn't noticed Shen, who was sitting on the floor nearby. He gave her an apologetic smile as he rose to his feet. "I offered to watch over your brother so that he could sleep."
"He looks like he needs it." Katara smiled fondly, reminding herself to keep that picture in her mind; it was rare to see her one-time nemesis, the uptight (former) crown prince of the Fire Nation, in a position so unselfconscious, so relaxed, so… human.
Seeing Zuko like that, however, also served to remind Katara of how tired she was, that the high-intensity healing she'd been doing on top of staying up all night had exhausted her completely. Again, she turned to Shen. "Have you been up long?"
"About half the night."
"Then you should get some rest too." Stepping over to Zuko, she lightly touched his shoulder.
He awoke with a start, nearly toppling out of the chair before catching himself, blinking a few times before he got a bearing on his surroundings. "Katara?" He ran a hand over his face. Then, his good eye widened. "How's Suki? Did you find out what was wrong with her? Is she going to be okay?"
The hand that Katara held up to silence him quickly came to her mouth to cover another yawn. "I think that Suki is going to be fine," she said as soon as the yawn ended. "Sokka?"
"His leg is the worst of his injuries, but he was panicking the whole time he was awake. It was all we could do to keep him from jumping up and running off to find you."
She nodded, yet another yawn escaping her; she could not muster up the energy to ask how they had finally gotten Sokka to settle down. "I think that Sokka and I could both use some rest before I get to work on his leg," she confessed. "But someone needs to stay with Suki to make sure she doesn't develop any complications, and in case she wakes up, it would probably be better if it's someone she knows."
Thankfully, Zuko took her meaning immediately and stood up with a stretch. While Shen left the room to bring her some bedding, Katara gave Zuko a list of things to watch out for, and which would necessitate waking her right away. Zuko, though he looked slightly panicked by the onslaught of information, nodded through everything she said and even managed to repeat it back to her without a single mistake. Confident that he knew what to do, Katara gratefully curled up on the finished pallet, and was vaguely aware of mumbling thanks to Shen and some additional instructions to Zuko before she was fast asleep.
Zuko shifted slightly from his seated position as Suki began to stir, though he didn't immediately move—this had happened a few times already, her eyelids fluttering and her fingers twitching, only for her to fall right back asleep after a moment of apparent restlessness.
This time, however, it seemed like she was finally waking up for real. Zuko pushed himself into a kneeling position as her eyes flickered open.
"Hey," he said as Suki blinked up at him, seeming dazed from her injuries and prolonged unconsciousness. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been trampled by a herd of angry Komodo rhinos." With a groan, she braced her arms underneath her body and pulled her knees forward as if preparing to push herself to her feet, but Zuko stopped her with a gesture.
"Don't try to get up. You were hurt pretty badly, and Katara said she'd freeze me to the ceiling if I let you move around."
"You're the one getting frozen to the ceiling here, not me. Don't see how that's my problem." Nevertheless, she lay back down, and Zuko gaped at her for a moment before he realized that she was smiling.
"Funny." Remembering the other instructions Katara given him in case Suki woke up before she did, he reached for the medicinal herbs at his side.
"How bad was it?" she asked, much more seriously, as Zuko added water before holding the cup between his hands to heat it. "I was only feeling a little faint, but then…"
Zuko hesitated. Sensing his reluctance, Suki narrowed her eyes at him, and he set the cup aside to cool with a sigh.
"Katara said you had internal injuries," he told her at last. "You almost bled to death before we even realized what was going on."
"I see." She looked away then, turning to face the wall rather than him. "Sokka?"
Though Zuko was sure he hadn't imagined the note of guilt in her voice, he decided not to bring it up, as they had more than enough to deal with already. "His leg's pretty badly broken, but that's the worst of it. He was getting frantic after you collapsed, though." When Suki did not answer, he continued, "Eventually he got so worked up that Guan Yin—our host—had to give him something to calm him down. He's sleeping right now. Katara says she'll work on his leg as soon as she's rested."
A brief movement of Suki's head was the only indication that she'd heard. Her non-responsiveness had Zuko at a loss—he didn't know what to say or not say, didn't even know what she'd been though over the week that they'd been hiding and he'd been healing and they'd both been desperately seeking information on what had happened to the others. As a matter of fact, Zuko was the worst person to be at her side under these circumstances—Katara, at least, would have known what to say. Uncle would too—the thought brought a burning heat to bear in his eyes and the back of his throat. Even Sokka, who said the most ridiculous things and always put his foot in his mouth, was not only her boyfriend, but knew what she'd been through and would be able to give her the kind of comfort that Zuko could not.
"Here," he said at last, picking up the cup, which should have finished steeping by this point. "You're supposed to drink this as soon as you wake up."
"All right." Her voice was dull. Again, she placed her hands against the floor, albeit more slowly this time. Zuko, thinking to help her sit up, eased a hand beneath her back. As soon as his palm pressed into the cloth of her shirt, however, Suki hissed in pain, jerking instinctively away from his touch.
"Sorry! I'm sorry!" He immediately pulled away.
"It's okay." Even so, she was speaking through clenched teeth. "It's just a burn. I'll be fine."
"You need to tell Katara. Burns can get infected easily…"
"You think I don't know that?" Zuko crossed his arms. She looked at his face, flushed, and turned away again. "Sorry. I was going to have Katara look at it once she'd finished with Sokka, but then…"
"Right." Letting out a sigh, he pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. "Where aren't you burned?" he asked at last.
In the end, he propped her up with a hand between her shoulder blades, continuing to support her as she drank the medicine. Suki made a face at the taste but didn't complain even if she did pause a few times, and kept drinking until she had emptied the cup of its contents.
"Ugh." She wiped her mouth as she set the cup to the side. Wordlessly, Zuko passed her some water; she rinsed out her mouth a few times before drowning the rest in one long swallow.
No sooner had she finished than the door opened, revealing a very tousle-headed Katara. She was rubbing her eyes with her fist, her mouth open in a yawn, but she brightened immediately upon seeing that Suki was awake.
"How are you feeling?" In a few swift strides she was at Suki's side, hands coated with water, and Zuko stood back to give her room. "Any pain? Dizziness? Nausea? Did Zuko give you the medicine I left?"
"Yeah, he did," Suki said, answering the last question first. "I feel… tired, and I get dizzy if I try to sit up too quickly."
"All right. Let me take a look." She eased Suki back down (incidentally managing not to touch any sensitive spots), before once again holding glowing water to her abdomen, moving slowly over various points on her body.
Finally she sighed, bending the water back into the bowl. "I'll do more later, but right now I have to take care of Sokka's leg." Suki nodded her understanding as Katara pushed herself to her feet. "Don't try to get up or move around. I'll send in Guan Yin to see whether you need anything." With one final stretch, she pushed herself to her feet. "Zuko, come with me."
"So what's up?" he asked as Katara closed the door behind them.
"I need your help." She worried her lip a little before continuing. "Sokka's leg had started to heal on its own, but nobody bothered to set it after he was captured, and it… healed wrong. I'm going to have to break it again, and set it right this time, or he's going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life."
Zuko winced. "So you want me to—"
His question was cut short, however, when Katara pushed open the door to Sokka's room. Sokka, now awake and alert, looked up in anticipation as they entered—as did Guan Yin, who was sitting beside him.
"How's Suki?" The words were out of his mouth before they had even stepped through the door.
"Awake, and lucid. She'll need to avoid any strenuous activity for a while, but as long as she doesn't try to push herself too hard, she ought to be fine."
"She was worried about you," Zuko added as Sokka let out a sigh of relief.
"I told Suki I'd send someone in in case there was anything she needed." Katara turned to Guan Yin. "Could you—"
"Of course." Their host stood and exited the room, closing the door behind her.
"Okay." Taking a deep breath, Katara sank down onto the floor next to her brother. "Sokka, you know how this works. I'm going to have to hurt you for your leg to heal right. I'm sorry, but…"
He cut her off with a shake of his head. "Katara, it's okay. Besides, you're going to heal me as soon as you're done, right? I think I can take it."
The words seemed to steel Katara's resolve, and she nodded. "Okay. Here's how we're going to do this." She produced a leather strap from the bag at her side and held it out to her brother. "Sokka, bite down on this." With a nod, he accepted the offering, though Zuko could hear his nervous swallow. "Zuko? Hold him down."
With a nod, he knelt at Sokka's head, placing his hands lightly against the other boy's shoulders. Unable to think of anything else to say, he could only repeat the words his uncle had whispered to him as the ship's doctor had changed his bandages the first few weeks of their voyage. He'd been in excruciating pain; as the soiled gauze was peeled from his face, it had felt as if his skin were being ripped off with it—but Uncle had always been there as well, repeating the same mantra over and over again while he bit back his screams, and it had helped him far more than he'd been willing to admit. "Look at me, Sokka. Don't watch what she's doing. Just look at me."
In answer, Sokka snorted. "What makes you think that I'm going to want to see your face when I'm in severe pain?" Nevertheless, he kept his eyes on Zuko as he placed the strap between his teeth. Zuko rolled his eyes but said nothing as he tightened his grip until he was sure that Sokka could not move; he knew that the friendly teasing was only Sokka's way of coping and that his own responses had been a great deal harsher.
From somewhere near the vicinity of Sokka's feet, he heard Katara take a deep breath, but followed his own advice and did not look to see what she was doing. Instead, he held Sokka's gaze, keeping their eyes locked as Sokka's hands came up to encircle his forearms.
Then, Katara made her move.
The dull snapping sound of breaking bone was nearly drowned out by Sokka's muffled scream, and his hands clenched on Zuko's forearms hard enough to bruise. Even as Sokka's eyes screwed shut and his breathing grew harsh with pain, however, Katara had set the bone and was bending a stream of water to hold against his leg, healing the worst of the damage. Slowly, Sokka's breathing evened out and his grip on Zuko's arms loosened, which Zuko took as his cue to ease his own hold. Sokka spat out the leather strap as he opened his eyes.
"That…" He swallowed, running his thumb over the set of teeth marks that had been newly imprinted into the leather. "I never want to do that again."
"Hopefully you won't have to." Katara pulled the water away before she went to work splinting the leg, wrapping long strips of bandages to hold the wood in place. "It'll take a few more healing sessions before you're good to walk again, but as long as you stay off it until then, there should be no lasting aftereffects."
"Right," Sokka groaned. "Go right back to not moving again. Great."
Katara only smiled indulgently at his complaints. "I'll see what I can do about getting you some crutches." After taking a moment to stretch, she stood and made her way to the door; seeing his opportunity, Zuko followed.
"I'll talk to Guan Yin about crutches," he said in an undertone once they were out of earshot. "You should take another look at Suki first."
The burns were of varying degrees of size, age, and severity. Some were almost-healed, peeling patches of skin that needed no attention from her; others, however, were oozing swathes of blisters that looked to be no more than a day old—or, even worse, were several days old, and had grown swollen and yellow with infection.
More than the sheer number of burns, however, what disturbed Katara the most was the fact that many—far too many to be a coincidence—bore the unmistakable shape of handprints, and that the great majority of them were clustered in some of the most sensitive areas of the skin. Whoever was responsible for this had done it with the intention of causing pain.
"Suki," she said at last, no longer able to stand the prolonged silence as she moved the water from burn to burn. "What happened?"
At first, she thought the other girl wasn't going to answer; she held her silence as Katara worked on a spot on her side that, though not particularly severe, was still giving her trouble due to the large area of skin that it covered. When Suki finally did speak, her voice was so quiet that Katara could barely hear it. "They were trying to get Sokka to talk."
Katara's response was equally quiet. "I see." After that, there wasn't anything more to say. Her stomach churned, and she didn't—couldn't—ask the obvious question, because she wasn't sure which answer would make her feel worse.
After a few minutes, however, Suki answered it anyway. "I told him not to. The world was more important than me." A hiss of pain escaped her as Katara placed her hands against a burn that started near the intersection of her shoulder and armpit and extended almost a third of the way down her back and side. This one was both larger and more severe than most of the others, the skin deep red and covered in ruptured blisters; this was probably the burn that Zuko had agitated when he'd tried to help her sit up.
"He didn't talk, at first," she continued as Katara began her healing, and it was evident from the flatness in her voice that Suki's feelings were as mixed as hers. "But then, they threatened to—"
At that point, however, her voice broke and she couldn't seem to continue, or to tell Katara exactly what it was that she would have suffered had Sokka not passed vital information into the hands of the Fire Nation, and Katara felt a surge of anger that anyone would use such an underhanded method of threatening a person's loved ones in order to get what they wanted.
"It's okay, Suki," she said at last, glad that Suki's back was turned to her, glad that they didn't have to look at each other during such a painful conversation. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." She bit her lip. "But we do need to know what they know."
"That's something you're going to ask Sokka. They always took him to a different room when…"
…when they'd interrogated him. Katara grimaced. Belatedly, she realized that she'd been working on the same injury for nearly five minutes, and reluctantly pulled away the water. "I don't think I'm going to be able to heal this one in one session," she admitted. If she'd been able to work on it even a day sooner, she thought with frustration, she probably would have been able to do a more thorough job, but at least she had managed to mend most of the ruptured blisters, which would cut down considerably on both the pain and the risk of infection. "For now I'll clean it and apply a dressing, and work on it again tonight."
Suki nodded, though a shudder went through her body at even Katara's gentle ministrations. Knowing how painful it must be for Suki to be touched by anyone right now, she cleaned the burn as quickly as she could without being rough, and used the lightest touch she could manage in applying the salve.
"Okay," Katara said at last as she finished bandaging up the wound. "You might have some scarring, but other than that it should heal fine."
"How bad?" she asked quietly as Katara moved on to the next burn.
"To be honest, I can't say for sure. But I've treated burns much worse than this, and I'm going to do everything I can to prevent it. At worst, the skin will be pink and a little rough." Suki nodded her acknowledgement.
Thankfully, most of the rest of the burns she managed to heal all the way. There was only one other that required additional attention, on the inside of Suki's upper arm—a location that would result in a great deal of chafing and pain for most normal movement. Katara had no doubt that that had been the intention.
No sooner had she finished bandaging up the final burn than a knock sounded on the door. "Hold on a minute!" As Suki pulled on a shirt, Katara got up and headed for the door—she wouldn't put it past Sokka to barge in anyway. Once she was sure Suki was decent, Katara pulled open the door.
Sokka had, indeed, been about to barge in. As it was, he stumbled forward when the door handle was pulled unexpectedly from his grasp, and only Katara's hasty intervention prevented him from pitching face-first into the floor. Somewhere, he seemed to have found a crude set of crutches, with which he was now supporting himself awkwardly, not quite having gotten the hang of using them yet.
"I did tell him to wait until you let him in." Zuko was standing against the wall behind him, arms crossed.
"I'm sure that you did," Katara grumbled, withdrawing her support and allowing Sokka to make his way over to his girlfriend.
"Suki?" His face was ashen as he staggered over as fast as his crutches could propel him. "I'm so, so sorry, Suki. I never meant for this to happen. I'm sorry. I—"
"Sokka, it's not your fault." She made a move as if to rise, caught Katara's warning look, sighed, and instead reached out to give a gentle tug to Sokka's hand. "I'm fine. Katara says I'll be fine."
Holding his crutches to one side, Sokka awkwardly lowered himself to the floor—but as soon as he was on her level, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. Though he was mindful enough of Suki's injuries not to squeeze or jostle her, he did not move for several long moments, tears running down his face as he held her close.
The sound of the door closing behind her brought Katara's attention back to Zuko. After turning the latch, he stepped into the room with a small cough. "I hate to ruin the moment and all, but we've got some important things we need to talk about."
Slowly, reluctantly, without any hint of embarrassment at being caught with an audience, Sokka and Suki pulled away from each other—though their hands remained entwined. Sokka nodded. "I think that you're right. We need to plan what we're going to do next."
Zuko looked a question at Katara, who nodded, indicating that he should start. He returned the gesture with a nod of his own before returning his attention to Sokka. "First of all, what happened to Toph?"
"We don't know." For a few seconds of silence, they waited for Sokka to say more, but when he didn't seem inclined to continue, Suki picked up where he had left off.
"Toph was singled out as the only bender in the group and separated from us right after we were captured. They… must know she's a metalbender. They used wooden restraints."
"I see." Katara hung her head. "The White Lotus hasn't had any luck finding her either."
"Well, she has to be somewhere," Sokka insisted, "and their usual method of imprisoning earthbenders won't work on her." He rubbed his chin. "What if they're keeping her on a wooden boat?"
"The Fire Nation doesn't use wooden boats," Zuko interrupted. "What do you think happens when a bunch of firebenders are out at sea on a vessel made of wood?"
"Zuko's right," Katara said. "If they've still got Toph, they're probably keeping her in a wooden prison cell somewhere, like that time we got captured by Combustion Man."
"Wherever they took her, it's already been a week, and the White Lotus hasn't had any luck either. Frankly, Toph could be anywhere by now."
"If the Order can't find her, we're going to have to track down someone who does have that information, and get it out of them in other ways." Suki's eyes flashed. "We can start with that guard who helped us out—she should be able to give us some names at least. Zuko, do you know of any other good places to start?"
"I could give you a few places to start." She nodded in satisfaction. "Frankly, though, what happened to Toph is only one of our problems." He turned from Suki to Sokka. "We also need to know what information you shared while you were in prison."
Katara winced—Zuko needn't have put it so bluntly, especially with Sokka and Suki both sitting right there. At the question, Sokka's shoulders slumped as his eyes fell to the floor. Suki's fingers tightened around his.
"I wish I'd held out longer." A hand came up to press into the side of his head, and he turned away from Suki. "I should have talked sooner. If only I'd—"
"Sokka. Stop." Katara knelt at his other side, placing a hand on his shoulder; he looked at her then, tears standing out in his eyes. "There's nothing we can do to change what happened," she continued gently, "but if we want to have any chance at all of fixing the damage, we need to know."
"I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of," Zuko added, sinking to the floor across from the group. "Sometimes it was because I didn't know what was right. Sometimes there was no right decision—but what's done is done, and sometimes you just have to accept the consequences and try to make right whatever you can."
At his words, Sokka nodded and took a deep breath. "I told them about the Order of the White Lotus."
"How much?" Zuko asked, worry working its way into his voice. "Did you share the passphrases?"
"I didn't know them—and believe me, they asked. They didn't believe me until they started—" He choked, as if the very words were an obstruction in his throat. Nobody prompted him to continue, but waited in silence as he took a series of deep breaths. "I named all the members I could, and told them about the Lotus tile I got from Master Piandao," he finished at last, his voice coming out in a whisper. "I was sharing everything I knew at that point, because of what they threatened to do to Suki if I didn't tell them."
That must have been why Ming hadn't accepted Zuko's offering: given the Fire Nation's newfound knowledge, it would have been incredibly dangerous to carry around a White Lotus tile for no apparent reason.
All the while, Suki was silent, wrapping her arms around herself like a small child. Though she did not try to pull away from Sokka, nor did she lean in to take comfort from his embrace.
Did she blame him for what had happened? Or had whatever her interrogators had done to her in prison been so traumatic that she had developed an aversion to human contact? Either way, Katara was going to have to talk to her brother, and soon: it seemed as if he had no idea how to interact with Suki now, especially in light of the fact that he clearly blamed himself for what had happened, and he needed to know how to avoid doing something that would only make things worse.
"We need to tell Guan Yin and Shen, so that they can get the word out." Zuko's voice broke into her thoughts. "Is there anything else?"
Sokka hung his head. "The Northern Water Tribe. Their defenses, the layout of their city—even random stuff about their culture. I was spilling everything by then."
"The Ocean and Moon spirits?" It was impossible to keep the horror from her voice. Zhao had been bad enough, but if the entire Fire Nation now knew the secret…
Sokka, however, shook his head. "That was the one thing I didn't tell them." His voice carried a note of pride—it was hollow triumph, but there nonetheless. "Yue… I couldn't…"
It seemed as if the entire room breathed a sigh of relief. "So they don't know."
"No. But there's more." Eyes narrowed, he pushed himself into a more upright position. "They wanted to know about the swamp benders too, and whether there were any other waterbenders born in the South. And I told them. I told them—!" Harsh breaths tore their way from his throat, and once again he stopped, not speaking again until he had fought his way back to a state of control. "The Fire Nation is going after the next Avatar—and we have to find him first."
"But there isn't a next Avatar!"
"Katara…"
"Weren't you listening to what Aang told us after we got away from Fong?"
"Katara—"
"If he dies in the Avatar state, the reincarnation cycle will be broken, and—"
"Katara, you're not listening to me—"
"—there's no way that blue light could have been anything else. We can't—"
"Katara! Aang wasn't in the Avatar State!"
Her tirade ground to a screeching halt as she and Zuko both turned to stare at the pair on the floor. For a moment, all was still.
"Sokka," Zuko said at last. "Are you sure?"
"I was right there. I saw the whole thing." A distant, glazed look came over his eyes. "Aang was in a pretty tight spot at first, but then he somehow managed to get into the Avatar State. It turned the whole fight completely around. I didn't see everything—I was too busy with the airships—but the next time I looked Aang had Ozai completely at his mercy. He was pinned to the ground and everything, and Aang was about to unleash the wrath of the elements on him."
"So what happened?" Even though she already knew the answer from somewhere deep within herself, Katara still had to ask. To hear Sokka confirm what her heart already knew to be true.
"He couldn't do it. At the last second he pulled back, came out of the Avatar State, and let Ozai go. I don't know what he was thinking. Maybe that Ozai would be grateful that the Avatar had shown him mercy, or that he was still too terrified to make a move. Maybe he hoped they could talk things out before Ozai recovered. But he lowered his guard. He turned his back. And then—" Sokka mimed a fire strike, letting his hand drop back to his side.
Katara's hands were over her mouth. Across from her, Zuko drove his fist into the floor with a loud thud. Smoke rose from the floorboards where his hand had impacted. When he pulled his hand away, his knuckles were bleeding.
Nobody spoke. Eventually, Katara knew, they would have to make plans, to figure out how they were going to use their meager resources to help a world that was so much worse off than it had ever been during their lifetimes. Right now, however, the horror of Aang's death was too great of a hurdle for her to get over. He had been unwilling to kill, he had shown mercy, and Ozai had repaid him by… by…
Ozai was a monster. Though Zuko had already said as much, on many occasions, only now, now that she knew personally what he was willing to do to an opponent, a child who'd been vulnerable only because he'd refused to emulate Ozai's ruthlessness, was she fully able to process that knowledge.
"Aang," she whispered. Unbidden, tears were running down her face, but she made no effort to wipe them away. Katara could only sit there with a hand over her mouth, saltwater spilling from her eyes as her shoulders shook uncontrollably. A hand—Sokka's—was on her back, rubbing gentle circles, but he didn't speak either, head hanging low on his neck with his eyes squeezed shut.
They sat there for an indeterminate amount of time, all of them grieving in their own ways, taking comfort from each other's presence. When somebody finally did break the silence, it was as if she had forgotten the real world existed, but Suki's voice brought her crashing back down into it.
"So what are we going to do now?"
"It's like Sokka said." Zuko looked over at them, yellow eyes intense. "We have to find the next Avatar, and we have to do it before the Fire Nation.
"We might have time," he continued. "Most of the navy was destroyed in Zhao's siege, and the airship fleet…" Trailing off, he shot a questioning look at Sokka, who smirked.
"Trust me, Zuko. There wasn't much left of the airship fleet after we got done with it."
"That gives us some time, then. The Fire Nation won't be able to hold its own against the Northern Water Tribe without a massive invasion force, and it's going to take them at least half a year to rebuild everything." He shot a hesitant look at Katara and Sokka. "The Southern Water Tribe—"
"Isn't a threat," Katara reassured him in spite of the spike of worry that shot through her stomach. "Before I left, I was the only waterbender in the whole South Pole."
"The Fire Nation knows it too," Sokka continued, picking up where she'd left off. "There won't have been any children born for the past three years, not with all the men away at war. Without any benders or any resources, we don't have anything that could possibly interest the Fire Nation."
"So it's settled, then," Suki added. "The next Avatar is going to be born in the Northern Water Tribe."
"Actually… he might not be." Zuko and Suki both shot questioning looks at Sokka, but Katara knew instantly what he was talking about. "The Foggy Swamp," they said in unison.
"We found other waterbenders," Katara added for the others' benefit, "living in the middle of an Earth Kingdom swamp. Their tribe was well-hidden, but some of them helped us fight in the invasion, and they surrendered so we could get away." It was evident from the looks on the others' faces that she didn't need to say anything more: they knew as well as she did that that meant any information on the swamp benders was now potentially in the Fire Nation's hands as well.
"The Fire Nation is low on resources right now," Zuko reminded them. "That gives us time. But if I know anything about my—about Ozai, he's not going to wait any longer than he has to. We need to get there first."
"We're going to have to warn both of them." Sokka's arm tightened around Suki's shoulders as he spoke. "Find out which tribe has the Avatar. Prepare their defenses. Maybe even evacuate if necessary." He swallowed. "We're going to have to tell the Order, but in the end that might not be enough."
"So how—"
At that moment, however, their plans were interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.
Without thinking, Katara was on her feet and out the door, hand over the mouth of her waterskin, Zuko hard on her heels. They didn't need to look far for the source of the commotion: at the other end of the hallway was Guan Yin, face pale, eyes wide with fright.
"Please—you have to help—"
"Where?" Katara demanded. With a shaking hand, Guan Yin pointed to the door directly behind her: the door to the room where they'd been keeping Azula.
A glance, a nod, and an unspoken plan was exchanged and agreed upon. Katara stood to the side of the doorway, back against the wall, while Zuko entered first.
Blue flames parted around him like water the second he stepped through the door, dispersing harmlessly into thin air at his reflexive block. Knowing that Zuko could now cover her effectively, Katara rushed into the room behind him, kneeling beside the still-screaming Shen while Zuko fought to restrain his sister.
Shen was covering his face with his hand. Katara had to pull his wrist away; he struggled against her instinctively, and in the end she had to kneel on top of his arm to keep him from touching the burn and making it worse. When she finally managed to get a good look, she saw that his face had been badly burned, the skin already beginning to blister.
Stomach turning, she bent the water from the pouch at her side and coated her hands, pressing the healing liquid to the blistered and reddened skin, knitting damaged tissue back together, clearing the chi paths so the healing would go easier. As Shen's breathing relaxed, Katara allowed herself a sigh of her own: though superficially ugly, the burns were no worse than Toph's feet had been, and that she had been able to give them immediate attention would aid the recovery process immensely. There shouldn't be lasting scars.
Chancing a glance to make sure that Zuko had Azula secured, Katara saw that he was watching her with an intense, unreadable expression. As soon as her eyes met his, however, he busied himself with securing his sister, re-binding her hands behind her back and tying them to the bedpost in such a way that she couldn't get loose again.
Thinking it best that Shen not stay in the same room with Azula any longer than necessary, Katara helped him to his feet to move him to another room where she could finish the rest of the healing.
"Even tied up, Azula is too dangerous. We have to do something about her."
"Like what?" Zuko rounded on Katara, who had managed to find him in spite of his best efforts—not that that would be excessively hard on such a small property, he realized with a scowl. He reached up to pet Appa's nose; the barn had seemed like the best place to avoid people while he thought—brooded, a small voice in his head insisted. "No matter what we do, she's still going to be able to firebend."
"That's the problem. We can't leave her with the White Lotus, not as she is. We can't drag her with us to the North Pole or the Foggy Swamp or wherever it is we end up going next. We have to do something about her bending."
"What?" Zuko demanded again. "What do you think we should do? Crush her hands? Cut off her feet?" Without realizing it, he had leaped to his feet; he was breathing hard.
"I don't know!" Katara looked like she was about to cry. "I'm not going to mutilate your sister, but we can't leave things as they are either." Taking a deep breath, she shook her head slowly before looking at him once more. "I was hoping you'd have some ideas."
"Sorry. I don't." All at once, the anger went out of him, leaving him feeling helpless and drained. "It's not… I mean, if we could take away her bending without hurting her otherwise, that would solve a lot of our problems. But we can't."
He flopped down once again against Appa's side, leaning back into the thick fur, eyes slipping shut. He waited, but nothing came. When several minutes passed without any sort of response, he opened his eyes again, to see that Katara had a faraway look on her face.
"What if… what if we could?"
"Take away someone's bending?" Zuko propped himself up on one elbow, intrigued, hopeful, terrified… "How do you think we could do that?"
"Not 'we'." She spoke so quietly that he had to strain his ears to make out what she was saying. "I."
"How…" Suddenly, his mouth was dry. "How exactly…"
"I'm a healer. I know how chi flows in the body, and I know how chi gets blocked up as well. When I worked on Aang after Azula… after Azula killed him, his chakra was blocked. He couldn't go into the Avatar State at all. I remember what that energy felt like. Also…"
"Also what?" When she looked away, biting her lip, he only pressed harder. "Also what, Katara? You can't take away someone's bending with healing techniques. If that was possible, the waterbenders would have been doing it already."
A few seconds passed before she was willing to speak; when she did, she would not meet his eyes. "Bloodbending." She spoke so quietly that he could barely hear her, wrapping her arms around herself as if for protection. "It's a technique that… well, you've seen it."
"You mean…" An image flashed into his mind: the captain of the Southern Raiders, body bent at unnatural angles, pinned to the floor of his ship under the light of the full moon, his face twisted in agony… "You're going to use that?" Zuko leaped to his feet.
"Do you have a better idea?" Her voice had risen to match his, and Katara forced herself to a stop, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, her words were delivered much more calmly. "I've had it done to me before. Sokka and Aang too, and at least a dozen Fire Nation citizens. I won't deny that it's painful, but… none of us suffered any lasting aftereffects. It's the only thing I can think of," she continued, pleading. "If I knew of anything else—anything at all—believe me, I'd be sharing it."
Zuko slumped back down again, allowing Appa's bulk to support him as his knees folded, his face in his hands. "What are you going to do?"
"What are you doing to me?" Azula squirmed madly, twisting against her restraints, but the chains and her brother's hold both worked to keep her in a kneeling position. "You've been working with her, haven't you? She put you up to this!"
Katara had no idea what Azula was talking about, and frankly, she didn't think that she wanted to know. So instead of pondering her words, she concentrated on allowing her healing abilities to show her Azula's chi paths, and the power of the full moon to show her every drop of blood in Azula's veins.
Above Azula's head, Zuko's eyes flicked down to his sister, before returning to Katara with an intense expression that she couldn't read. He still had mixed feelings about doing this—Katara still wasn't sure that it was the right thing. When she had ventured the suggestion that he might not want to be here, however, his refusal had been so adamant that she hadn't asked again.
As if of their own accord, her hands were moving, following the chi paths that she could now feel with no effort at all. Had she had water available, it would have been glowing with the force of her healing powers—but Katara was not using water. Not tonight.
Her hands, guided by chi, came to rest gently against Azula's skin—one on the side of her head, the other over her heart.
Katara took a deep breath. She could feel the blood—and the chi that it carried.
She took hold of it and pulled.
She had braced herself for screaming and thrashing. What happened instead was somehow much worse: Azula froze, mouth open, eyes wide as if staring into the face of some unspeakable horror. Every one of her muscles had locked up; Katara could feel it through her bloodbending, and she knew that Zuko could feel it even more directly.
"How much longer is this going to take?" he gritted out, even though with Azula no longer struggling, the effort required to hold her must have been minimal.
"I'm working… as fast as I can." In spite of what she had told him earlier, in spite of her knowledge and her surety in her own abilities, Katara could not help but worry that something would go horribly wrong. Rearranging the body's chi paths was no mean feat, and this was the first time to her knowledge that anyone had tried it for reasons other than healing.
Please, Tui and La, don't let me fail now. Grunting with the effort, she gave one last pull before pulling her hands away from Azula's body.
As she took a step back the princess tried to lunge after her, snarling with rage, only to be pulled up short by Zuko's grip on her arms. In between her incoherent screams she breathed in forceful, deliberate huffs, blowing air in Katara's direction, and it took her a few seconds to realize that Azula was trying to breathe fire—and failing.
It had worked. Azula was never going to firebend again.
A/N: Okay, I'll confess: I hate writing Azula. She's one of the most difficult characters I've ever encountered, so I'll admit to deliberately getting her out of the story as soon as possible. The prison break was also… definitely not one of my favorite things to write.
I did enjoy writing the interaction between Zuko and Suki, mostly because they were two characters who canonically didn't get to interact much beyond "You kind of burned down my village," and Suki never even got a field trip. So it was nice to give them a friendship scene or two.
Before I sign off, I'd also like to remind everyone of the "guess the album" contest that I've got going for this story (see Chapter 1 notes for details).
