Scene 3: Episode 308 "The Bloodbender"
Disclaimer: I own a lot of things. Avatar: the Last Airbender doesn't happen to be one of them.
Sorry, I was on a youth retreat this weekend, so I just got in last night. Here's an update for the latest episode that aired in the US. Enjoy!
Summary: Katara's selfloathing after her fight needs some spiritual intervention
Scene Three: Ice
Katara sobbed uncontrollably into her hands, feeling the water trickle between her fingers to drip on the dry ground beneath her feet. The earth practically slurped up the moisture, all the available water having been removed in the fierce combat between her and that… that monster. The ground silently begged for more water to ease its dry thirst, and Katara was more than happy to comply.
"Um… Katara?" Aang ventured hesitantly. "Are you alright?"
Katara bit back the sarcastic retort that had fizzled onto her tongue. Aang didn't deserve a verbal whipping from her. So even if she wanted to scream, no, stupid, of course I'm fine, I've just become a monster like that thing hiding in Gran-Gran's body, why wouldn't I be – she couldn't.
"Katara?"
Damn him and his stupid caring heart, Katara thought bitterly. "No, Aang, I'm not alright," she answered him. Her voice was clogged and her nose ran. She sniffed and continued, tears never stopping their trickle down her cheek.
She heard Aang shift behind her, resting more of his arm across her back. His brotherly love was suffocating, sometimes. "Maybe I could –"
Katara's other brother interrupted. "Let her be, Aang."
Aang paused at the calm control in the other boy's voice. Slowly, he withdrew his arm from Katara's back, and she tried not to be too obvious in her sigh of relief. "She just needs to be alone for a little while," Sokka continued. "Let her be."
Katara tried to grin through the tears, but her mouth twisted into a terrible grimace instead. She remained crouched on the ground as the other two walked away, Sokka still talking to Aang in that same calm tone, the one she herself had used on injured penguins and seal pups back home.
Home. Katara stumbled onto her feet, her legs swaying dangerously beneath her. She really wasn't stable enough to stand, let alone walk, but she had to get away from this place. Homesickness was bad enough. This tainted ground compounded the wounds in her soul tenfold. She needed to get to the only place that she could call home anymore, and she heard it murmuring softly in the distance.
Katara staggered through the trees like a blind woman, following her ears and the clean scent of water that wove in and out of the boughs to beckon her to her safe haven. She burst through the underbrush, scratched and scared and sobbing, to collapse at the stream bank. The full moon shone softly through her hair to sink into her skin, into her muscles and veins, into her heart and head. Despite the delicate state of her emotions, this power was still flowing through her, and would the whole night through if she didn't do anything to stop it.
The tears slowed and stopped, but still she sobbed, dry, tearless sobs for herself, for her family, for the world. Somehow, in the course of a single evening, she had become the enemy. Just as surely as if she had betrayed the Avatar to the Fire Nation, she had become the enemy. No matter that she had saved Aang and Sokka from killing themselves like squealing pigs on a hunter's spear, no matter that the villagers were no longer going to be terrorized – none of that mattered. She had forced her will on someone else, and that made her no better than the very Fire Lord they fought. Wasn't that what he was trying to do? Force all the other elements to bow down to fire's superiority, just like she had forced an old woman to bow down before her own youth? It wasn't any different. It wasn't different at all.
Her fingers trailed in the burbling stream, creating little whirlpools and water spouts that twisted and writhed in time with the twitches of her fingertips. They followed the discordant music that jarred in her mind, the clashing harmonies of what she knew she had had to do – Aang could not die, not while she could have helped it – and what she knew was right and good in the world, and how she'd betrayed those morals – she had become as low as the monster she had fought this night.
The water reflected the moonlight, and Katara's dark eyes reflected the light back onto the rippling surface. It's almost like it's glowing, she thought absently, through the storm raging through her mind. Like the Spirit Oasis…
A shining ribbon of liquid rose out of the stream, twisting and undulating like a living creature, its 'head' bobbing up and down as if searching for something. Katara stared at the water, half-hypnotized by the rhythmic motions of the water ribbon. Her fingers stopped their sporadic twitching to lie peacefully in the water. The 'head' quested about for a moment more before bumping against her wrist.
Katara had just enough time to realize that the water was cold – ice cold, as if newly melted from the polar ice sheets – before the water ribbon wrapped around her wrist and froze into an icy bracelet. It glittered coldly in the dim light, a glacial diamond band.
Katara gaped at it, startled out of her self-pity in the marvel that was forming around her wrist. She peered closer at the ice and discovered that the ice was flawed – it had formed too quickly. Frost webs and irregular bubbles pierced the blue-white color. They were still forming, too. Actually… the bracelet was getting larger by the second, extending tendrils across her pulse point and the back of her hand to form almost a glove of living ice.
Her hand became cold, then colder yet. Katara vaguely raised her other hand to push the bracelet away to allow her skin to breathe and warm, but when her fingers touched the bracelet, it was so cold that it burned her skin. She jerked back her fingers with a yell and stared at the bracelet again, this time with naked terror.
"Take it off, Katara."
The cool, calm voice echoed in the woods, and Katara jumped up to defend herself. But her hand was too heavy from the newly forming ice, and it soon hung limp at her side.
"Who are you?!" she screeched, not even attempting to conceal her panic.
"Take it off," the voice insisted, and then Katara felt a cold presence hover over the creek. It wasn't unlike the time she'd seen the Painted Lady, this presence, but while that spirit-sense had been warm and welcoming, Katara could only sense the eyes that weren't really there, watching her every move.
Katara reluctantly tried to pry the bracelet off again, gritting her teeth against the ice burn, but the bracelet just continued to grow, heedless of her attempts to dispose of it. "I can't." She fell to her knees, and her head spun from the quick movements that she had indulged in over the last minute. "I can't."
The presence was silent. It floated, and said nothing.
Katara raised her head to glare at the space she was fairly certain was…whatever it was that was torturing her. "I can't!" Her vision blurred and cleared, and Katara felt her cheeks grow wet yet again. Amazing – she still had tears left to cry.
The presence remained silent, nothing more than moonlight and mist. It might not have even been there, except for the increasingly more painful bracelet – no, manacle – that kept tightening and growing on her hand. It was like the living crystal King Bumi had made into a walking prison to coerce Aang into playing his sick little games, but somehow even that had less…calculation, more madness, more meaninglessness, than this manacle had behind it.
This was meaningful, alright. And it was getting pretty meaningfully irritating.
Katara's face heated as she realized what a fool she was being. A Waterbender, scared of a measly piece of ice! her mind scoffed. Surely you have not fallen so low as this.
No, she thought back grimly. I'm not quite that hopeless.
She stood up once more, this time with the strength of training and her own pigheadedness keeping her spine straight and her arms strong. The ice continued to creep along her hand and up her arm, but it would stop. Right. Now.
Katara placed her hand over the ice shackle and dug her nails into the ice, chipping them on the impossibly hard exterior. Privately she mourned over the loss of her perfect manicure – she spent so much time keeping up some modicum of civility! – but pushed that distracting irritation aside. She had to focus on the ice, because it wasn't exactly what she'd thought it'd been.
She closed her eyes and dove into the bracelet with her will, letting her senses seep into the ice's pores and fractures like a waterfall, bathing it in her power and soaking it with her thoughts and desires. This ice would do what she was telling it to do, be it spirit or man made.
As she examined the bracelet, though, she discovered a problem. The manacle had woven itself up and down her arm, yes, but had also pierced her veins and was drawing blood from her body to keep itself going! Katara felt dizzy just thinking about the bloodloss. Maybe her earlier vertigo hadn't been from the sudden movements, after all. Her will faltered for the briefest of seconds, and the manacle began to grow again, sucking up her blood to feed itself like a vile parasite. At this rate, she would be cocooned in an ice prison made from her own fluids. Her mind despaired. She couldn't win. She had never been taught anything to counter this…this madness! It was impossible.
Or had she?
Blood. Blood was the key. If she could bloodbend the ice back into her body, the shackle would melt and she'd be free. But that would require bloodbending… and Katara couldn't do that.
"Not to save yourself?" The voice was back, and was no longer impassioned. It was disgusted. "So you'll let yourself die, when you know the world and the Avatar – your Avatar – need you?"
Katara's hackles rose at the abrasive, cutting tone. No matter how terrible the tone, though, it provided the impetus she needed and she thrust her will on her own blood before she could talk herself out of it.
The ice shuddered and melted away into her bloodstream, cooling it and her heated heart like only icemelt could. It soothed the fires of self-loathing and hatred that Katara had kept stoked there, not only since her encounter with the demon-woman, but…well, if she were being honest, they'd been there since she'd failed her Avatar – her Aang.
And it was this realization of her self-loathing that returned cool reason to her mind. Yes, bloodbending was a terrible weapon, but she and Sokka and Toph and Aang all faced terrible enemies. It was more important that the world –and those she loved – survived than it was to forsake whatever resources they had available, no matter how distasteful.
Katara raised her head, her final tears shining on her face from the light of the moon.
"Thank you…Yue."
