A/N: Hey everyone! Welcome to the next installment of Fragile. I am very aware of the fact that it has been an unacceptably long time since I've posted a chapter and I do apologize. It is the beginning of the school year, I've already had one test and there's only more looming on the horizon. My personal hell is being defined by two words: Physical Chemistry. As Humans Versus Zombies starts the week of the first test for that and I've spent all this week grading, I can definitively say that I will not be updating for the rest of this month. I am sorry, but writing takes a backseat to my majors and friends - I hope you can respect that.
Please excuse my grammar and mechanics errors, I read it over a few times but this is unbeta'd. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar. I really wish I did. But I don't. So there.
Round Four – The Healer vs. Hatred
"Ahhhh! Thank you Katara, I'm glad I'm worth wasting your energy on." Katara glared at her as she bent the water she had been holding to Toph's feet back into the fountain.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Whatever you want it too, Sweetness," Toph replied blithely as she scooted back towards the wall of the temple, careful not to let her feet touch the ground.
"Humph!" Katara rolled her eyes and called Sokka over to help her with Zuko. He was lying in a heap in the shadowy corner of the temple where Sokka had left him. Aang had been filled in as they had landed. He hadn't approved of Katara ignoring the more severe injury, but even he was not immune to the prejudice against Zuko that the year of pursuit had left and he hadn't pressured her to look after Zuko first.
Zuko's were not the first set of broken ribs she had seen, but the one other time this had happened, Gran-Gran had chased her out of the tent so she could get poor Kanahi out of his bloody clothes. That particular incident had led to the banning of Polar-Grizzly riding. If she was completely honest with herself, Katara wasn't quite sure what she was going to do with Zuko's ribs. She settled for a standard probe of the chi, and perhaps she'd get something flowing again inside that nasty looking tangle that spanned most of his left side.
Sokka arrived and rolled Zuko on his back again. "I need you to get his shirt off," Katara said briskly. Sokka gave her an incredulous look. "It's easier to feel the chi if I have direct contact with the skin!" she exclaimed hotly. Sokka's gaze cleared and he had the grace to look a bit sheepish. He proceeded to pull Zuko's arms out of his sleeves and push the shirt down around his waist. Sokka bit his lip as the carnage was revealed.
Zuko's chest was a veritable maze of scars - some old and pale while others looked more recent. His back was much the same Sokka discovered as he rolled Zuko so that all of the damage was accessible to Katara. Zuko rested on his hip and right shoulder and Sokka kept a hand of his left to keep him balanced during Katara's examination.
She summoned a small amount of water to coat her fingers once more and slowly moved the glowing digits up and down Zuko's lanky frame. Starting near his temples where a healthy sheen of gold shone to her altered perception, she moved down through his torso, noting duller red patches there and in his arms and a dim orange near his right wrist. She skirted the area around his ribs where the pale grey showed almost no movement of chi, like a fire that had been left to burn down to ash, and completed the scan around his legs. She encountered more red patches there, but resolved to ignore them for now. She had never had the chance to really examine the patterns of a firebender's chi and it was very different from the straight paths and verdant coloring she had seen while healing Toph.
The patterns seemed to match their elements. Aang's had left her dizzy when she had tried to follow the paths and heal blockages. She had been grateful for her Spirit Oasis Water, it had done most of the work for her. Zuko's chi had a flaring pattern that seemed to be a combination of Toph's lines and Aang's…whatever those shapes had been. She wasn't even sure there had been shapes, come to think of it. There was a big net of chi around the center of his chest, near where his lungs ought to be. She sensed the high concentration there must denote the area as important to a firebender's bending. She furrowed her brow as she deepened her probe into the area around that dense tangle of chi – the dead-looking expanse that she knew was the ribs Toph had smashed.
She bent more water and covered the mottled skin with the cool liquid. She concentrated on the blanket of moisture and it too began to glow with the same spirit-touched light that had been only around her fingers before. With her workspace now widened she hesitantly began to pick at the threads of chi, trying to unravel some of the smaller knots and encourage healing where she could get the strands to cooperate. After the tenth knot she sat back on her heels dropping her water to splash onto herself. Spirits, she was tired and the large grey area hardly looked any brighter. She snorted; maybe she wouldn't have to worry about rolling him off the cliff after all. If her sessions had this little effect on him, he wouldn't last long anyway.
"Alright, I'm done. Aang, can you hand me that roll of bandages over by Appa's saddle?" Aang quickly grabbed the soft white roll, tossing it to Katara. She began to unwind it and, with Sokka's help, wrapped Zuko's bruised torso tightly in the supporting linen.* They laid Zuko on his back and Sokka tossed a blanket on him as an afterthought. The group proceeded to gather around the small fire Teo had managed to get started for dinner. None of them noticed the slight glint of the firelight off Zuko's eyes as the narrowed slits examined the people at whose mercy he was now at. After a few moments, he drifted into a true sleep, hoping they wouldn't try to kill him in his sleep if they had gone to the trouble of bandaging his ribs. It wasn't long before the nightmares descended upon him once more.
Toph rolled over. She had fallen asleep near the fire after Katara had finished with her feet. The cool water and the relief had lulled her into a light sleep. She frowned as she felt the slight vibrations coming from near the wall of the fountain room. She counted and found one extra person laying a ways away from the more familiar figures gathered closer to the fire. Her frown deepened as memory returned. Zuko, it was Zuko moving around over there, and it felt like he was having another nightmare. Did the guy have any happy dreams? She rolled her eyes as she made her way over to the latest addition to their group.
"Zuko!" she whispered loudly. "Hey, Zuko! Wake up!" There was no response from the distressed teen, he just continued to twitch and toss his head restlessly, his breathing hitched and uneven. Toph knelt next to him reaching out and laying one hand on his shoulder and her other on his forehead. She let fly a string of colorful curses that would have had her parents flat on their backs if they ever heard her say one of them, let alone her favorite set.
Zuko was burning up. She was sure even firebenders weren't supposed to be this hot. She crawled over to the familiar breathing pattern that marked Katara on the far side of the fire and shook the other girl awake. "Katara! Something's wrong with Zuko, I think he has a fever!"
Katara groaned as she rolled over. "There's nothing I can do about that, if he has a fever his body's trying to fix something on its own," she growled, thinking Toph had woken her just because Zuko felt a little warm.
"Can't you cool him down or something? Make some ice?" Toph wheedled. "What if it were Aang burning up?" She knew fevers could be dangerous and provoking Katara when she was this tired was as well, but right now Zuko's fever scared her more. She still felt the heat in her palm from where she had touched him.
Katara glared at her. "Burning up, huh? Toph, he's a firebender! Maybe they're supposed to be hot?" Toph could see this was getting her nowhere, so she decided to stop playing nice. She began to walk away and slid the earth Katara was sleeping on along behind her. Katara let out a strangled noise of protest before she found herself unceremoniously dumped beside Zuko. "Katara, if you're going to be a healer, you had better start acting like one," Toph stated whilst staring straight ahead. "You accepted Zuko as your patient. I'm not asking you to do more healing – we had a deal about that and you upheld your end. What I am asking you to do is show some damned humanity! Sprits, I know you don't like the guy and I honestly don't have a very good grasp as to why other than the fact that he chased you but you need to get your head on straight. If you refuse to help him now how does that make you any better than the people we're fighting against?"
Katara was silent for a moment and Toph hoped what she had said was getting through the indignant anger that she could practically smell it was so strong. A soft whimper from Zuko cut through the stillness and Katara seemed to deflate a little. She turned sharply on her heel and Toph breathed a sigh of relief as she felt Katara going through the motions of bending.
Water from the central fountain arced over their heads and settled into ice formations around the prone Zuko. "Thank you, Katara. You did the right thing." Katara's odd look at Toph was lost on the blind girl as she settled next to the feverish young man.
"And just what do you think you're doing?" Katara asked curiously as she noted Toph's new position.
"I would have thought it obvious, oh great healer. I'm going to keep an eye on him for tonight, so to speak. He's still got the fever and his breathing sounds funny. I may not be a healer like you, but even I know that's bad."
Katara stiffened. Who did Toph think she was? She didn't need the earthbender to tell her what to do as a healer. She knew! Didn't she? Great she thought. Now I'm doubting myself. She groaned and dropped to her knees beside Toph. "For spirit's sake, Toph. What do you want from me?"
It was eerie how Toph's sightless eyes stared unerringly into her own. "I want you to think, Katara. I want you to look past your prejudice. Oma and Shu! What gives you the right to decide whether or not he deserves to be helped? If you were captured, wouldn't you want to be treated humanely? Because I gotta say, the way you've been all treating him I would almost say you're trying to torture him!"
Katara's hand unconsciously dropped to where her water skin would normally be. Toph's anger was palpable, cold and penetrating. She felt a slight thrill of fear before she ruthlessly repressed it. She glared at the smaller female. How dare she act so superior to her! She had not been torturing Zuko! For the love of the ice! She had done everything Toph had asked of her!
Healer Yugoda's words floated back up through her memory. A healer's duty is a sacred one. We can do more harm than the most vicious attack which is why you must never accept someone as your patient unless you are willing to care for them to the utmost of your ability until they are well again. You cannot simply stop caring for them because you don't want to continue or they're difficult or you don't like them. Abandoning care of a patient can often do more harm than leaving them alone to begin with…
Abruptly, the fight drained out of Katara. She felt ashamed of her treatment of her patient. She may not like the exiled prince but she had accepted responsibility for his health.
"Please Katara, can't you just fix his breathing? He sounds awful! That should be easy to fix, right?"
Silently, Katara forced some of the ice now surrounding Zuko into a frozen glove around her hand. The hardened water crackled and a frost rimed the ground beneath her knees as Katara sank into a true healing trance. Small puffs of steam escaped the lips of the three benders caught within the young healer's cold snap.
Katara was oblivious to the effect she was having on the immediate microclimate. She felt herself falling through layers of her consciousness until she was submerged in glowing threads of chi. She moved to the shadowy border of the web of chi surrounding his lungs. She took a deep breath and slid the brightly glowing projection of her hand into the horribly unnatural darkness suffusing Zuko's chest. The icy fingers of her own chi stroked the dull threads, gently pulling and teasing at the tangled strands. Small embers of red began to spark in her wake as flow began to be restored to the starved areas, peeking through like a embers in a banked fire.
This was so differed from the rush and push she felt in Aang's chi. It was warm here, like a summer day. She knew instinctively that the chilled deadness pulling the warmth away from the newly kindled threads needed to be stopped. She pulled the coldness to herself, wrapping it around her icy fingers and leaving the warmth that the ash had been trying to smother.
She moved with more confidence as she continued, but she was worried. She had bound the ribs, there shouldn't be anything left to be causing this much damage. It was even worse than when she had done her surface scan. There had to be something she had missed.
She pushed further and further. She discovered a brightly glowing spot that lit the surrounding area. She twitched a bit as it beat loudly. She had found his heart. Didn't think he had one she thought, bitterly. She continued her forward push, untangling and encouraging as she went, blowing on the sparks until they caught, just like she would the cooking fire. She stopped short as she encountered something hard and sharp; something that had no business in the soft tissue of the lungs.
She concentrated wrapping the ice she could control around the black bit of malice that was trying to ruin all of the healing. She finished encasing the foreign object in her protective layer of ice and began to pull. It slid reluctantly out of place and she proceeded to pull it along a path she opened ahead of herself. She came to a screeching halt as she realized that even if she managed to move it out of the lungs, she still needed to get it out of his body. And the only way out of Zuko was through Zuko.
She could feel the beginnings of a headache forming as she contemplated the best place to bring the damaging shard out. The second lesson Yugoda had taught that day had been that sometimes to heal, one must cause pain. The art of healing lay in balancing the pain caused with the good that could be done. She knew whatever this was, it needed to come out. She decided that the best place to bring it through would be where there was already pain. Surely a bit more wouldn't be as big an inconvenience as damaging somewhere else on his chest.
She made the ice encapsulation as hard and smooth as she could. She didn't want to tear anything unnecessarily as it moved. She began to draw it to the side closest to her. She had never tried anything requiring this degree of control over her bending before and it was exhausting. She could feel the small shard near the surface and with one last pull she forced the sharpened end of the ice covering through the skin.
Toph started in alarm as Zuko began to toss and moan and Katara began to tremble. She noted with alarm that both of their heart rates were accelerating rapidly. She moved closer and touched Katara's frozen arm. "What are you doing Katara? You're hurting him! Hey! Katara!" She continued to shout at the catatonic healer but neither she nor anyone in the camp responded. She fell silent as she noticed something clink to the ground and Katara sagged bonelessly forward over the prone form of Zuko. He had stopped moaning, but was now trembling violently once more. Toph quickly pulled Katara off of Zuko and laid the sleeping girl next to her patient.
She felt Zuko's head and found, to her relief, that while it was warmer than it should be, it no longer felt like she had touched a pot on the fire. She bent a warm earthen blanket over the cooling teen and then, remembering that something had hit the ground before Katara's collapse she bent down and felt along the ground next to the two sleepers.
Her fingers closed on a cold piece of something hard. It wasn't ice, she could feel minerals in it. She stroked her callused fingers over it, wondering why it felt so familiar. The sharp shard fell from nerveless fingers as memory of her youth came to the forefront. It was how her family had discovered she was a bender…they maids had chased her out of the kitchen because she kept wanting to play with the chicken-hog bones in the refuse heap because they were the only toys she could find that she could 'see.'
It was a bone shard that had fallen. Toph felt a bit ill. She stopped once more to pick up the fragment. It was about as long as her little finger, thin and rough. She slipped it in her money pouch and firmly decided that she needed to go to sleep. Zuko's breathing had finally evened and sounded much clearer. She lay down between Katara's cool frame and the earth covering Zuko. She would think about this in the morning and hopefully Zuko would be awake enough for her to apologize to at last.
She smiled as she drifted off. She honestly hadn't expected Katara to do the healing session she had just done. She decided that appealing to Katara's healer side might be the best way to get her to continue treating Zuko and maybe get her to see that he was the teacher Aang needed. She had to believe it was possible, after all – one miracle had happened tonight, hadn't it?
*A common treatment for broken ribs was to wrap them tightly in an effort to support them. Recent studies have shown that this actually does more harm than good.
As there was some confusion as to where the bone shard ended up, I wish to clarify. The shard punctured his lung and was near his heart, but not in it. Hence the difficulty breathing and the infection that caused the fever. The heart was healthy, the lungs were not.
A/N: So there it is. Katara's finally gotten it through her head that she has to be a healer all of the time, not just when she feels like it or it's convenient. I hope you all enjoy what's left of your weekend. Please let me know what you think - reviews are crack. I give e-brownies to reviewers. Reviews are love! I am desperate for love!
galimeril ;D