Nights in Egypt
Chapter Eleven: Living Dead Girl
"What?" It was said at a hiss, angry golden eyes flaring like embers lit in a fire. Katara could barely process the sheer murderous intent of the man above her –due to the hit from the floor and the moderate suffocation the Egyptian prince was applying to her throat. She gasped, but he didn't relent, her nails dug into his arm.
"I'm lucky if I can manage ice. . ."
Suddenly air returned to her lungs and he was off of her, pacing like an angry animal. Katara rubbed her throat and glared at him from the floor. He had no right to be angry with her. He's the one who went gallivanting off thinking he could use her natural born ability to murder his own kin. Spoiled prince. . .She slowly got to her feet. Mind searching for a way out of the mansion he'd brought her to. Where exactly was it? How far from the House? Her questions were cut off by a single thought. I have nowhere to go now. I'll be killed anywhere.
She was silent a moment and looked to the prince, still pacing, angry comet-shaped scar pinching with his face. It was sickly fascinating trait. It was said that the Pharaoh himself had given it to him for disobedience. It had never healed beyond the tender pink flesh scarring that would remain forever. A healer from the north might have been able to help, if applied immediately and if the king's people trusted Waterbender's enough.
"You're telling me you can't Waterbend, at all?" His voice may have dropped a few tones, but the tense dangerous tone still lingered in his words.
"You didn't really give me a chance to tell you otherwise."
"How?"
She stared, confused. "What?"
"How?" He growled. "How can you be a Waterbender, come here, be able to make ice and nothing else?"
Katara's expression turned blasé, like a mask of superiority she'd often remember great politicians and diplomats wearing when they came to visit the House –amazingly they usually melted after a few moments of dancing and drinking, but Katara's was a permanent mask, a weapon. It seemed to irk the prince as well.
"Well, your highness, when one is forced into servitude there isn't much time for training." Her hands found her hips, and she squared her shoulders. "I was young when I left my home, my training had barely begun and I had no one here to teach me. . .and in case you have forgotten this is the Lands of Fire, Waterbending is illegal here. I have been a well-conducted member of society, up until now."
The prince stared at her, dumbstruck.
"Did you think I was a part of some organization plotting against the crown anyway?"
"No. . ." He looked away scornfully, and then met her eyes again. "I thought you were a little dancer who fancied herself above everyone else and practiced in private." On the word 'private' he was nearly nose to nose with her, but Katara wasn't backing down now.
"How very stereotypical." She commented, not missing the venom in his gaze. "So I've been ripped from my life as a chaste dancer and disowned by my 'mother' and brought here by a temperamental prince who can't seem to grasp they we all don't fall into place?"
The prince's face flushed and he opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by another. "I'd say that is right."
Both looked over to Iroh, dressed in crimson robes meant for sleeping, crossing the threshold of the room with a tired look in his old eyes. His mouth was a thin, unmoving line and his eyes were set on Katara. "Mistress Katara. . ." The elder man moved with the fluency of a bender, almost dance-like grace that helped his footsteps become almost silent, but the padding of his slippers and the rounded weight of his body built over lax years wouldn't allow it.
When he reached for her hands she didn't pull away, but she jumped when he bowed over them like she was a lady of the high Egyptian court, or something of that privileged rank.
"Uncle–!" The prince jumped back.
"I am sorry for the trouble this has caused you, Katara. Truly I am, I haven't the right to even speak your name under these circumstances and I apologize for my nephew's behavior –once again. I didn't want it to come to this."
Katara pulled her hands away. "But it still did."
His frown was enough to make any heart break, he truly looked like he was sorry, but Katara wouldn't allow herself to let him get to her. Skill of warrior that she may lack, she had the heart of one and the will of iron that came with it.
"Now what happens to me now? I still refuse."
"Mistress Katara–" he began, but Katara wouldn't let him finish.
"Why did you do this? That's all I want to know is why?" Her voice didn't break this time. "I may not like any of you, but I have never given anyone any reason to hate me. This country, your people, have taken everything from me and forced me to bear witness to my people's fall. But what have I done? Nothing. I haven't been in contact with any generals, or my family, or anyone. Yet you pick me out of the crowd, twist my secrets and bring me here? What will you do now that I can do nothing to help you?"
The prince glared. "My father wants you. . ."
"You could find many other women that he would want!" Katara snapped.
"No, he wanted you exclusively. Once he sets his sight, he has what he wants. His mistresses are the only people he is with without guards. You being a bender and not wanting him was just a bonus for us. You could have killed him while he slept or while his back was turned. While he was intimate, while his guard was down."
Katara blushed madly, shoving aside those thoughts and rearing up to the prince. "Well, I guess that plan is foiled now!"
"Not really." Iroh said.
"What? !" The two turned to him again.
"You can make ice. Ice. . ." Iroh tapped a scar on his neck. "Can cut deep."
Katara glared. "I can't do it at will."
"But you can make ice?"
"Yes," Katara growled, a pounding headache burning in her head. "But not at will. I can't bend water either," Her brows fell. "I managed to turn off that part of me in order to dance. What you saw in the tea room, I did that out of anger, because I wasn't careful."
"We can fix that." Iroh said.
Katara's breath caught in her throat. She didn't have to look to know that the prince and her wore the same looks of shock. 'Fix that'? Fix what? My bending? Something buried deep part of her seemed to warm at the promise of having her bending back. But it was quickly killed when she thought. . .
"You're forgetting one thing."
It was now Iroh's and the prince's turn to stare.
"I'm not going to kill the king."
Memories of swirling blue water filled her dreams. The dance long forgotten, the steps unpracticed, the moves she possessed but couldn't unlock. She remembered her childhood. She remembered her white fur trimmed parka with dyed blue seal skin and the beads made of rocks, tooth, and bone. The pretty charms and blue glass sent from the warmer nations as peace offerings. The warm hut, the fire, the snow, the cold, the cool summer sun.
She remembered being a child, falling back into the snow and staring up into the cool wispy sky as the snow fell around her. Colleting on her eyelashes and against her pink lips. Shouts of voices were distant and she couldn't make out the conversation.
But that one cold memory was the warmest thing she had in her heart.
Tears began to well behind her eyes.
She opened them to find the ceiling of 'her room'.
She sat up from the bed –never in her life had she slept in an actual bed– of silken red sheets and beautiful coverlets with swirling designs of darker red. Red wood. Red curtains.
Red, red, red
Always so much red. Katara idly thought back to the time where everything was blue and shoved it aside. She didn't really like the color blue anymore. Blue was always consumed by red. How the blue sky bled to crimson in the evening. How red ran through her veins. How her blue coat was coated with blood that was not hers.
Red controlled everything.
She hated red.
But she hated blue for submitting so easily to the dominating color.
With the light of the morning the mansion proved to be as magnificent as she'd expected from a wealthy Egyptian house. The entirety of the complex was made out of a sandstone type bricks that like everything else in the country seemed to be made out of and consisted of two floors. The lower floor –holding a furnished living space, trophies, a small servant's quarters and kitchen– was mainly for show with all its elaborate decoration. The pride being, huge marble workings Iroh called 'columns' that came from a place called Rome. Looking up the tall, strange, structures you'd notice the other floor just above it that seemed to jut outward, held up by four smaller columns attractively and the staircase leading to the upper floor –more intimately decorated because it held the rooms of the household and separate washrooms for each.
Katara had been given such one of those rooms and, quite honestly, couldn't begin to fathom why the idea of staying in this mansion seemed to be her only option.
The harsh gold of the prince's eyes met hers through her mind's eye.
"You will stay here until we can further decide what to do with you."
Aw, yes, She thought wryly. That's why.
She sat on her bed, bored by the gentle wafting of the gossamer curtains in the breeze. Katara twisted uncomfortably in her ripped and worn silk dress; the ripped seams hung hair fine silk threads that clung to the hopeless fabric like life depended on it. Wrinkled, torn and dirty.
She looked like the slave girl who'd been dragged here years before.
Why hadn't they just thrown her into the slave's quarters instead?
A tentative, but persistent knocking echoed against the door. "Mistress Katara? Are you within?"
The voice was none she had heard before. Not the prince, not Iroh, not any she could recall. Curious and cautious, Katara stayed put on the bed and called to the voice.
"Yes."
The door opened and, to Katara's relief and question, a young slave girl stepped in. She wore a plain white dress of no significance at all and her hair was pulled back into a no nonsense bun gathering at the back of her neck. "Good morning, Mistress Katara." The girl bowed. "I have brought a dress to replace the one from last night. . ."
The girl trailed off, eyes lingering on Katara longer than necessary and taking in the damage of the material.
"Forgive my boldness, but did you sleep in that, my lady?"
"Yes," Katara nodded coolly, cautious still. "There was nothing else to sleep in."
"Oh!" The girl's cheeks flushed and she bowed again. "Forgive me! The household staff just arrived not an hour before morning –a great while after your arrival. Lord Iroh informed us that you were already abed. We assumed you traveled with your own staff and dressed for bed. I'm sorry."
During the rant Katara began to slide off the bed and inched closer to the girl, whose eyes got wider with each step Katara took.
"I am sorry! Please don't be angry–"
"Enough." Katara pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's alright, you didn't know and I was too tired to change."
The girl stared at Katara weakly and smiled. She then raised a tray she'd been carrying in her hands, cotton red dress laid on it with gold bangles. "The prince and Lord Iroh wish that you will change and come downstairs for breakfast."
Katara stared at the girl, momentarily considering putting on the dress and going downstairs to be pestered by the prince.
Then it dawned on her.
The little girl called her 'mistress' which meant they must have told the slaves she was a guest. Katara fanned herself. "Tell the prince and Lord Iroh that I am feeling tired from my long journey and I should like to relax, and eat, in my own room." Drawing the spotless draw of an aristocrat to servant order that she'd heard many times, Katara fought her smile as the girl nodded and left the dress on a table.
"Then please, change and get some rest. I shall return with breakfast for you."
The enraged growls from the prince echoed through the halls, but he dare not enter her room.
Katara stared out her window, half finished breakfast tray shoved away from her on the ledge. The heat of the morning and then afternoon settled in. Katara fanned herself heavily and stared out the mansion and out onto the busy market place, where people were constantly coming and going and filling the streets with noise, sounds and smells. Anyone could really hide there. Ty Lee had made a decent living in the market beforehand; she danced for pocket change and bought food and lived in rundown buildings.
And she was a noble banished because her father couldn't stand to look at her.
Katara had been pulled from the comfort of her family and put into the slave markets.
She was sure she'd survive long enough to get out of Egypt.
Peering down onto the awning some feet below her window, Katara withdrew from the window.
After being brought to the House, Katara had never gone out into the market place, especially at night. Where she was a servant herself there were other servants that went to the market. Thin, wizened girls who could never pray become dancers. Ming had enough knowledge to know Katara would one day become beautiful and a talented dancer.
"A pretty face has no place in a dirty market." Ming had always said, and it was true.
The lowlifes of Egypt (even lower than the standard low) only went after the pretty girls with the turn of misfortune and their head in the clouds.
Katara hadn't realized someone was following her, the soft deliberate steps she made herself and unsettling silence was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, but Katara didn't bother to turn. She had to find a place to hide until tomorrow . . .
Dancing on the streets until she could gain enough money to leave seemed to be the only option other than prostitution. But the illusion of it all paid much more. Ming had taught her dance, one of the few things she could take away from her and she could use that ability to get enough money to leave, for her lack of schooling, Katara was smart enough to know better than to go somewhere without supplies –she'd even ransacked her room in the mansion for any suitable thing to take with her, but found nothing.
Could have searched harder for a cloak. Katara shivered in the sundress she'd been given to wear by the little slave girl. It was thin, meant for a hot day and was a dull shade of red with inlays of gold silk that made the fabric seemed to shimmer under the light of the lone streetlamp. Why does it get so cold at night? Katara wondered while rubbing her forearms to create warmth.
Heavy footsteps echoed behind her. Indicating someone running. Katara turned–
Meaty paw-like hands grabbed her, shoving her into an empty alleyway. The waning light from the main road going faint.
She couldn't see his face, but Katara immediately lashed out like she had at the guards.
The scuffle lasted for a few minutes, Katara's muscle no match for the much taller man's in the struggle to get her onto the ground. During the fight the man had reached out, fist grabbing at her chest and pulling away a handful of spider web-like cloth with a satisfying riiiiiiiip screaming along the seams.
Katara screamed too, but her attempts her futile.
No one answered the screams made in the dead of the night.
"Gotcha." Her feet were kicked out from under her and she went plummeting backward as the man remained standing, still clutching onto her wrists and the scrap of her dress. Staring up at the man, a chilling memory clicked in her mind. The silhouette of the man looked similar to someone else's.
She was frozen in terror.
Unable to move.
Like a terrified child.
. . .they grabbed hold of her arms and pinned her down so she couldn't move and the gag shove into her mouth muffled her screams, taking up all space between the roof of her mouth and tongue. Denying her the ability to speak. She didn't disserve it. She wasn't a person in their eyes. Just an object for this use and her voice was a nuisance that needed to be silenced. . .
Fire erupted from behind the man and a terrible scream echoed past his lips and into the hollow night. Katara watched as he fell, rolling off to the side and rippled flesh of his back burning. The foul smell of burning flesh filled the air and Katara recoiled, even more surprised when two masked guards ran forward and grabbed the man without a word to her –dragging him off into the night like a silent kill.
"See how helpless you are?" the voice of her savior asked, the soles of his bare feet padded across the stone road. His own silhouette divergent greatly to the one of the man she'd just seen, this one was smaller, but held a more regal form of importance.
Pale white skin. . .
"This weakness, this maidenly distress . . ." His voice twisted disgustedly as he drew closer. "It doesn't suit you. It makes you but a mere shadow to whom to claim to be."
Strong muscle, royal gold choker and necklace. . .
"Quit faking it!"
Fierce gold eyes. Austere mouth. Charcoal dark hair.
The prince. Her breath caught in her throat as he suddenly knelt down in front of her, grabbing her wrists, turning the palms of her hands to her face.
"You have a gift. It was given to you by the gods. You should be shamed for not fighting to keep it."
Katara wrenched her wrists away and glared. "Gifts are given for purpose. Once taken the purpose is destroyed. You're people stole it from me. . ."
The prince snarled. "Gifts like this can't be taken."
"What kind of gift can't–?"
"Ones that you fight for."
The two were incased in a long moment of silence, the velvet dark night swathing around them and nearly concealing them from sight had it not been for the pale glow of the oil lamp.
For a brief moment she was angry. Angry that he'd followed her, angry that he'd saved her, angry that he was here. Then the strained embarrassment and humiliation of being in this state, unable to protect herself hit her. It made her wish she could summon ice now, a dagger, just to conjure the same look from his face. She'd been powerful at the House, he couldn't touch her there, but now she was in his domain.
He didn't understand. He was a child, albeit a year older. He was fresh for battle and pampered and had received no blows such as this one. He did not know the struggle. The fight it took to hold on and the devastation that followed when it slipped. She was tired after the spirit breaking the Egyptian slave traders had dealt her.
Katara's eyes wavered over the scar marring his handsome face.
It came from battle, from suffering.
Maybe it's an understatement.
The prince sighed and rose to his feet. "Come," he offered her his pale hand. "We will go back to the mansion and get you a new dress."
No room for argument. No hesitation.
He knew what he wanted, she'd give him that. But what aristocrat didn't?
She stood on her own, gathering the lengthy skirt in her left fist and the ripped front in her right. "This dress is hideous. It's terrible to run in too."
The prince huffed and his brows drew together. "You're the one who ran in it."
Katara stared at the tears made into the dress, her mind play idly with what would of happened if the prince hadn't of followed her and then contrasted to if she could Waterbend. It was like a fork in the road, two very different paths with very different ends but ripped from the fabric of the same beginning.
She stood at another one now.
To have her bending.
Or to not.
I hate and love all of you. Longer chapter, ha!
Yeah. . .it was meant to end after the first page mark, but I figured after the last chapter you're all in a screw Zuko mood and I had so many ideas . . . VOTE ON MY POLL FOR THE NEXT TWIST!
Due to my new obsession with The Avengers a.k.a Loki a.k.a Tom Hiddleston I've just been a big fangirl mess and have tried to dignify myself for that beautiful slice of Englishman. Seriously, if you haven't seen the movies look up a picture of him. He is gorgeous. I was rooting for him during the entire movie. His entrances are amazing! And his character has grown from Thor. And I'm looking forward to Thor 2 *grumbles* which I don't care how 'underwraps' it is until 2013 do not underestimate my computer skills *ends grumbles* and I'm trying to figure out if Siygn -goddess of faithfulness, I think- will be in the movie because she's Loki's wife in legend and in comic and -if you read the legends- during his punishments given to him by Odin, she's always been there to stand by him.
Anyway, *composes herself* Keep in mind that there will be a lot of background story to this. In Ty Lee, Iroh, and Katara. Zuko has a little more background, but nothing that can't be covered in a chapter. He pretty much has all his cards on the table, while Katara is still holding back who she really is and what happened during her time on the slave markets.
For those of you who may have caught on to Katara's past, I got elements of her reactions from the book 'Living Dead Girl' by Elizabeth Scott. It's a chilling novel and the girl 'Alice' refers to who she was in a sort of third person sense and how selfish she was then as to how she is now. She talks about te tiredness of living with a murderer and people who don't know don't care on a daily bases and how she wishes for death, the want to run away, but the feeling of being trapped and that she can't for fear of her family who only lives a few miles away. But I gave Katara more anger.
Review me, tell me what you think!
~QueenVamp