As far as Katara was concerned Kya Watari was the best woman to ever walk to earth. She'd been born into a normal family, middle child, good parents, nothing that would suggest how she would spend the last years of her life. She'd met and fallen in love with Hakoda, married into the family, into the cruel world of Yakuza. But she wasn't one of them. Never was and never would be. Kya had never given into the evil, into the darkness of the Yazuza. She'd always been a force of good, even in the midst of all that sin, and people gravitated towards her for it.

Katara missed her mother, but was half glad that she didn't live to see how things were now, how she was now. She wasn't strong like her mother.

A hand smoothed out against her lower stomach as she sat alone in her room, the women saying a prayer for her mother's forgiveness.

"Not feeling well?" a voice asked from her door.

"Don't you knock?" she snapped, looking at the tall Airbender. "I swear you people have no manners."

"So before we were monks, and now we're rude?"

"You can be both." She stood from her bed. "What do you want anyways?"

"I wanted to see if you were feeling ok."

"I'm fine," she insisted. "I mean all I've had today is rice and eggs."

"There was tofu for dinner," Aang added with a grin.

"Rabbit food," Katara snarled. "You didn't answer my question."

He was running his fingers through his hair, looking at her with a lazy look. "What question?" Katara growled, which made Aang laugh. "Calm down, it's fine."

"Then why are you here?"

"Well, I came to ask you to teach my men and women how to bloodbend."

"I told you today I'm not a bloodbender."

His broad shoulders shrugged. "Yeah I know you told me that, but we both know you are."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" she barked, trying to barge past him. Aang put his hand on her shoulder, pushing her back into the room.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, you don't know anything!"

"Yes, I do," he laughed. "I know that you're a bloodbender and I know that you're the one who killed the men we were talking about earlier."

Katara crossed her arms across her chest, hip popping out in annoyance. "And how do you know all that?"

Aang leaned into her space, looking coy with a soft smirk. "I'm good judge of character. That high maintenance bitchy persona you put on is hiding who you really are."

"And who's that?"

"A killer." He smiled. "I'm one too, ya know? I'm around them all day every day and I can pick them out of the crowd. I knew what you were the second I met you and I was just trying to figure out how you got there. Now I know."

In an instant her demeanor changed. Her posture straightened, her chin raising, fierce blue eyes meeting his. She went from the mewling, complaining brat to what she really was. "So…" She cracked a small smile. "I must say I took you for a fool."

"Well, I am." He smiled, "But I'm not an idiot."

"That remains to be seen. And before you ask again, I'm not going to teach it."

"Why not?"

"Why would I? I'm the only person in the world who can do this, and I'm sure as hell not going to show your mismatched brats how to do it."

"Hey," he snapped, stepping forward into her space. It took Katara off guard. People who knew her, REALLY knew her, didn't dare confront her, yet here he was. "Don't talk about my family like that. If you wanna be selfish and keep this knowledge to yourself, that's fine. But you don't need to be mean."

"It's not selfish! It's what I have to do to survive."

Aang waved her off, rolling his eyes. "Everyone in this fucking world is out for survival, you're not special."

"You don't understand anything about survival!"

"What don't I understand? Enlighten me."

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be a woman, born into the family I was?! Knowing that you were going to be married off the to the highest bidder! That I would be treated as a pawn, as a walking breeding machine for a brutal Yakuza?"

Aang was going to say that it wasn't like that, but he stopped himself. He thought of the things Zuko'd told him about Suki and how she was treated as a teenager by the family, and he knew that she was right. That's how women were thought of in this world. They were, most of the time, currency.

"So I had to make myself valuable. I had to make myself more important than simply a vessel for the next shitty generation."

"And you did it with bloodbending?"

"I did it by being a killer," she hissed. "By showing no mercy and no fear. I did it by being more valuable as fighter than a woman."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry that you feel that way and that you were forced to become that."

Her breath hitched, blinking in surprise. She'd never heard someone say that to her. Her position in the family was delicate. People feared her, but needed her. She never felt like people cared. She knew they didn't care. Yet here she was looking into his gray eyes, finding solace for a fraction of a second. It was just long enough to allow her walls to come down, even just for a moment.

"Can I tell you something, something that I've never told anyone outside my family?"

Aang nodded. "Of course."

Katara looked down at herself, reaching for the hem of her shirt. "I learned bloodbending from an old woman named Hama. She taught me the technique, then as soon as I knew I could do it I killed her, but not before I used it on myself."

Katara lifted up her shirt, showing Aang her stomach. His eyebrows raised, looking at what looked like two light, but deep, hand shaped bruises. "You did that to yourself?"

"Yeah," she sighed, putting the shirt back down. "I didn't plan on there being a bruise forever. It just never went away for some reason. I guess that's what I get."

Aang nodded slowly. "What did you do to yourself?" he asked, almost hesitantly.

She thought about it for a moment before answering. "I took away the chance that I would ever be used by my family. I took away my ability to have children."

Aang should have been shocked, but for some reason this fit with her, with how he now understood she was. If she couldn't have children she would be of no use to those who would hurt her. Because she did that she was able to just be who she wanted to.

He could still see the pain, the suffering in her eyes. But he saw strength. He saw a woman who wasn't to be fucked with.