A/N: I know this is rated K+, but just a warning for a bit of violence contained in the chapter.
"You sure you don't want company?" Katara asked Toph as the younger girl prepared to leave.
"No, I want to get home, and you have to get back to the Fire Nation," the little earthbender replied. "Thanks for the ride, though." Katara had bent a massive wave to carry the two of them to the Earth Kingdom coast - it really wasn't that far from the southern islands.
"If you're sure…" Katara said dubiously, not wanting to leave the girl to fend for herself.
"Hey, I'll be fine," Toph said, with supreme confidence. "You go get that fire spirit of yours back."
"He's not mine - " Katara began to protest, but Toph just laughed and started walking away.
"See you," she called over her shoulder, then jerked her hands forward with a stomp of her foot and bent a staircase into the cliffside.
Katara stared, impressed. This girl was a very good bender, despite her age.
"Thought you had places to be, Sugar Queen!" Toph yelled, halfway up her staircase. "Get going already!"
Katara shook her head. "I'm going!" she called back, then bent herself another wave. She was headed for the capital.
o0o
It took her two more days, mostly traveling over water, to reach the capital on the westernmost island. She came around the back side of the island, swimming with her head just barely above the surface - she didn't want to be spotted, which meant coming in through the harbor, while perhaps more convenient, was not an option. The city itself lay in the open crater of an old volcano, with one gate at the top of the road leading up from the harbor. The gate was her main problem. She didn't know if the Spirit of Fire had enlisted the help of his people, or if he was even looking for her in the Fire Nation, but she couldn't risk being recognized. A disguise would be needed. How to get one, though?
As she made her way through the jungle that still covered the lower slopes of the mountain that housed the Fire Nation capital, she spotted several houses, tucked away from the bustle of city life. And many of them had long clotheslines, just sitting out in the open.
Katara bit her lip. Stealing clothes… It would be a good way to get a disguise, but something in her rebelled at the thought. She'd always been taught that stealing was wrong - but if it helped her to survive?
Then she laughed at herself. Survival? She was heading straight into the reach of the patron spirit of the Fire Nation, and he was extremely angry with her. She probably wouldn't survive the encounter. But she was still in the same dilemma - she had to have a disguise, and there was an unguarded clothesline right in front of her, its Fire Nation clothing waving tantalizingly in the light breeze.
"Are you going to take those clothes?" asked a mildly curious voice from behind her.
She whirled around, whipping her water out of her bending pouch. A brightly clad figure stood in front of her, hands raised in a universal 'Don't shoot ice at me' gesture.
"Who are you?" she demanded, heart still racing.
The person - a bald-headed young man with orange and yellow robes and a blue, arrow-shaped tattoo on his head - gave her a wide smile, much to her surprise. "Hi! I'm Aang, from the Southern Air Temple."
"H-hello," Katara stammered, completely taken aback.
"What's your name?"
"Katara," she told him, then realized she probably should have made something up.
"So, going back to the original question - were you going to take those clothes?" the young Air Nomad asked, face growing suddenly serious.
"I don't know," she answered, honestly.
"I'd advise against it. From what I've heard, they don't like stealing very much here. The Fire Lord is harsh - you didn't hear that from me, by the way," he added quickly. "We're supposed to be diplomatic and neutral."
Katara gave a small smile, despite everything. "What are you doing here?" she asked, curiously.
"We're on a pilgrimage. I'm from the Southern Air Temple, but we're visiting the Eastern Air Temple. We stopped to pay our respects to the air spirits of the Fire Nation, since it's on the way," the young airbender explained. "What are you doing here? You're Water Tribe, aren't you?"
"Yes. Southern," Katara said. Something about Aang's friendly manner and wide grey eyes made her want to tell him everything, but she held back. She had to be careful. "I'm… looking for someone, and I need to get to the capital without drawing too much attention."
Aang nodded, and although she could see he was still curious, he asked no further questions. "We're going into the capital," he told her. "You can come with us."
"Really?" Katara asked. "Just like that?"
Aang smiled. "Just like that."
o0o
The Air Nomads were welcoming, each one giving her a respectful bow and a smile as she passed. "You won't pass as an Air Nomad," Aang said, eyeing her critically as they walked toward his sky bison. "But you can wear some of our extra robes, and you should be all right." He stopped by a female Air Nomad's bison and waved. "Hey, Yuyo!" he called. The airbender leaped from her sky bison, landing gracefully on the ground. "Can we borrow an extra set of robes?" Aang asked, gesturing to Katara. "She needs them."
"Of course," the other airbender replied with a gentle smile, fetching them out of her bags and handing them over. Katara pulled them over her head and made sure none of her blue clothing was showing.
"Here," said Aang, straightening her collar. His cheeks were slightly pink.
"Thank you," Katara said. "Not just the clothes - for all of this."
He smiled. "No problem! It's always a pleasure to help someone else." He led her over to his sky bison. "Meet Appa," he announced. Katara stared at the massive airbeast in awe. He towered over her, shaggy head low to the ground. Appa let out a low, rumbling, groaning noise and snorted.
"He likes you!" Aang said with a grin. "Go ahead and climb aboard. We'll be ready to go soon." Other sky bison were taking off already, lofting into the air and heading toward the Fire Nation capital. They touched down just inside the great gates of the city, where they were met by a diplomat and several Fire Sages.
"Our greetings, southern ones," the diplomat said. "Welcome to Caldera City. The Fire Lord welcomes you and thanks you for your respect in coming to honor our spirits."
The head monk, an old man with a spectacular mustache, dismounted with a gust of wind and bowed back. "Thank you, sir. We appreciate the Fire Nation's allowances for us."
"The temple is this way," the lead Fire Sage said, as the rest of the Air Nomads began to dismount. "Follow me."
"Are you coming with us?" Aang asked in a low voice, his eyebrows drawing into a concerned frown. Katara nodded, keeping her head down.
"I have to go to the temple, too," she told him.
"Stay in the middle, then?" he suggested, and she nodded again.
They made a strange sort of procession, the brightly clad Air Nomads with their blue tattoos and serene expressions, following the richly ornamented Fire Sages through streets that were full of staring people, all the way to the center of the city where the temple of Agni towered over the houses around it.
As they got closer, Katara realized how similar the house she'd stayed in with Lee was to the temple - the pagoda-style building had red roofs with dragons perched on each of the four corners closest to the ground. The walls were decorated in gold flames.
Katara had sudden, horrible realization that she had no idea what she was doing. She'd made it to the temple - now what? Even if she managed to get Agni's attention, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't just vaporize her on the spot. For that matter, what would she even say? "Hello, Spirit of Fire that previously tried to kill me. I was wondering if I could see your son, who I think I've fallen in love with, who probably doesn't ever want to see me again, since I burned his face and - " Right. It just got better and better.
Taking a deep breath, she followed the Air Nomads into the temple.
o0o
The temple itself was gorgeous - Katara was impressed. The interior walls were inlaid with gold, and incense hung heavy in the air. The many columns leading up to the main shrine were wrapped in scarlet cloth and the thick red carpet muffled their footsteps as they walked. There were other shrines off to the sides, where Fire Sages bent over braziers of glowing coals, or knelt chanting in low tones before little statuettes of the lesser fire spirits. Katara's blue eyes took in all of it - it seemed so alien compared to what she had been raised with. The Water Tribes treated the spirits with reverence, sure, but this was… different.
The group stopped; they had reached the main shrine. The statue inside was gold, a man with a dragon's head that glowered down over the whole temple. Or maybe Katara just thought he was glowering - the product of an overactive imagination. The Air Nomads formed a line, each approaching the shrine one at a time, bowing, murmuring a few words of respect, then drifting off towards other parts of the temple. The Fire Sages watched them, hawk-like, though what the Fire Sages thought the Air Nomads would do was beyond Katara. She found herself in the middle of the line, closer to the back, but still nearer to the front than she would have liked.
"What exactly do we say?" Katara whispered to Aang, who was ahead of her in line.
"Just say your name, and that you pay respect to the patron spirit of the Fire Nation, or something like that," Aang whispered back, encouragingly. "Nothing too hard."
"Right," Katara said. But she also had to apologize, and ask his son's forgiveness, and possibly be burnt to a crisp for her audacity, all in the short amount of time they were expecting her to pay her "respects."
There were two people left before Aang, and Katara swallowed nervously. Her heart was pounding; her palms were slick.
"Hey," said Aang, turning to her, his eyes full of concern. "What's the matter?"
Katara just shook her head. "I'm fine - it's fine."
"Listen to me, Katara of the Southern Water Tribe," Aang said, laying a hand on her shoulder firmly. "It's just paying your respects to Agni. Nothing to be worried about."
That was when the entire shrine burst into flames and there was a horrible howling roar that echoed through the temple and sent everyone scattering for cover, leaving Katara alone in the middle of the floor, with no one between her and the flaming shrine.
"WHERE IS SHE?" a terrible voice bellowed, and the flames coalesced into the figure of a man, who then took two giant strides forward. "STAND FORWARD, WATERBENDER!"
Katara was frozen. The Spirit of Fire was here. He was here, and he was going to kill her, and she was going to burn alive, and she would never see her family again. That was how this was going to go.
And then she remembered the pouch of water at her side, beneath her Air Nomad robes, and felt marginally more comforted. She might be able to put herself out if she caught fire. Then she realized Agni was waiting for her. She undid the Air Nomad clothing with shaking hands - if she was to face the Spirit of Fire, she might as well do it as herself - then stood forward.
He was still roaring for the waterbender, and every time he did, the torches in the temple would flame higher and higher. The Air Nomads and Fire Sages had all fled. Good - Katara didn't want anyone else getting hurt.
She took a step forward, toward the main shrine where the man of flames stood. "H-here," she started, then forced her voice into some semblance of confidence. "Here."
The man glared down at her. His eyes were like twin suns, shining brighter than the rest of the flames he was made of. "You," he said, and his voice was so furious, so venomous, Katara thought it was a wonder that she didn't burn to ashes on the spot.
He sent a whip of fire flying at her, so fast she hardly saw it. She felt it, however, as it hit her in the side and left a blistering burn across her ribs. Before she could do much more than gasp, a second fire whip was flying at her from the other side. She tried to raise her arms to protect herself, but that only earned her more lashes. She screamed. Her knees buckled, and she crashed to the floor. The blows continued, and it was all she could do to curl herself into a fetal position and hope the fiery onslaught stopped. Then she felt a pool of water near her fingertips - her pouch had been split by one of the fire spirit's hits and her water was soaking into the thick carpet. Acting with some last reserve of energy she didn't know she had, she bent her little pool into a dagger of ice and sent it flying toward her attacker.
The ice blade hit one of the fire whips as it was coming at her and exploded in a hiss of steam. The Spirit of Fire stopped; whether it was from confusion or from utter contempt, she didn't know. Katara lay on the scorched floor of the temple, her arms, legs, and sides blistered and blackened from the attack. She had a searing burn on one of her cheeks, and she was fairly certain her hair had been burnt as well.
"Were you trying to defend yourself, little water savage?" the Spirit of Fire asked, and his voice was darkly amused.
Katara couldn't bring herself to answer; it hurt too much. It was taking all she had to stay conscious and face her end with some semblance of dignity.
"A warrior spirit, or some gleam of it," Agni mused, looking down at her with those blazing eyes of his.
Katara, struggling as white spots closed in on her vision, tried to push herself up on one arm. The Spirit of Fire laughed.
"Still trying! Now I see why my son was adamant about you," Agni said, and he sounded begrudgingly respectful now.
At the mention of Zuko, Katara froze, her eyes wide. Agni studied her face, his own fiery eyes narrowing. "You are not worthy of him," he said finally, and his voice was contemptuous as he raised his arm to deliver the final blow.
"No," Katara rasped, and the Spirit of Fire paused again. "Let - me - prove it," she ground out from behind teeth gritted in pain.
"You wish to prove your worth, waterbender? To me, the Spirit of Fire?" Agni laughed again. "For what? Your life?"
"For - Zuko," she said. "I never meant - to hurt - him - " She broke off as she coughed; the smoke from the smoldering temple was getting to her. The coughing made her sides explode in agony, and she doubled over for a moment, then forced herself to straighten and look up at the Spirit of Fire. "I want - to ask his - forgiveness."
"Warrior spirit," Agni said quietly, and lowered his arm. "You have strength, waterbender. Though you earned my wrath, you say you wish to make amends. Fine. I will set you these tasks. First, you must go to the top of Mount Xiangchen and retrieve for me snow from its highest peak. Next, you must travel to the land of the Sun Warriors and bring me back the scale of a dragon. And finally, you must go to Koh the Face Stealer and ask him for a certain box that belongs to me. If you can complete these tasks, I will allow you to go to my son and make your apologies, and then I will let you go with your life."
"My thanks… Spirit of Fire," Katara said, though her heart felt like it was falling through the floor. Three impossible tasks…
"If you fail," Agni continued, and his voice grew thunderous again, "you and your tribe will have the wrath of Agni visited on them for generations to come." With a wave of his hand, he repaired the damage to the temple he had caused. "Bring each item back to me here." He took a step back onto the shrine, and then he was gone.
Katara collapsed to the floor, shaking. Tears began to leak from her eyes as all her nerves screamed in pain. Water… she just needed water… then she could heal herself… but it was hopeless anyway. Impossible…
That was her last thought before she blacked out.
A/N: Perhaps I should up the rating to T... That last bit was a bit violent, now that I'm reading it over. I'll stick with the warning for now, though. Thoughts?
Updates will now be a bit slower (ha, daily updates - you lot have been SO SPOILED) since this is the last chapter I have fully written right now, though Chapter Eight is in the works and should be done fairly soon.
Tell me what you think of this one, yeah?
