take my love, take my land, take me where i cannot stand
i don't care, i'm still free,
you can't take the sky from me

episode one:
strangers in a strange land

chapter three:
(out of the abbey)

"So, um... hi," Katara said, poking her head in the doorway. The doctor - Simon, right? - turned.

"Hello. It's... Katrina?"

"Katara, actually," she replied, and Simon smiled, rubbing the back of his head.

"Sorry, I'm not... Um, is there something I can help you with?" he asked.

Well, she thought. He was just adorable. "Yeah, um," she started, and then lost track of her thought. "I was... You see," she sighed, and then tried to start over. "It's like this. In our world, waterbending can... well, I can heal. And you're the healer for the ship, so I just wanted to, um, talk to you and..." She didn't want to say offer my services because that sounded sort of creepy and uncomfortable, but she didn't know how else to say it. "See if I could help any?"

"You can... heal with water?" he said, looking at her like she'd grown another head. "How does that work, exactly?"

"Um, well, I just..." How did it work, exactly? It was kind of like trying to explain music to a deaf person. To Katara, waterbending was natural, and using it to heal was like... well, it was like using her voice to sing. "It's hard to explain," she muttered, and Simon nodded. Strangely enough, she really wanted to impress this Simon person, not just because he was handsome, and older, and clearly smart...

Okay, maybe it was.

"Well, what did you want to help me with? I've got most of the medical work under control, unless something goes really wrong..."

"I could just... I mean, I..." She did not like feeling flustered like this. "Waterbending is great for healing, but sometimes it doesn't work, you know?"

He stared. "No," he replied bluntly, "I... can't say that I do."

"If... I mean, if someone has internal injuries, or they've been shot with an arrow, or things like that, I can't do anything about it, and I'd like to learn how."

"You want me to teach you surgery?"

There was a long moment where they just stood there and stared at each other, this huge barrier of complete confusion between them. "I want to know how to remove arrowheads, or... what are they called?"

"Bullets?" he prompted, and then mimed the shape of a weapon. "What the weapons shoot?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "You don't have to teach me all the details, but... First Aid, you know, if something goes wrong and we can't get to you."

"That seems reasonable..." he mused. "But I'll have to get a dummy to let you practice on, or wait until someone gets shot..."

"Don't you mean if?" she asked blankly, and Simon gave a dark, cynical laugh.

"So, we make this delivery, and - "

"Hang on," Wash said, raising a hand. "I seem to remember going over this a few times before."

Mal ran a hand over his face. "There ain't so many people willin' to deal with us, 'specially now. We gotta take what we can get. Just as a precaution, though, Jayne, I want you and Zoe wearing vests."

"Way ahead of you, sir," Zoe replied.

"You know, I'm pretty sure we can find someone to sell this cargo to who hasn't tried to kill us twice before," Wash insisted.

"Yeah?" Mal asked, crossing his arms. "Who?"

Wash opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and then landed on something - "Fanty and Mingo."

It was Jayne who answered, "Yeah, right, after that little show with River? Ain't no way they'll deal with us."

"Aw, it was just a bar fight," Wash said, shrugging. "Plenty of those happen all the time."

"Answer's no, Wash," Mal replied sharply. "They were swindlin' us, anyway."

"And Patience wasn't?"

"The point," Zoe said, cutting into the conversation and laying a hand on Wash's shoulder, "is that Patience failed."

"Did Fanty and Mingo actually make off with that money, or did River distract them out of it? I wasn't paying attention."

Zoe rolled her eyes, and then the proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of Toph - armed to the teeth, courtesy of a weirdly-proud Jayne - and Aang, who looked terrified.

"Wherever you're going," Toph said gleefully, "I want in."

"And I'm not letting her go alone," Aang added, although his face betrayed his utter horror at the concept of Toph with mass quantity of projectile weapons.

"She ain't alone," Jayne said flippantly, and then whistled. "You know, I might let you handle Vera someday, li'l girl."

Everyone who knew Jayne shuddered. Zoe stepped up. "Toph, it's cute that you want to join, but... you're blind."

"Yeah, so?"

"You can't shoot a gun if you're blind."

She grinned, and it was positively feral, "See, cap'n, that's where you're wrong. I see through my feet, which makes me an awesome shot."

"That made absolutely no sense," Wash said.

"She feels the vibrations in the ground," Aang explained. "And we've worked out our fighting styles pretty well over the past few years. She takes care of anything on the ground, I take care of anything in the air."

"You do realize that we might have to kill people, don't you?" Mal asked, and Aang looked from the captain to Toph, torn, before finally sighing.

"Yeah, I do," he said quietly, "but I can't leave Toph alone."

"You totally can, Twinkletoes, I've got Jayne to help me," she replied brightly, and Aang's face darkened a bit. He didn't say it, but everyone else could clearly see the that was my point written all over him. Mal considered this for a moment - on the one hand, Aang annoyed the hell out of him, but on the other hand, he was right and Mal had no intention of keeping watch over a teenage girl with delusions of grandeur.

"All right, fine," he conceded, shrugging. "If you die, it wasn't my fault and I still expect to get paid. Make sure you wear a vest."

"A vest?" Aang asked blankly, and Mal closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

"A bulletproof vest," Zoe explained. "I don't think we have any that'll fit him, sir."

"It's all right," Toph said, "I'll just earthbend us some shields if we need them."

Zuko was torn. He rather liked Kaylee - she was sweet and friendly, and reminded him an awful lot of Ty Lee - but he also wasn't especially interested in anything she was saying. She seemed to be under the impression that he had an interest in engines and machinery, and was so excited to have someone on board who wanted to hear her talk about her passion that he didn't have the heart to tell her to please shut up.

Luckily, Suki was also in the engine room, and was actually interested in what went on there - which was strange, as he'd never pegged Suki as that sort - so he didn't have to do much other than nod and smile at the right places.

"So, if that fails, the whole engine goes?" Suki asked, eyes wide, and Kaylee nodded.

"Yup. It actually happened once," she replied, and shuddered. "It wa'n't pretty."

"How do you keep it in repair? It seems like such a small thing..."

"It is," Kaylee said, "but I've got this cool system..." She went on to explain, in terms that Zuko did not at all comprehend, how she kept everything running. Suki seemed to be in love.

He wondered how things were back home. How was the Fire Nation doing without him, and without the Avatar? Were there search parties out hunting for them? Did they even know they were missing? Had their home world just ceased to exist when they appeared here? It was a terrible thought. He imagined everything he knew just not existing - Uncle, and Mai, and Azula, and Ba Sing Se, and that amazing little diner that had never asked questions about the Fire Lord visiting - and it made him a little sick.

This place was nice, sure, but he liked his home - or, well, he liked it on average - and he wanted to get back there. It was starting to seem like a hopeless dream, though. They had no leads, no ideas, and the only way they knew that the whole thing wasn't just a hallucination was their bending. And worse, he seemed to be the only person who cared. Sokka was determined to learn how to pilot a ship, Toph was having the time of her life, Aang was desperately trying to keep Toph from accidentally killing herself, Suki was fascinated with all parts of this world, and Katara...

Katara. She seemed unsure, which was something, at least. He wondered if he should talk to her about this. She was more concerned about figuring out the war and which side Mal had been on in it, but it was at least better than nothing.

"What do you think, Zuko?" Suki asked, startling him out of his reverie. He froze, and blinked several times. Kaylee giggled.

"Looks like he was thinkin' about someone," she teased.

He was about to panic and insist that no, of course he wasn't, but then he realized that this was his chance. "I was, actually," he replied, shocking Suki. "I was just thinking... I haven't seen Katara since breakfast."

"She wanted to talk to Simon about something," Suki answered, but Kaylee's eyes lit up in a way that frankly terrified him.

"Ooh, Katara," she trilled, drawing out the syllables, and placing a hand on his back, leading him out of the engine room. "Go get 'er now, while the Cap'n's off on the job an' the dorms are empty," Kaylee said, grinning hugely. Suki tried, and failed, to stifle her laughter. Zuko paled.

"That's not what I - "

"Sure it ain't," Kaylee replied, and pushed him lightly, leaving engine grease on his back.

"All right," Wash said, leaning back in his seat. Sokka, perched on the floor next to him with a look of pure adoration on his face, sat up a little higher.

"Now you can teach me to pilot?"

Wash grinned. "C'mon. We can't go far, 'cause we've gotta be ready to go at a moment's notice, but I can show you a few tricks on the shuttle."

Sokka hopped up and trotted after Wash, still beaming, and didn't even notice the way that Suki and Kaylee were snickering and whispering to each other in the hallway. He was getting to fly an spaceship. An actual spaceship. He hadn't felt this giddy since they'd defeated Ozai. It was almost pathetic, really, how excited this concept made him.

"Okay," Wash announced, showing him into the little shuttle. It was clearly used mostly for storage, packed with boxes upon boxes of things. One of them was open a little, and Sokka peered in, finding an old, thick book with writing all over the pages and a sheaf of paper - which appeared to have once been part of the book - slid carefully inside it. "That used to belong to the Shepherd," Wash said, and Sokka jumped.

"Huh?"

"Shepherd Book," he explained. "That was his. He... died a few weeks ago."

"I'm sorry," Sokka replied, feeling strangely intrusive, standing there holding a dead man's book. "What happened to him?"

"The Alliance," was all Wash said. "Now let's show you the ropes."

"I'll admit," Mal said, hands on his hips, "I've had better ideas."

"Which ones are those, sir?" Zoe replied dryly, and Mal glanced at her, unamused.

Jayne's voice came over the intercom, "We dealing, or what?"

"She'll show," Mal told him, never taking his eyes off the horizon. "She has to," he added, to himself.

"Why is that, sir?" Zoe asked, hand on her shotgun. "We did kill some of her men the last time we dealt with her."

"Yeah, but only 'cause she tried to get away without payin'. If she'd played fair, no one woulda got hurt." He looked around warily. "She needs what we got."

"There are other people she can deal with, sir," Zoe said gravely. "I don't like this. We should cut our losses and go back to the ship."

"Have I ever done that?"

"Yes," Jayne said through the intercom, and Mal jumped.

"Well, I ain't doin' it this time," he replied bitterly, to both Zoe and Jayne. "We need the money."

"We can convert the money that Zuko gave us for passage, sir, and we don't have to deal with Patience."

"We don't even know if we can convert that to real money," he retorted, "and I don't like havin' Alliance goods on my ship. Ain't done me any favors yet."

A new voice came over the intercom - "Horses, coming from... What's that direction?"

"Ow," Aang cried, and then answered, "East, I think."

"From the town," Mal confirmed, and then mused for a moment on how useful that little blind girl could turn out to be. The rest of them - save possibly Zuko - he could do without, but Toph was proving herself to be a damn good ally. "See? I told ya they'd show."

"Lots of them," Toph said, an edge to her voice, "I count at least seven."

"Wasn't this supposed to be a simple deal?" Aang asked. "Why so many?"

"'Cause it's Patience," Zoe answered, already bracing for the worst. Finally, the horses that Toph had already sensed came into view. Sure enough, seven of them, with Patience at the forefront. It was eerily - and unhappily - familiar.

"Well, well, well," Patience said when she rode up, a sour look on her face. "You thinkin' maybe third time's the charm?"

"Can we not exchange bullets this time?" Mal asked, annoyed. "I just want to deal like normal folk."

"Maybe you shouldn't have set up snipers, then," she replied coolly, but Mal wasn't especially worried. Jayne could hold his own in battle, and if Toph could pick out seven horses from half a mile away, then he didn't think she'd have too many issues with Patience's people.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't give me reason to," he countered. "I've got the supplies you need, hidden in the brush about a quarter of a mile that way," he gestured vaguely south. "Just pay me and we can walk away without any wounds or dead horses this time."

"You know you have to show me proof you've got the goods."

"Naturally," he replied, and nodded to Zoe, who opened the small box they'd brought with them. Inside were a collection of seeds, carefully divided into little glass canisters. "In this one, you've got tomatoes and cucumbers. Plenty more for the taking. We agreed on the price."

Naked greed fell over Patience's face - fruits and vegetables were like gold to these outlying planets. The old woman made a face, but finally relented, handing over the money as Zoe handed her the box. "I don't like it, but in the interest of not repeating ourselves, I'll deal. Personally, I think I came out on - "

Just then, the ground shook and a loud crashing came from the direction Patience had ridden. Surprise and then anger crossed over her face.

"She was trying to play us again, wasn't she?" Mal asked Zoe, ducking as the dust cloud rose up from the distance.

"I think so, sir," Zoe replied.

"Toph, was that you?" he asked into the intercom.

All he got in response was a giggle.

"That was dangerous," Aang said, watching the men and horses scramble to regain their footing and their weapons in the massive trench that had just formed.

"That was awesome," Toph replied. Aang hastily grabbed her and forced her to the ground when shots started flying wildly out of the hole. She kicked again and they abruptly stopped, the hole suddenly gone, although eerie, panicked screaming could be heard from the place it had been. He glared, even though she couldn't see him.

"Toph."

"What? I'll let 'em out if the Cap'n wants me to."

"You should let them out now before they use up all their air." She rolled her eyes and poked the ground delicately, forming a little hole. The shrieking intensified.

"There, now they won't suffocate."

Patience chose that moment to ride up, coming up short at what she saw - two young teenagers, of maybe eighteen at the most, standing on the ground next to a little hole, from which terrified screaming could be heard. She stared.

"Do I get to shoot now?" Toph asked the intercom, a grin blooming on her face.

"Didn't you ever hear that discretion is the better part of valor?" Zoe's voice replied, and Toph smirked.

"Nope."