Title: Midsummer Madness
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Author: BurningIce
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Rating: PG-13
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Summary: Katara learns that there are both advantages and drawbacks to being a female water bending master, and pays back a favor to an old friend..
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Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar. If I did it would have been considerably less awesome, but Katara and Zuko would have totally gotten together, so I guess it's a toss up.
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Chapter 12: The Murder
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Aang was just fastening the letter he wrote to the messenger hawk when a portly servant skidded to a stop next to him. The man bent over wheezing, it was clear that he had ran a long way looking for the Avatar.
"Avatar Aang!! There has been an incident at the Asylum!! Princess Azula has escaped, she . . . ."
Aang frowned, "What happened?"
"You're not surprised?" the servant looked confused, he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed at his streaming forehead, "This could become a political incident! She killed three of the nurses there."
"She what?!"
"I was only instructed to inform you that you were needed to give orders immediately. I suggest you arrange for a tracking squad to find her as soon as possible. I have cleared your appointments for this morning, it's nearly dawn, if you hurry, you might be able to catch her before the news hits the streets. She cannot have gotten far."
Aang looked around helplessly, he was a thirteen year old boy, he didn't know what to do. He looked at his hands.
"Who were the victims? What were their names?"
"Arrangements for the family of the deceased will be made, you don't need to worry about them." The man looked uncomfortable, and Aang could see that there was something that he was not telling him.
"Start a citywide search, I want all of Zuko's private guard to search for her . . ." as he spoke, the decisions became easier, "I want the scribes to start working on wanted posters in case she is not found, both for. Any Azula supporters slinking around are to be brought in for questioning, if Mai is fine, she is to be brought in for questioning. Saddle Appa, I am going to go see the crime scene."
"No!!" the servant said hurriedly, then shifted, "I mean, it's not necessary for you to see the crime scene, two of the fire nations top surgeons and castle guard are en route to inspect it thoroughly."
Aang pursed his lips, "Why were surgeons called in and not just the night watch?"
The man shifted, and Aang sighed, the man obviously didn't think that a murder was no place for a thirteen year old boy. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then blurted out, "the carnage of it, I was told that there has never been a murder like it!"
"Saddle Appa." Aang's voice hardened, fresh panic gripping his chest.
The man bowed and turned on his heel, scuttling out of the room, and Aang tuned back to look at the hawks in their separate cages. They peered back, and one screeched.
"So Twinkle Toes, you finished sending your very important letter?"
It was Toph, she was leaning against the doorframe.
"Can we go pound some royalty into the soil and haul them back to prison now?"
"You can, I am going to the asylum to assess the damage."
"What?! Aang!! We gotta chase her down!! Immediately!!" Toph had assumed her usual debating stance, stepping into his personal space in a dominating and intimidating gesture.
Aang tried to evade her, he sidestepped and went for the door, "I'm going to wash and change, Appa will be ready to go by then."
"Aang!!" Toph stepped in front of him.
He stepped to the side.
So did she.
He stepped back to his other side.
So did she, intentionally barring his way.
"What do you mean assess the damage?!" his constant evasiveness was getting annoying.
Aang cast a glance around, most of the hawks had gone back to dosing. He inhaled deeply, and explained to her what happened at the asylum, and what the servant had told him.
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Azula looked in Mai's hand mirror for a long time. It was the first time she had seen her reflection in what must have been nearly six months. She touched her hollowed cheeks, her collarbone, her neck, she looked half starved.
That would not do.
Her mongoose dragon sneezed, and Azula snapped back to attention. She looked ahead at Mai, who was staring vacantly off into the forest. Ursa was nowhere to be seen, the apparition had been mysteriously absent since she left the asylum.
Azula tugged on her hair nervously, glancing behind her, the capitol city still in view across the steppes. It was obvious that Mai was waiting for the correct time to abandon her, the girl had no backbone. She would have to be careful, Mai was not to be trusted, Mai would want to know the plan, Mai was not like Ty Lee, Mai didn't follow without question. Mai would insist on no more killing. Mai was a bad lackey.
Azula looked at her nails, they still had the Avatar's blood caked underneath them. She smiled. She knew one of the Avatar's weaknesses, she just needed to figure out how to exploit it.
"Where are we going?" Mai asked, looking over her shoulder. She had been paler than usual the whole ride, and Azula assumed it was because she was unaccustomed to murder.
"Turn left here, go up the hill." Weakling.
Mai didn't argue, and the Princess went back to studying her nails. She could kill Mai, but Azula hated the idea of killing someone who could become useful to her again. But if she didn't she would risk a second betrayal. The aristocrat had proved most squeamish.
She went back to running her fingers through her hair. The road reached a river, and she reined her mongoose dragon into the water. Mai turned in the saddle and did the same. They doubled back the way they had came walking in the riverbed, and then down a tributary when the river forked. Azula wanted to be sure she would be impossible to track. The river soon became rougher, and the mounts began to hop, trying to pick their way through the rapids.
"We're getting wet." Mai complained.
"It gets clearer up ahead, we can ride on top of the water." Azula snapped back, a little water never hurt anyone. Mai was just bitching about anything to do with water or water bending.
It did indeed calm ahead, and they spurred their mounts to a hind legged run. The creatures darted across the water with relative ease, and the miles flew by. Azula cast another glance over her shoulder, the Avatar must have formed a search party by now, soon she wagered, her mother would do the same, after all, it would be her head on the line if Azula wrot havoc. She had been the one that talked the council out of the death sentence, so she would have to take partial responsibility for her daughter's actions under blood law.
Azula frowned, perhaps the nurse at the asylum would not be enough to get her mother's attention. She wasn't sure how far the news needed to travel, perhaps she would need to set a bigger signal fire. She glanced over at Mai again. The aristocrat had forbid her from killing anyone else, threatened to leave her stranded, so she would have to be sneaky. She had no intention of following any orders the Mai gave her.
Unfortunately, the girl was right, although it was fun, any more killings would be a waste of time and lead the Avatar straight to her. She set her mind to figuring out how to leave a trail for Ursa that the Avatar would not see, even if it was right in front of his face.
She reigned her mongoose dragon in another direction, "We're going this way." She shouted ahead to Mai, "I remember a place where Ursa took me to play when I was little, said it was the spot where her great great grandmother had a summer house. I think it's in ruins now after Avatar Sozin fell out of favor. I remember, she never took Zuko there. Said it was a 'secret girls place' . . . I think I know what she meant by that, I think it was a meeting place for the Order."
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Aang jumped off Appa before the sky bison could even land. There were already crowds of people forming around the asylum wall, and the city guards had their hands full telling everyone to back off and to go home. One of them saw him and jogged over.
"Avatar Aang!!" he pulled his helmet off, revealing a handsome, but weary face, "We were not expecting you, have you found the princess?"
"I came to see the crime scene, I though there might be some hints as to what she is planning to do." Aang also wanted to see for himself that the fire princess had killed someone.
"Very well, I will escort you to her cell." They waked through the double doors and down a long winding corridor, "Two were just stabbed in the chest, we believe in the wrong place at the wrong time, the third however . . ." the man hesitated, "We thing it might be a message for someone."
They climbed flight after flight of stairs, Azula must have been kept very high up in the tower.
"It's two more flights . . . here." The man held out a handkerchief drenched in jasmine smelling oil, "It won't help much though."
Aang looked at it, then back at the guard, the guard however was climbing the next flight, still talking.
"It's a delicate situation, half the city is still loyal to her, and although this behavior warrants a death penalty, if Fire Lord Zuko executes her, we will have a civil war on our hands. However, if he takes no action, he will lose some of the supporters he does have, because it will seem as though he favors emotion over justice . . . ugh." He held his own handkerchief over his nose and mouth.
Aang noticed it as they reached the landing, a horrid, sweet, disgusting scent that he knew immediately was a decomposing body. He pressed the handkerchief over his face, and found sadly that the man was right, it did not help much.
"We figure the corpse is about 12 hours old, since the body has not quite cooled to room temperature, and rigor mortis has not set in, though it would be hard to tell if it had."
Aang tried to listen, but the stench was getting worse, it smelled like decay, and like shit, and he began willing his stomach not to turn. He decided that this was not such a good idea, and the next time he felt curious about something, or insistent on being treated like an adult, he would rethink it.
"It's just through here." The guard said, voice muffled by a handkerchief, "Brace yourself." He opened the door to the cell, and hustled Aang through.
Aang took everything in at once, a woman, gutted like a rag doll, her innards strewn across the floor, her intestines draped across the charred bed like streamers, her eyes gouged out, her mouth gaping, her liver and pancreas in her lap. Her chest was covered with blood, which had seeped from a long, deep gash that severed her windpipe. The bottom half of her body was nearly purple, as all her blood had settled to the lowest point, and it had made her swell up.
There was a dried orchid placed inside one of the woman's sockets, and it's petals dripped with congealing blood. He thought back to Azula's torn and charred medical gown, it must have been spattered with dried blood too. He remembered her talk of taking his eyes, and his gut twisted into a knot, his breakfast in his throat.
Aang bent over to throw up, and the guard quickly grabbed his shirt and wrenched him away from the cadaver. The Avatar braced himself against the wall after his stomach had emptied itself, and took a deep breath. Unfortunately he had not replaced the cloth over his mouth, and he inhaled the sickening aroma of decay again, and coughed, wanting to throw up again, but nothing was in his stomach.
He was vaguely aware of two surgeons walking in and scolding the guard, and the guard patting his back and offering him a water skin to rinse his mouth out with. He found upon gulping, that the thing was not filled with water, but wine, and he quickly spat it out. Suddenly he felt dizzy, the room was spinning. . . .
"Lee, you moron, why did you bring a little boy up?!" One of the surgeons scolded the guard as he caught the fainting Avatar.
Lee juggled the Avatar in one hand and the handkerchief in the other, "If the Avatar orders me to bring him up to see the body, I bring him." He managed to half scuttle out the room with the boy, holding him with an arm and a leg.
He put him down and the surgeon who had scolded him knelt to take a look, a mask over their mouth and nose.
"Jeez, the kid is all scratched up! Burnt too, and look at his wrists, they're bruised!"
"Man, those are scratches from a ladies nails! I would have thought him a little young for THAT kind of 'play'!" The guard chuckled.
"My apprentices have brought a med pack, fetch me some water and one of them, these should be tended to properly." The surgeon waved him off.
Lee rolled his eye behind the physician's back but followed the order. He returned after several minutes, two medical students in tow. One held a flask of water, the other a big pack stuffed to the brim.
The surgeon opened the bag and rummaged through it, pulled out swabs and drenched them with alcohol, then dabbed at the Avatar's chest.
"Mmm . . ." Aang felt like he was waking up from sleeping, his limbs felt heavy. Something was stinging his chest and he swatted at it.
"Please lay still Avatar Aang, this wont take a moment."
The stinging continued.
Aang opened his eyes, trying to remember where he was, why he wasn't in bed, why there was someone with a face mask bending over him.
"Where . . .?"
"You lost consciousness, don't worry, Private Lee there caught you before you hit your head."
"I'm not a private, I am a second lieutenant!" The man argued.
"I fainted?"
"Yes."
"But only girls faint!"
"Anyone is capable of fainting." The surgeon's voice became cutting and annoyed and Aang suddenly noticed the delicate liner around her eyes, and that her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her two apprentices snickered from where they stood, and Aang blushed, he hadn't meant to insult her.
Aang sat up, and the nausea returned, he rolled back onto his side, thankful that Toph had opted to lead the tracking party for Azula instead of coming with him to see the victims. She would never let him live down the fact that he had thrown up and fainted.
"Take this, put it on." The surgeon was holding something out, it was a facemask. Aang took it and tied it around his head, thankful for the charity. He sat as she bandaged his chest, and then allowed her and Second Lieutenant Lee to help him up.
"Alright, ready for round two, Avatar Aang?" Lee teased lightly.
"You're not suggesting I am to let him back onto my crime scene!" The surgeon argued, "He already almost threw up on the body!! You are to go home and rest Avatar, you are in no physical or mental state to be looking at dead bodies. You let us professionals take care of everything."
Aang wanted to flee the scene, and was more than happy to follow one of the apprentices out of the building. He collapsed on Appa's head, and buried his face into his friend's soft fur, trying to shake the memory that was burned into his mind.
Once he had pulled himself back together, he picked up Appa's reigns and flicked them, "Appa, yip yip."
He had every intention of finding Azula before she hurt anyone else.
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Katara sat, listening to the soft sounds of the swamp around her. She had been sitting for the better part of the day, and she was starting to think that nothing was going to happen. Her stomach growled, and she felt hot and sticky.
She put her chin in her hands and rested her elbows on her knees, trying to wait patently for something to happen.
Nothing did.
She contemplated going back to camp, but stubbornly resolved that she would not leave the spot until the swamp showed her something. Katara tried meditating, but it didn't help, she tried yoga, but after sinking into the mud to her elbows and knees in downward facing dog she gave up on it.
She stood, figuring she was already lost, and wandered deeper into the swamp, stepping around vines and over huge fallen logs. She found it worked better if she froze the water in the mud before she stepped on it. She emerged from a particularly close cluster of bangrove trees and saw she was at the foot of the huge tree in the swamp's center.
She grabbed one of the vines and started to climb up the root, deciding it would be easy to find her way back to the settlement if she knew which way to go. She could see the sky, and caught the last few minutes of the sunset, and as the swamp darkened several patches lit up with campfires, though she couldn't figure out which settlement was the temple.
The hours crept along, and she resigned herself to spending the night camped in the swamp. The prospect would have seemed a lot less disheartening if there wasn't a handsome fire bender in the bedroom next to her's back at the temple. She considered again wading through the mire, but she didn't know what kinds of animals crawled out of the mud to play once the sun set, and decided that it would be better to spend the night under the protection of the grandfather tree.
She picked a few huge leaves off of one of the plants nearby, crossing her fingers and praying they were not poisonous, and settled down for the night. It was hard to fall asleep. Being alone left her mind free to wander, and it inevitably wandered to the previous night. She questioned her decisions, she thought about if it was fate or not, if all this was meant to happen.
Leaning back against the huge tree, she found a comfortable place to rest her head and gazed into the shadows of the pools of water the roots submerged themselves in. She remembered what Hue had said, that he reached enlightenment beneath the tree, and Katara wistfully glanced up at the branches above her, wishing some enlightenment might come her way.
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"I can't believe it! They could be anywhere by now!!" Toph pressed her hands and feet to the riverbank, hoping some stray vibration would betray where the two runaway girls had gone. The earth however, remained relatively still, and betrayed nothing about the ex princess.
"If I may make a suggestion, Lady Bei Fong?" one of the guards cut in, "The princess has lost us, we should put up the posters for her I doubt it will take more than a few hours to have every bounty hunter in the Fire Nation looking for her."
Toph thought about it, it wasn't a bad idea, but she didn't want to give anything so drastic the go ahead without Aang's or Zuko's acknowledgement.
"Set up a signal flare!" another man said, Toph didn't recognize his voice, "That's the Avatar with his bison to the south east,"
The men scrambled back and forth, and stuck something into the ground, a second later Toph smelled smoke and heard a high pitched noise that reminded her of the fireworks she had heard in the north, but it was not followed by an explosion.
The men quieted, and she waited, after several long moments, she could smell Appa in the air. Aang landed on the ground, and she could sense by the way he was walking, sort of crookedly and lightly, that something was wrong.
The squad of men greeted him and said that he looked 'pale' whatever that looked like, but Toph cut to the chase.
"What did you learn at the asylum?"
Aang shifted back and forth, his heart rate jumping, "Nothing useful, I learned just how close I was to getting dismembered."
Toph pointed at the river, "Her trail ends here. They must have rode down or up the river a ways, I've had them comb the beach, but these trackers say they can't find her trail."
". . . and what have you been doing?" She could hear the humor in Aang's voice, he was definitely shaken, trying to cover it with a joke.
"Supervising." Toph crossed her arms, "You don't sound so good Twinkle Toes. You should sleep some before you have another meltdown."
She heard Aang sigh loudly, "I'm fine, totally fine."
"Avatar Aang, I was just suggesting we put out the posters, get a few bounty hunters on the job before the end of the day, if the purse is big enough, we could get every bounty hunter in the Fire Nation looking for her."
Aang shifted again, his pulse changing, indicating more things he hadn't shared with her. Toph made a note to grill him later when he was the least emotionally resistant.
"That sounds . . . public, and . . . expensive."
"It has to be done Aang, and fast." Toph punched him in the arm . . . gently . . .ish.
Aang winced and stepped away, closer to Appa, and she heard Momo jump onto his shoulder and chatter at her.
"If her supporters find her, they'll harbor her," one of the palace guards said, "and we'll never see her again, they'll hide her somewhere and then we wont hear from her for several years, then we'll find Zuko and his children murdered in their beds."
"Okay, okay, Put up the posters, put everyone on red alert to be careful, say the princess is mentally unstable, that she needs special care."
The men began shuffling off, chatting amongst themselves and mounting their komodo rhinoceroses. Toph followed, after she had gotten past the first shock of being off the ground, she had found the ride rather pleasant. The beasts were fast, but lumbering and smooth, each step making quite a satisfying crunching noise, and best of all, they were equipped with so much armor that Toph had no trouble metal bending and seeing her surroundings.
"You don't want to ride with me and Appa?" Aang sounded hurt to her, and she pressed her lips together, thinking.
"Thanks but no, I would rather ride Crusher." Even the komodo rhinoceros's name rocked.
"You want me to come?"
Toph read between the lines and figured he wanted to talk to her about something in private. She shrugged, earth bending a ledge so she could hop onto the beast's saddle, "Sure, why not, but I'm steering."
"But you're blind!" Aang protested, it didn't stop him from taking an air bending leap up onto the animal, landing neatly behind her.
"It doesn't matter."
It didn't either, she took the great beast over every old log or bramble bush she could sense, and true to it's name, the creature simply crushed everything flat with it's bony feet while it walked right over it.
"Now this is the life!" Toph grinned, steering the horns to a sapling.
"Toph, maybe you should just let him have his head and go-" There was a crunch, "Never mind."
"So what did you want to talk about?" she oriented on a pile of rocks, and Crusher smashed through them, showering them with dirt and pebbles as he . . . she . . . it, tossed it's head.
"What?" Aang brushed off his cloths, then his arms around her tightened and he flinched. They bumped over something, Toph hadn't even been watching, so she had no clue what it was.
"You know, you wanted to ride with me, did you want to talk about something?" She pulled the reigns and oriented the creature on a huge tree. After several seconds where the beast didn't slow down, Aang grabbed the reign and steered the beast off the collision course for the tree.
"Maybe you should just let him have his head." The air bender repeated, boy-code for, 'pay attention to me because I want to be more interesting than smashing things' Toph suspected.
"Ok ok," she loosened her grip and the beast altered it's course, following the rest of it's herd.
"It was a pretty bad murder scene." Aang put his forehead down on her shoulder, trying to block out the memory,"I wonder if Azula would have done it to Katara . . ."
"Probably, and Zuko too, she tried to kill him on several occasions."
Aang stiffened and tightened his grip.
Oh right, Toph thought, comforting.
"We all know Sparky and Sugar Queen, if either of them is going to go down . . ."
"Yea, they'd take Azula with them." Drop in heart rate, relaxing muscles. Good sign.
Toph felt something wet on her neck. Tears. Bad sign.
"Oh come on Twinkle Toes, what is it?!" Toph asked, patting his hands where they clasped her waist.
"Nothing." Aang sulked, but didn't jump ship. Instead he pressed his cheek into the back of her shoulder and watched the scenery.
Ugh . . . Toph kicked herself, she really didn't enjoy upsetting him, it just so happened that she was really good at it. They rode in silence until they got back to the city, Aang was pleased to see wanted posters were already going up, though some had been torn, apparently Azula had many supporters that did not want to see her caught.
When they rode into the palace courtyard, Aang helicopter himself up to the balcony of his room, Azula's old one, and began feeling along the panels of the wall. He wanted to know what she had come to his room looking for, and if she was likely to come back. He could tell the wall was hollow, but he couldn't find the mechanism to open it.
His fingers darted back and forth, knocking, pressing, shifting, and still nothing.
"Come on!" Toph said from the doorway, "Just bust through it!!" a slam of her wrist and suddenly the wall was in ruins.
"Toph! This is Zuko's house!" Aang scolded, but picked his way across the splintered wood and into the secret room.
It was mostly empty, it had a few pairs of shoes, a change of cloths, and weapons on the walls, some of the things were missing. It also had a hallway that led off into darkness.
"Well?" he heard Toph over his shoulder, "What's in there?"
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Zuko was definitely regretting taking up a few of the boys in an offer to go jogging. His lungs burned, and he was sure he had sweat out at least a gallon of fluids. He was also the last one in the pack which was humiliating. Rao, one of the brighter boys who had seemed to notice the Fire Lord's self consciousness paced him.
He also would not stop talking.
"-'ut that would mean that y'all would have to wear something else underneath it in the summer. Don' sound like a very good plan t' me, goin commando is the way to go-"
Zuko watched the boy, whose cheeks were not even starting to flush with exertion. He figured the teen must be some sort of half Avatar that had mastered both air and water, and was using a new technique of air bending that allowed him to breath in and talk out at the same time.
It was the most plausible explanation.
He prayed to Agni that he would find some hidden strength so he could speed up and Rao would stop talking, but the mud was like a suction cup, and his stamina had depleted over the past months.
"Y'all should keep up Fire Lord!!" one of them called back, "Can't outrun a scorpion bat with that pace!"
"There is no such thing as a scorpion bat, you liar!" His buddy shot back.
"Ugh, ignore them spoilsports, theys is jealous of yer . . . yer sudden importance," Rao told him, "Y'all're lucky, yer uncle came by a time ago! Was' he the one who told y'all ta visit?"
"He what?" Zuko asked between pants.
"Yea, said 'e was opening a tea shop in Ba Sing Se, and wanted to get some real exotical things ta serve."
Zuko slowed to a walk, his uncle had traveled a round a bit, soul searching after Lu Ten's death, but had never mentioned anything about a swamp. "How long did he stay?"
Rao shrugged, "A couple 'o days I think, y'all should ask some of the older priestesses . . . So as I was sayin' I's never worn 'un in my life, so constrictin 'in all, y'all need to embrace-"
"So about my uncle, which priestesses exactly?" Zuko changed the subject back.
"Hahaha! Which priestesses he is askn! The alpha ones o'corse, they's the most forward! Sing 'n Har 'n Nel got quite cosy with 'm. Yer Uncle was a time and a half I 'erd, they was makin 'dragon of the west' jokes for weeks after!!"
"Dragon of the West Jokes?!" Zuko liked this less and less, his uncle was a terrible flirt, and the women here were terribly open minded.
"Yea, liiike," Rao frowned, thinking, which apparently, was a bit difficult for him, "Umm, like, 'Man, that Dragon 'o the West can join MY white lotus any day'"
"Alright, Alright! I'm good to jog again!" Zuko snuffed out the mental picture.
"Wait! Ah thou' 'o anothr 'un!" Rao followed the retreating Fire Lord, "'Y'all know why they say the Dragon of the West has a forked tongue?'"
Agni had answered his prayers, and Zuko found the inner strength to book it out of there, leaving Rao behind before he could get to the punch line.
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Leaning out his window, the Fire Lord watched the moon rise. Katara had not come back, and it was approaching Midnight. He didn't want to admit to himself that he was waiting up for her, but sleep was refusing to come.
Two tattooless girls walked by carrying baskets and clippers, the women tended to harvest their herbs at midnight, claming an increase in potency. It made Zuko think about his uncle, and he wondered if they had taken him reaping at midnight. That made him shudder and wonder what else they had shown him at midnight, and he ran his fingers through his hair, tucking it behind his ears.
It flopped right back out.
The girls had noticed him by then and called and waved, trying to be both respectful and coquettish at the same time, asking him if he was lonely and would like 'company'. Zuko declined politely, he had never felt so objectified in his life as he did in the swamp, like he was just a piece of hot man meat, and had no intelligence or personality.
He sat down on the bed and fumed.
He missed Katara, the girls didn't bother him when she was around.
The thought brought him back full circle, and he started worrying about her again. He stood and padded over to the mat to her room, he opened it and leaned in, glancing at her things. A mirror, a jar of kelp lotion, her brush, her soaps, her dagger, and her empty water skin sat on her table. Her saddle bags full of cloths sat open on her trunk, she had obviously not touched them in days. The swamp was just too hot.
He picked up her mirror and leaned back, it wasn't honorable to go into a girl's room without her permission, no matter how much she seemed to barge into his, but she wouldn't mind him borrowing her mirror. He lay down on his mattress again, and looked at his scar, he touched a finger to it, running it along the skin of his cheek. Then he touched the reflection of it on the mirror and frowned.
Using his right hand, he covered it and smiled at his reflection, studying it. He combed his bangs over his face with his fingers, then tilted his head so the good side of his face was prominent.
He grimaced.
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Katara figured she had slept for about four hours when one of those screaming birds had woken her up. It was surprisingly breezy up on the roots, and she started to shiver, and wrapped one of the leaves she was laying on around her shoulders. It didn't help.
Her stomach growled. She was done. Whatever Vel had wanted her to see or understand, she would pass, there was a soft, animal free (except for Zuko) bed waiting for her at the temple.
She stood and rubbed her neck, it had stiffened as she slept, and scrambled off the root, landing knee deep in murky swamp water. A catfish gator that had been sleeping nearby hissed at her, annoyed she had woken it.
Wading to the shore was more difficult than it looked. Seaweed coiled around her ankles, mud sucked at her feet, and the swamp bed was horribly uneven. She stepped on something and it writhed. She cursed and froze a chunk of the surface, scrambling up onto it. A mammoth swamp python raised it's head out of the water and hissed, it's two sets of fangs lengthening, it's gills closing. She sat very still, it would strike much, much, MUCH faster than she could bend, of that she was sure.
It struck.
Screaming, Katara bent the water into a torrent that hit the snake's face. It hissed and made a strange clacking noise and retreated.
Breathing slowly, she pulled up her loincloth to look at her thigh better. Four small puncture wounds, oozing green slime decorated her right quad. She bent some water onto it, probing the wound and sucked in her breath. It felt like she had pressed a hot poker to her leg.
She began to feel woozy and cursed the spirits again, the animal must have been venomous. Unfortunately while water was great at straightening chi or healing wounds and burns, it was not particularly good at burning off poison. She bent her torso, but the wound was too far up her leg to reach it with her mouth, and she guessed that there was too much venom to suck out anyways.
Using her bending, she steered the chunk of ice to the shore and scrambled off, trying to remember what she knew about snake bites. Yugoda had not covered them in her healing classes as they were not particularly numerous in the North Pole.
She reached out into her blood, trying to bend it back to the wound, but it was difficult, the moon was not full, and her power spike had faded hours earlier. She tried for the venom instead, going for the fluid, but she was getting more and more dizzy, her vision blurring, a flick of her wrist sent a small glop of poison out of her system and onto the mud.
Three more wounds to go.
Her head started to throb. She began unlacing her top and pulled it off, wrapping it around her leg a few inches above the punctures and tied it.
Something was dripping out of her nose, and she wiped it off onto the back of her hand. Blood. She pinched her nose, and leaned her head back, fear clutching her chest.
"HEEEEY!!" She screamed, noticing blood spraying from her lips as she screamed, "HEEELP!! ANYONE OUT THERE!!"
Some medicine woman I am . . . she thought wryly.
Her lower abdomen spasmed in pain, and she felt more blood trickle down the inside of her leg. She screamed again, hauling herself to her feet and limping across the moss. Katara tripped over one of the vines she had been stepping through, and fell on her stomach into the mud. Cursing the spirits, she hauled herself up again, then held her breath, she could have sworn she heard someone.
She sneezed, blood was leaking down her face and dripping onto her chest, and the swamp blurred in front of her eyes. She tripped again, her elbow hit something hard and she whined.
"Oi!! Someone screamin' round 'ere?"
Katara recognized Hue's voice and she called out to him. He came around the corner, a mass of vines, and discarded them to jog over to her. He knelt and examined her leg, bending some water from the swamp and touching it to her wound, where it began to glow. She covered herself, embarrassed, though didn't have enough spare blood to blush.
"Katara! What're y'all doin out here so late?! Y'all got yerself a nasty python bite there." He was bending, the vines started winding themselves around her, "Just relax, the venom ain't fatal, it attacks yer mucus membranes, 'ts tha bleedin ta death that kills ya."
She hacked up another mouthful of blood, letting the older water bender lift her.
"Y'all try to keep your heart even, the less the stuff circulates, the less y'all'll bleed."
The ride back to the swamp was a blur of pain, Hue kept asking her stupid questions, and she figured out that it was to keep her conscious. She answered dutifully, watching the green and black blur by.
"Why were y'all out there in the first place?"
"Vel told me to wait by the tree for a vision."
That seemed to annoy him, "N how did y'all get bitten by a python."
"I stepped on it . . ."
He took her to the cells of the High Priestesses, yelling for specific women and rapping on doors. Katara sank down to the floor, leaning against the wall, her eyes feeling heavy. She felt sick, blood was pooling around her on the silver clay floor.
Bare feet were running down the hallway, people were barking orders, somebody was opening her mouth, another person spread her legs.
"How long has it been?"
"Looks like almost an hour, not the best, but not as bad as it could be."
Someone was lifting her and carrying her.
She must have drifted out of consciousness, because the next thing she knew she was in her bed, and someone was propping her up and forcing her to sip some sort of vile substance. Fae was working on her leg, the blue glow of her water the only light in the room.
"Y'all shouldn't walk around the swamp at night!" Fae scolded as she worked, "Y'all are lucky it was a mammoth swamp python and not a cocklebur mud rat!"
Katara felt her face, there was still blood trickling down it, it was congealing on her chin and chest, and in her hair, "What-"
"It's venom is full of anticoagulants, you're lucky no old wounds opened up."
Someone started yelling outside the door.
Zuko.
"Are y'all comfortable?"
Katara nodded.
"Did y'all see anything spendin' the night under the bangrove tree?"
Katara shook her head.
"Pity . . ." Fae turned to her assistant, "Get the bandages and salve."
The woman scrambled to follow, and handed the High Priestess a nutshell of past that the woman gloped onto the puncture wounds.
Katara screamed.
There was a thump outside the room and Zuko burst in, "What are you doing to her?!" He took one look at Katara and staggered back against the wall, his eyes wide.
The paste was burning, and her muscles twitched, she tried to yank her leg away. Fae Held it still, smearing the stuff over another puncture. Katara hauled, herself to a sitting position.
"Please calm down Fire Lord," Fae didn't even look up, Katara grabbed at the old woman's wrists, but her assistant pushed her back into the mattress.
"What happened? What's wrong with her." Zuko seemed to rally and crossed the room, peering over the woman's shoulder.
"Y'all want to make yourself useful, y'all can hold her down." The assistant said irritated over her shoulder, dodging a clawing hand from the water bender.
Zuko grabbed her wrists, she knew it was him, and pressed them into the mattress. "Hold still 'Tara."
Katara glared at the red and white blur that was his face, but bit her lip and tried to hold still. It was not easy. It hurt. It HURT. Her skin felt like it was blistering, Fae might as well have dripped boiling oil onto her.
"Oi!" the Assistant wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, "'o course she gets as docile as a pussy catgaitor when y'all hold her down." She sounded bitter.
Fae began wrapping her leg with bandages and Katara hollered, she dug her nails into the fire bender's arms and Zuko winced, but didn't let go. She didn't either.
"Done." Fae stood, "Give her another drink of the painkiller, I don't think it was strong enough."
The assistant nodded and opened Katara's mouth, forcing her to swallow more of the disgusting liquid from the shell. However bad it tasted, the pain in her leg indeed subsided, she relaxed, closing her eyes. Suddenly she was exhausted.
"Here Fire Lord, help me with this . . . be too . . . can wait . . ."
The directions that the witch doctor was giving him faded out as she drifted again into black unconsciousness.
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She didn't know how long she was out, but it was still dark out when she came too, Zuko was straddling the chair his head cradled in his arms on the table. She was relieved that the blurriness had left her vision. She pulled the covers up around her, even though there were several extra, she was freezing, probably since she had lost so much blood her circulation was suffering.
"Katara!!" Zuko scrambled over and kneeled on the floor next to her, "Thank the spirits, you've been out for two days."
"Two days?" There was a new dark circle under his eye, and his face was creased with worry. She sat up, and her leg throbbed with protest. She lay back. He picked up a water skin from the floor and helped her take a drink.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine, I'm just a little cold . . ." She closed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair, rallying, feeling her face for blood, relaxing upon finding there was none. Her top was still gone though, and she tried to discreetly wrap the covers more tightly over her torso.
Zuko put the water down and carefully climbed into bed, She felt him shift and pull her under the sheet and up against his chest, and squeaked in surprise as his positively scorching chest touched her back. He leaned against her and pressed her down into the mattress, so his body was half on top of hers. He was careful not to touch her leg.
"Tell me if I make you too hot."
"Er, You've made me hot . . ."
"I haven't even started fire bending yet."
"Oh right, fire bending . . ."
She felt the air around her heat, the mattress heat, his skin against her heat, she shivered violently once as the heat sunk in, than again for entirely different reasons. His fingers laced with hers and he pulled her more snugly against his chest. She traced the veins along his arm with her fingertip as he nuzzled his lips against the base of her neck.
"You missed it, Hue and that woman Vel got into a huge fight, it went to blows. He said she was reckless to try something so advanced, and that you were not a trained priestess, and you didn't know the landscape and dangers of the swamp."
"Then what?" Katara touched the bandages on her leg and winced as fresh pain throbbed there.
"She said that if the swamp chose to enlighten him, then it might have done the same for you. She was mad at him for treating you like a little girl. What happened out there?"
It was so warm against him, Katara started nodded her eyes closing, "Nothing, nothing happened, I was rejected . . ."
"They said that once the poison works it's way out of your system they'll be able to patch up your puncture wounds better. They said such a heavy dose of the venom will throw off your cycle, apparently they use that stuff as birth control."
Katara nodded, remembering it was in the stuff that Yeo had given her to drink. She had wanted to get her hands on some of that stuff to take with her, but not like this.
Zuko's arm around her tightened, some of the weight on her eased up, he was talking again, but Katara didn't pay attention.
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"Soooookkaaaaaa." Ty Lee somersaulted in front of him, "Sokka, You got a letter from the Avatar!!"
Sokka dropped his sword in surprise, "Don't DO that Ty Lee!!" He picked up his sword and put it back into his sheath lovingly. It had taken him the better part of a month to find it, and then had to repair it since parts of the hilt had snapped off.
He had never found his boomerang.
"What's it say?" Suki asked, peering over her shoulder as Ty Lee handed it to him.
Sokka read it over once, and the two girls watched his olive skin go pale.
"What?!" Suki pulled it from him and read it herself.
"Oh no," Ty Lee frowned, "looks like bad news!"
"Aang wrote that Azula escaped, and that they haven't been able to recapture her." Suki read, "He wants us to go to the swamp and get Katara and Zuko right away, and then all of us head to the Fire Nation, immediately."
"What? Me too?" Ty Lee was surprised.
"Well, it's hard to read, he scrawled it really fast, but it looks like he wants the whole gang on it." Suki squinted at the paper, "Anyways, you're Azula's best friend, I'm deciding right here and now you're coming too."
"You'd probably be really helpful in her capture." Sokka put in.
Ty Lee chewed on her lip, looking indecisive, trying to decide whether her loyalty lay with her new friends or her old one.
"Is there any reason why you shouldn't come, Ty Lee?"
"No, captain, I'll go and start to pack." The acrobat bowed her head and took off towards the dorms.
"Tell Kisa I want to speak with her, I am going to leave her in charge again!" Suki called after her.
"Does it say anything about travel arrangements?" Sokka asked, taking the letter back.
"Nope." Suki tapped her finger with her lips, "We'll have to take a ship. Write Aang a message back that were on our way, but if he sends an airship to meet us at the swamp we could shave day off."
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Okay, so Kuro-TheNinethSon, on DA, (Not sure their SN here) made me the most awesome fan art of the swamp dancing!! Warning: You may wish to wait a minute or two after reading and before clicking to avoid Zutara induced seizures and mouth foaming.
http : / / kuro-theninthson dot deviantart dot com / art / Zutara-Under-the-moon-97359326
Or for those of you who are lazy, (or very judicious about unnecessary movement) there is a clickable link in my profile.
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So, here is lean mean fourteen, and not the mediocre Stephanie Plum novel. I hope you like! Sorry about the up and down, I forgot to put in a few sections I wanted to, then while I was working decided I just hated everything and revamped it all.
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Current distractions:
Classes, (I am looking forward to being in a critique where someone isn't ragged on so much they cry)
A Matter of Honor (Seriously, it rocks harder than a rocking chair in a mosh pit)
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Thanks for reading, reviewing, and thanks to those of you who check out Kuro's DA page!