The walls start breathing
My mind's unweaving
~It Ends Tonight, The All-American Rejects
Arc I: Whereabouts Unknown
-in the face of flames-
Katara is put in a cell somewhere deep enough in the ship that she'd get lost trying to find the sky.
Between sparse servings of bread and grapes, Katara contemplates ways to escape, even though she knows escape is not an option. Not only because of the twenty-some firebenders on the ship, but because she doesn't have any ounce of faith that her tribe won't be eradicated if Katara shows any resistance. Really, what use are nonbending women and children (and Sokka and Essa, but they can't know about her) to the Fire Nation?
She can only tell time by the soldiers' rotation to guard the cell. The two men who watch her for the first half of the day are always completely silent, only talking to each other when necessary ("I'm going to the bathroom", "Our shift's over"), but the two soldiers who take over after them chatter like sparrowkeets. Currently, one of them (Taro, Katara thinks his name is) is talking about trying to get promoted to the Phoenix King's army. Katara thinks he'll never make it, between the Phoenix King's paranoia (he's built his own palace in a previously unsettled mountain even higher than Caldera) and the numbers (there are only 100 people in his private army).
Katara finishes off the last of her grapes and then lies down in a corner of her cell, curled up on her side. She shifts a bit and is silent for a few minutes before she starts taking steady, deep breathes; feigning sleep.
Taro stops his grumbling about the Phoenix King's army, and instead drops his voice a notch and says, "Don't you think it's crazy how June's become a captain so fast?"
The other soldier, Ren, huffs. "Sure is. There's soldiers like Li who've been in the army for years now, and this Earth Kingdom girl just comes in one day, and boom, a few trips later she's our captain."
Katara opens her eyes momentarily in surprise. Earth Kingdom?
"Fire Lord Azula's getting crazier by the day. I heard June didn't even go through proper training," Taro says, disgruntled, "You know, when I was in training..."
Katara switches sides slowly, exhaling and trying to let Taro's stories lull her to sleep like Gran-gran's would when Katara was little.
"Hey." Katara hears the urgent hiss through the foggy screen of sleep. "Hey, waterbender, get up for a second."
Katara sits up quickly, wildly searching the dark until she meets the nearly-black eyes on the other side of her bars. She squints into the darkness. Taro and Ren both have golden eyes.
"Take this." Katara realizes the voice is female.
"June." Katara's voice holds suspicion. There's the clinking of keys and the door opens slightly, and June places a cup right inside the cell. Katara glares at it and hopes June can see her.
"It's water," June says. Katara keeps looking at the cup and can almost hear June roll her eyes. "It's not poisoned. The Fire Lord needs you alive."
Katara reaches for the water and briefly entertains the idea of encasing June's head in ice before taking a tentative sip. She tries to savor the water, but once she gets a taste - Katara notes its acrid aftertaste - she finds herself gulping the whole cup down.
June still sits across from her, separated by metal.
"You're from the Earth Kingdom," Katara says, her tone neutral.
"I am," June replies in the same tone.
Katara pushes the cup towards June. "Thanks, but you can leave now, Captain," she says, her tone mocking. "Wouldn't want to hold you up from your duties to the Fire Nation."
June's countenance remains stoic as she silently opens the cell's door and leaves with the cup. Katara curls back into herself and falls asleep.
On the fifth day (and too many stories to count from Taro), Katara is taken out of her cell in the dead of night. Taro and Ren are dismissed from their shift and instead two Dai Li agents flank her at each side.
Katara is led up two flights of stairs. As they walk down a metal-walled corridor she finds herself looking around for windows and finds none. She tries to keep her thoughts under control as they round the first corner, but by the third turn she gives up and decides to reassure herself, at least they won't kill you; Fire Lord Azula needs you alive. But she also knows that the Fire Nation is known for things worse than death.
When the agents finally push open a door, Katara almost laughs.
It's a bath.
"You need to look presentable for our arrival in the Fire Nation," one of the Dai Li agents tells her. "You understand, of course, that there will be consequences should you try to use your bending against us."
Katara rolls her eyes and disappears behind the thin screen in front of the tub. She somewhat hesitantly takes off her clothes and slips into the warm water in only her wrappings. She scrubs herself with the bar of fancy soap perched on the rim of the bathtub and, for the time being, ignores the pull of the water and the urge to bend. Once she feels clean and most of the soap is washed off, Katara tries to bend, just to pull up a thin ribbon of water, but finds that she can't. Frowning, she gives it another couple of tries, but the water doesn't respond to her movements.
She gets out of the tub and quickly puts her dirty Water Tribe clothes on again, ignoring the outfit of red laid out on a rack next to the tub. The Dai Li exchange a glance when they see her clothes but then seem to mentally shrug as they lead her back to her cell.
When they're locking her back in, Katara asks, almost conversationally, "Why couldn't I bend?"
"Suppressants," is the answers.
Katara smirks, feeling a sense of pride that they think her dangerous enough to suppress her bending.
"Only a few hours left."
That is the only sentence that Katara hears for the next several hours. The silent guards are on duty.
"Why isn't she in the clothes selected for her?" June asks when Katara is hauled up to the deck.
Katara barely hears her; too focused on trying to get her eyes to work properly after being in dim light for a week. The sun in the Fire Nation is all-too bright and beating down hard on her back and Katara feels herself starting to sweat. She wonders if she will ever see snow again and be warmed by a hug from Gran-gran instead of steamed by Fire Nation air.
"I won't wear Fire Nation clothes," Katara says when she's done blinking away the black spots in her vision. She leans her head slightly over the railing and watches the water, wishing she could pull up a wave.
"Fire Lord Azula requested that you come in the reds of the Fire Nation."
"I will wear the colors of my tribe."
June exhales slowly. Dai Li agents shift their arms, but June waves lazily.
"Let her."
They arrive at a port in the heart of Caldera, right by the Royal Plaza, not too long after. As Katara walks off the boat with Dai Li agents and Fire Nation soldiers forming a tight procession around her, it is almost like she is the Fire Lord's guest, with the guard around her for her safety.
A red carpet rolls down the Royal Plaza, a structure that looks simple enough, with a long, wide ashen gray stone path, at the end of which lie five watchtowers. As they walk through the plaza Katara can't help but look down for bloodstains. The last time she had seen her father, they had lost half their men (Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom rebels alike) in a last-ditch attempt to assassinate Ozai. He had told them, teeth gritted and expression strained, of the tundra tanks that came out of nowhere and burned some and crushed others. Ozai probably had a lot of cleaning to do for his coronation ceremony.
The sole entrance into the Royal Palace from the plaza is in the dead center of the watchtowers. Two guards stand on duty, more for show than protection. No one expects intruders to ever get even halfway to the entrance. Both of them incline their heads slightly upon seeing June and open the metal door.
"Agents and soldiers, you are dismissed," June says tersely, waving them away. All of them incline their heads and disappear down different pathways into the maze of tunnels behind the door. The earth binding Katara's wrists disappears into the sleeve of one of the Dai Li. Katara takes a quick look around and knows, especially with the bending suppressant (not that there's any water to bend), that she would never be able to get out.
Once they emerge from the tunnels, finally above ground, Katara is surprised to see that they land directly outside of the throne room. A small group of three servants is waiting for them.
"Fire Lord Azula has excused you from your duties for the day," the tallest girl says to June, not even looking at Katara. The other two girls eye Katara's clothes with thinly veiled disgust. "Her Highness commends you on your success."
June nods. "Please give the Fire Lord my regards." She moves past Katara and barely brushes against her side. The folds of Katara's tunic shield the small object June slips into Katara's palm from the servants' view. Katara frowns slightly, wondering if she's just been given a bomb or something equally improbable, and then shifts the object in her hand. It feels like some sort of game piece. As the servants gesture for Katara to follow them, Katara slips the object into the waistband of her tunic.
"So this is the waterbending peasant?"
Katara thinks the servants standing behind her have stopped breathing out of fear at hearing the Fire Lord speak.
Fire Lord Azula looks at Katara with sharp eyes despite her lazy demeanor. Her golden eyes take in Katara's blue clothes. Katara can't seem to tear her own gaze away from the flames surrounding the Fire Lord's throne. She thinks about how it would probably take very little effort for the Fire Lord to kill her. Katara reminds herself that June had said that Azula needs her alive to quell the growing knot of panic in her chest.
"You managed to hide from us for a while, didn't you?" Azula says, and Katara forces herself to look the Fire Lord in the eyes.
"My mother sacrificed herself to give me a chance to live," Katara says neutrally, expecting to illicit some sort of response from the Fire Lord. She does get a response, although it is not the one she expected. The Fire Lord's lips curl into a smile.
"You're a lucky one," she says, "and I'm even luckier to have found you. Your kind have been harder and harder to track down."
Katara falls asleep (she is given a proper room; small with only a bed and a low table, and a bathroom with no running water, but a room) wondering what Azula meant by that.
When Katara wakes up, she is almost smiling, her lips forming Sokka's name when her vision clears and is assaulted by the bright reds of her room. The servants from the day before sit around the table, talking quietly with one another. Katara stays lying down and strains to make out what the servants are talking about, hoping for something useful, but decides to sit up when she hears "cute" and "I think he likes me".
All three girls look at the bed at the same time as Katara shifts into a sitting position, and then slings her legs over the side and stands up. She crosses her arms over her chest.
After a slight pause, the tall girl tells Katara, "The Fire Lord has invited you for tea in the guest room. We're going to help you prepare." The other two girls nod somewhat reluctantly. "A bath is set up for you along with fresh clothes."
When Katara slips off her tunic, the little playing piece June had given her clatters to the floor, and Katara - her back still to the servants - quickly knocks down a nearby comb, apologizing for her clumsiness. She kneels down to pick up both the comb and the gamepiece (she recognizes it as a Pai Sho tile; with a painted white lotus) and then moves towards the bathtub. Katara takes off her leggings and slides the tile underneath the tub before stepping into the water.
The stubborn part of Katara still refuses to wear the colors of the people who murdered her parents, but pulls on the clothes anyway because her own tunic and leggings smell like Sokka's dirty socks. The simple red skirt reaches her ankles and the darker red top has full, loose sleeves edged in gold.
Half an hour later she is being lead through the winding halls of the palace.
XxX