Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar, just the original scenarios and what-not here. This is also an AU. Hope you like it, and if you do or don't, reviews on how to make it better or just reviews are greatly appreciated. Thanks :)

Author's Note: I've been dealing with a family tragedy, by the way, so please be patient with me for the next few weeks as far as updates go. What is currently going on in my family is well, none of your business, but I assure you I will do my best to update, it's just I'm having a difficult time at the moment.

Thanks,

Iesha

Chapter Three

Katara sat up on her bed and looked out the window of her room. She tried and tried to fall asleep, but the more she closed her eyes the more the vision of her mother, sapphire eyes wide open in shock and a pool of blood soaking into the snow around her, plagued Katara's inner-most thoughts. Her throat began to dry and the walls around her steadily closed in, all the while her breathing became erratic, as if she was experiencing the nightmare all over again.

Katara took a deep breath and brought her legs in toward her as if in a meditation-like stance. She longed to clear her mind of the thought of her mother, but the closer she and the crew got to arriving at Ba Sing Se, the more the memory would intensify in her mind. She closed her eyes and placed her hands on her knees and began performing different breathing techniques to try and slow down her unsteady heartbeat.

The room became silent, but a presence remained that Katara felt as she carefully moved off of her bed and began to turn around. Her ears perked up and the hairs on her back stood on end as she realized there was someone else inside the room with her, and it was Sokka or the crew members. This person was a fire bender. Heat generated off the person in her room and Katara felt it on her own skin, but she couldn't see the person because no light came in through her window.

It was said that the walls of Ba Sing Se could obscure the moon of night and sun of day, but Katara always thought it was lie. She now wished that she would have thought otherwise.

Her first instinct was to attack, but the person in her room was quicker than she was. A warm hand with an almost fiery touch covered her mouth and a blind fold was placed over her eyes. Katara frantically struggled against the person, but he or she was incredibly strong; Katara could tell by the way their stomach tightened and their arms flexed with ease as they held her.

She flailed in the person's arms and tried in vain to summon water, but with her arms held back and the moon obscured she had no way doing it. As Katara was getting ready to break free, a whisper in her ear stopped all of her previous movements.

"You can't be trusted with the correct location of Warrior's Bay yet, so stop moving and let me take you to a different ship!"

The voice was that of a boy and it was strong, demanding, and above all else, arrogant. His voice also gave Katara goose-bumps. She silently wondered to herself how a voice could cause such a reaction, but a moment later her contemplations were put on hold. The voice came again,

"I'm really sorry about this…"

Katara felt the boy touch a spot behind her ear and her eyes began to droop in drowsiness. She quickly and quietly blacked out before falling limply into the arms of her kidnapper.

Zuko paced back and forth on the deck of Bumi's ship and every ten minutes or so he would grunt and reach his hand up to dark, raven-colored hair and muss it up. Jet, Zuko's best and most trusted friend, sat with a cigarette burning between his lips leaning on a wall for support. Jet's eyes went back and forth as he watched his friend curiously.

"Zuk, stop being so stupid. The chick was awake. So what?" said Jet, as he lazily took the cigarette from his lips and blew two perfect Os with the smoke. Zuko glared at his friend and continued to pace back and forth.

"Jet, you don't get it, you idiot. This is something bigger than what you think!"

There was one thing in his life that he ever kept a secret from Jet, and that was the night Zuko's father came home and destroyed the house brandishing the necklace at Zuko in a shocked sort of horror. It was too personal of a thing to share, even with his own most trusted friend.

"Oh, right. And Bumi isn't stoned out of his damn mind half of the time," replied Jet sarcastically as he raised himself up and threw the cigarette overboard.

"I'm being serious, Jet. This girl is…important," said Zuko, as he struggled to find the words to describe Katara. Zuko looked up at Jet, whose eyebrows were raised up into a sea of dark brown hair.

"Important? Are you okay, man? You seem off. A girl important to you? The last time you said that we were fourteen and you were convinced that that chick…uh, Jen or Jin or whatever, was your soul-mate. You don't think this chick's your soul-mate, do you?" asked Jet with a laugh, but there was a certain sense of concern behind his mockery.

"No, stupid, like I said…it's something bigger than that," replied Zuko quietly as he stopped pacing and picked at the sleeve of his long blood-red shirt. Jet sighed and shrugged, aware that Zuko wasn't in the mood for company, and then lit another cigarette and walked off to bed.

Zuko sat down in the place where Jet had previously been sitting and felt around in his pocket for the necklace. Before he had seen the girl he had thought it would be so easy to just out and return the necklace, but after her piercing blue gaze penetrated his amber one, he realized the task at hand was probably just as challenging as the fight to stay a student would be. His fingers grazed the soft black velvet tie of the necklace and he cringed involuntarily as he pictured the beautiful girl with the long wavy brown hair and deep sapphire eyes dead in the snow with the necklace lying in front of her. His finger stopped abruptly as it connected with the cold sapphire stone.

On the stone, there was an inscription in an old water bending language that he didn't know. When he met Yue he had been afraid to ask her if she knew what it meant for a while, and Master Pakku, her water bending instructor, just flat out scared Zuko to death when he was a kid, but eventually Zuko got over his fear of talking to Yue.

When he was eleven he went to her and asked her what the inscription meant. She was surprised that Zuko had such a beautiful water bending artifact, and asked him almost immediately where he got it from, but he told her that it was a secret. With that she told him what the inscription meant.

I Love You Like the Moon Loves the Sun

For years this inscription confused Zuko. The moon and sun were opposites, to him they seemed to hate each other. He went to his uncle with the necklace and told him what the inscription meant. Uncle Iroh's only reply was;

"The sun has chased the moon and the moon has chased the sun ever since the beginning of time, there is no love like one that will never give up hope."

Katara's eyes fluttered open and she looked around the dungeon like room she sat in. Seven other people sat around her. One was clearly an air bender. His head was shaved and tattoos of blue arrows caked his body. A shirt lay next to his unconscious body and for a moment Katara watched as his naked chest rose and fell softly as he slept. A girl was to her right, and Katara couldn't quite tell if this girl was awake or asleep. She had long raven hair and wore a flowing green nightgown. As Katara examined the room more closely, she noticed that everyone in it, including her own brother, were all wearing the night clothes.

Realization dawned on her that the seven people around her were the other seven fighters chosen. She examined everyone more closely. A girl on the side of the room slept sitting up and leaning on the cement wall behind her. She wore a red night gown and her dark brown hair lay limp at her shoulders. Katara knew, as she did in her own room, that this girl was a fire bender because of the heat that reverberated off of her. Even in this girl's sleep, the oxygen that flowed through her produced heat.

The girl had delicate features. Pale, pallid skin and yet her cheeks were tinged red, as though there was blush on her face.

"Stop staring at me, you weirdo," came a voice and Katara jumped, startled by the girl. "Chill out, Ice Princess, I've been awake for about ten minutes now…and you move around like a maniac. Very stealthy."

Katara watched as the girl's eyes fluttered open and two large rings of bright yellowy gold stared back at her. The girl shot her eyes heavenward in sarcasm.

"The name's Katara, and I prefer it over 'Ice Princess'" replied Katara with a grimace.

"Hell, I would too."

Katara's jaw clenched in aggravation and she felt herself slowly inching toward the girl, as though she was getting ready to attack, when two large doors at the front of the room flew open and an elderly man stood on the opposing side of it. Light barreled into the room and everyone with the exception of the fire bending girl and what Katara thought to be the fire warrior, shielded their eyes from the sun.

A goofy, almost crazy laugh was emitted from the old man who wore a large robe of green with rubies and jewels found only in the earth bending nation caves. His hair went every which way and a lop-sided crown was placed upon it, all the while his disproportioned eyes searched and surveyed the room.

The elderly man stopped laughing and proceeded to move away from the door. All eight of the strangers, including Katara, got up from their spots and walked slowly to the door in confusion, and when their eyes met the place in which they had been taken to, all eight strangers stared in disbelief.

The ship sat in a circular bay of crystal waters that the sun glistened on. There were beautiful trees of all shapes and sizes all around and the ground was covered in the most inviting shade of green grass the eight had every seen. The sky was a mixture of indigos, light blues, and dark blues, while the clouds were more beautiful and magnificent that the Northern Water Lights. It was as beautiful as a rain forest, with colors swirling all around.

"Welcome!" came the booming voice of the man who had woken the eight of them up. His eyes searched the group, and fell on the air bending boy that Katara had been watching earlier.

"Gorou, the air bender, and Ami the air warrior; Toph Be Fong, the earth bender, and Izumi the earth warrior; Azula, the fire bender, and Kenshin the fire warrior;"

For a moment, the elderly man's eyes paused as he surveyed Katara. A glint of mischief was in his eyes.

"That's a beautiful necklace you have there, Miss Katara," he said softly.

Katara frowned softly and looked down bringing her hand up to her throat where there was indeed a soft black velvet tied there. She quickly removed the necklace and examined it, her throat suddenly going dry. A memory of her mother smiling down at Katara, the very same necklace dangling from her neck, coursed through Katara's entire body and chills went down her spine. When Katara looked up again, the others were on their way off the boat, but Katara's shock was too much for herself to handle.

She was in a deep haze as she followed behind the other seven people and she kept on touching and feeling the cold sapphire stone in her hand, as if at any moment it would disappear. She stroked it and felt the ancient water bending inscription carved into it. She didn't know the ancient water bending language, but she immediately knew what the inscription meant. When she was a little girl her mother would whisper it to her every night before she would fall asleep.

"Katara, I love you like the moon loves the sun."

Katara reached up to her forehead, almost feeling the ghost of her mother's kiss upon it, but was taken out of her memory by the odd laughter of the elderly man once more. She had subconsciously followed the others off of the ship and when she looked around, she realized they were standing on the grass, but this time, there were more than just eight individuals. There were nineteen including the elderly man and herself.

She looked across the way to see two air fighters, one from head to toe in the traditional air bending monk style of orange and yellow, and the other in a beautifully flowing yellow dress. There were the earth benders. One stood out more than the other with his mane of brown hair and the swords he held at his sides. A cigarette was pressed between his lips as he leaned lazily onto a tree for body support. Beside him was someone Katara knew very much about. It was Yue, the water bending master, with her flawless skin and flowing silver hair, she smiled pleasantly at Katara. Lastly, Katara's eyes landed on the fire benders. One was a warrior who looked to be indifferent, bored almost, but the other; Katara knew who the other was straight away. A shiver ran up and down her spine as she thought of her kidnapper and made the connection between the fire bending boy standing before her and the one that had been in her room, waiting to die, the night before.

She found herself glaring in his direction and clasping the necklace in her hand even tighter.

Katara ripped her gaze away from Zuko and she returned to the elderly man, who had been introducing the warriors and benders to each other. She had regrettably missed the names of the others. The elderly man clapped his hands and smiled an odd smile. His eyes twinkled in delight.

"Well, my warriors and benders, I am Master Bumi of the Ba Sing Se School for Gifted Benders and Warriors, and welcome to Warrior's Bay."

Thanks for being patient, and I'm sorry to say, under the circumstances, you may have to be a little bit more patient with me during the weeks to come. There are things in my family that need taking care of. Enough said. Thanks for reading and make sure to review.