Disclaimer: ATLA and LOK and all characters therein are not mine.
I'm really terrible at judging thresholds in my own writing, but this chapter probably begets a warning, so: Violence, mentions of torture/abuse, and general unpleasantness ahead.
A Change in the Wind
XXI. The Darkness beneath the Moon
Weariness washed over Katara in a crippling wave: everything was heavy, and everything hurt, and she no longer had the strength to stand. She swayed, lightheaded, and she couldn't even look at the pitiful form of the captured Avatar as the soldiers hauled Korra back over the railing and to whatever doom would follow; she was too busy wavering backwards. She might have fallen—her legs were certainly weak enough, and her center of gravity was somewhere outside her body with the rest of her functioning thoughts—but both Toph and Aang reacted with instinctual speed and steadied her with concerned hands.
"Hey, Ice Queen, it's gonna be…" But the earthbender was forced into silence, quailed by the utter lie of any reassuring resolution.
Aang sought to comfort by providing a distraction. "Come on," he said gently, straightening her with some effort but not much; it felt to him as if she had lost more than half her weight, as prone to being set adrift on the breeze as the curled husk of autumn's last leaf. "We cannot help her, but there is much we have yet to do here. Korra's capture is certainly devastating, but it has spared us further slaughter. We should focus on helping the wounded; there are more than enough of them to occupy us for some time."
Katara shook her head, not in any direct denial, but because it no longer seemed quite so anchored to her shoulders. "She…she wasn't awake," she said, her voice very small, the strangled pitch of a desolate child. "How…how badly must they have hurt her to…to…"
"Spitfire's tough as nails," Toph interjected, trying again, and she crossed her arms on her chest, as if projecting confidence in that opinion truly decided anything. "She'll be fine, and I'm sure she'll bust herself outta there in no time. Those firebending jerks are in for a nasty surprise, let me tell you!"
The waterbender simply stared up at the destroyer as it pulled away from the shore and turned back to the open sea and deeper waters. Its retreat was almost serene, but any grace that might have been attributed to its movements was suffocated by the sickly black smoke that belched from its stacks, and it only served to be a nightmarish image.
For Katara, it was an image from a nightmare. She had seen these ships so many times in her darkest dreams…
But exhaustion had buried itself in her bones, and she was too tired to try counting all the new cracks in her heart. So she nodded weakly instead and leaned on her friends, grateful for their support and wishing that it would make any difference in the long run.
"Yes," she murmured, "the wounded. I…don't think I'll be able to waterbend, but I'm not that good at healing with it, anyway. Still, I know how to wrap bandages and set bones and do stitches, so…" She trailed off with a bit of a sigh, like someone acknowledging the mountain in their path that they have no choice but to climb. "Let's get to it, then."
Aang's thin lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile, but he guided her around anyway. Together, the three benders trudged back into the ruined camp, quiet and reserved beneath the solemn moon.
Despite being considerably more of an amateur when it came to first aid, Zuko was nevertheless a quick learner, and he labored with increasing dexterity at Katara's side. She had been forced to show him the ropes in the beginning—no, no, wrap it like this, with the knot over the wound—and he had paid rapt attention to her every ministration, noting how she handled the breaks and the burns and the oozing cuts and then applying that knowledge, rather more clumsily, to his own tasks.
Such careful and pointed focus also made him notice more than just her healing skills; it called attention to the somber shadows under her eyes, to the listless blankness in their icy depths, to the way her hands trembled every so often in a tremor that she couldn't repress or disguise. And yet she struggled on, quiet and patient and steady in a fragile sort of way, the kind achieved by dint of grave determination and was just a whisper away from utter collapse.
Watching the battle from afar had been, strangely, one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. Pervasive helplessness had snarled him in its unforgiving clutches, for he had been unable to intervene on his friends' behalf and equally unable on his countrymen's. It was a terrible thing, he reflected glumly, to be a man without a nation, and even worse to have once been heir to that nation's throne. Now he was reduced to this, contributing aid of the most meager kind in the aftermath.
It was sickening.
He grimaced at his distraught musings and accidentally tied off a bandage too sharply; the wounded warrior winced at the sudden pressure, and the firebender mumbled a swift apology, still not entirely invested in the present. But a sudden change caused him to be very invested, indeed.
The tent flap—of one of the few relatively unscathed tents—was shoved aside, and Hakoda, already clad in what seemed to be several rolls of bandages, further shoved a man into the interior…a man dressed in the uniform of the Fire Navy. The assembled wounded Water Tribe warriors surveyed him coolly, and Katara glanced up at her father with a puzzled frown.
The chief curled his lip. "Look what I found skulking in the shadows."
The warriors' glares intensified, and those still capable of hefting weapons did so in a menacing attitude.
But Zuko could tell that the Fire Navy soldier was injured, and he concluded that the unfortunate fellow must have been rendered unconscious during the battle and had chosen this inopportune moment to wake up. Something roiled in his stomach, some awful, visceral cross between nausea and pure fear, mixed with just a dash of uncomfortable anger.
Before any of the men could make a move, though, Katara was speaking. "Well, what're you sitting there for?" she addressed the Fire soldier. "If you want to be treated, then get in line with the rest. I don't play favorites."
Zuko could've sworn that he heard everyone blinking as they were all taken aback; he certainly didn't know what to make of that, and neither did Hakoda.
Somewhat off-balance, the chief gruffly stated, "That's not why I brought him here, Katara."
"Really?" she echoed, feigning deliberate ignorance. "Because this is where I'm conducting all the healings, so you'll forgive my assumption. Nevertheless, as long as he's here, I might as well see to him. Right?"
Hakoda swallowed, trapped by the unpleasant prospect of ordering a man's death in front of his daughter, especially when she was being so unshakably calm about it. He rallied somewhat, however, his deep disgust for all things Fire Nation prompting him to action. "It's scum like this that's responsible for the Avatar's capture," he declared bluntly, "and you want to help him?"
Zuko heard Katara suck in a stilted breath, saw her hands slip on the bandage she was knotting, and he had never seen someone flinch quite so completely. It had been a low blow, bringing up Korra like that, and he couldn't look away, transfixed and utterly unable to fathom the scenario's outcome.
But then, she seemed to snap back into herself, her body and mind aligning once more. "You wouldn't know this, Dad, but I stopped Korra once from dealing unjust death. I'll stop you from doing it, too. No one should execute an unarmed prisoner. It's abhorrent." She paused for just a second before she concluded thinly, "Now, can I get back to my work? There's still a lot that needs doing, and I'm so tired I might keel over any minute, so I'd appreciate if we moved things along as quickly as possible."
Zuko's mesmerized gaze swiveled back to Hakoda, who was staring at his daughter as if he'd never seen anything like her before; slowly, though, in degrees, his expression softened, because he had indeed seen something like her before, even if it had only been once and a long time ago. "Very well," he capitulated. "But as soon as you've tended to him, we're cutting him loose, you hear? We have enough to do without babysitting some worthless trash."
"That sounds fine," Katara said, her eyes trained on the needle she was threading, but she was encountering difficulty, as a flimsy but detrimental veil of tears had welled into being.
Zuko reached over with steadier hands and clearer vision and gently took the tools from her. "Let me," he said softly, and in the work of a moment, he had slipped the thread through and knotted it in place.
She looked up at the ceiling and blinked several times, but she lowered her gaze when he proffered the readied needle. Accepting it almost absentmindedly, she murmured, "Thanks."
He spared a glance at the Fire Navy soldier, who was now waiting blankly in line. "I think that I ought to be the one thanking you," he replied, his gratitude thick to the point of almost being tangible.
She shook her head in a vague sort of dismay and whispered, "I couldn't let you see that. You shouldn't have had to see any of this, but, well, the rest couldn't be helped."
He acknowledged that with a nod, and he studied her profile for tics and tells as he said, "Korra will be fine, you know."
There—her façade of composure cracked, a subtle straining of the skin around her eyes and mouth, and he almost thought the tears had arisen anew, but if they had, she succeeded in blinking them away as she continued her careful suturing. "How do you know?" she challenged, but the only heart in her words was the broken kind.
He floundered but momentarily. "She's strong," he countered.
Katara exhaled a pale parody of a laugh. "Of course she is," she dismissed. "But that won't be enough this time."
Perplexed by her dogged unwillingness to accept that, Zuko swallowed and ventured, "Well, what will be enough, then?"
She hesitated, her gaze trained on the bloodied needle. "I don't know," she confessed, nearly inaudible, and that admission seemed to pain her more than anything else.
It was helplessness, Zuko saw. The same that he had felt during the fight, the same that still soiled his tongue now. But he had no solution to offer her, no wisdom or balm, and so he returned to his state of pensive silence and simply toiled at her side, doing what little he could to ease this burden, at least.
At length, they succeeded in working through the wounded and tidied up the impromptu hospital as best they could, and all that was left was to go down to the tideline and wash the blood from their hands. Zuko knew that would be a lengthy endeavor in and of itself, as the scarlet stains were nearly impossible to scrub out, but when he made the suggestion, she just gave him a look and effortlessly bent the blood from his fingers.
"Oh," he realized, impressed by his immaculate flesh. "I…would never have thought that waterbending would include…well, blood."
Her expression creased. "Korra actually suggested it a long time ago. She seemed to think it might be possible—to bend the blood inside someone, that is, not just like this, where it's more obvious." The creases worsened, and she shut her eyes.
He settled a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, but he still had no words, so after a moment, he just lifted it again. "Well, try to get some rest," he remarked belatedly. "You've definitely earned it."
"So have you," she said, her gaze untrained and listless. "Thanks for all this. You didn't have to."
"I kinda did," he replied, and he smiled faintly and almost turned away, but he caught a glimpse of something sharpening in her eyes, a glint that sliced through the murky depths like a fin through water, and then she was rising to shaking feet. He regarded her with a measure of concern as she staggered out of the tent without so much as a hint of explanation, and he followed after, convinced that she wasn't just seeking somewhere quiet to retire. She seemed far too hollowly resolute for that.
As it turned out, he was right—she made her wobbling way not to any shelter or sleeping bag but instead to Appa's snoozing side, and he heard her cursing under her breath, a furious and self-directed litany: "What're we all, idiots? How did we not realize it earlier? Ugh, I'm so stupid…I should've just gone right away…!"
Zuko bounded across their intervening distance and caught onto her sleeve, but he half-wished he hadn't been so bold when she pinned him with a ten-ton glare. Wincing, he protested, "You know why none of us went to Appa right away! Even if we had caught up with them, what then? We don't have the numbers to stage a rescue—knowing which destroyer she's held on won't make it that much easier!"
Her glare shifted to become rather more discerning. "You know which destroyer she's on?"
He hesitated, but when she tilted her head to the side in a decidedly threatening way, he owned to it with a sigh. "Yes, I do. All the ships have identifying markers, if you know what to look for. But that doesn't change anything," he insisted, tugging sharply on her sleeve as she tried to scale Appa's furry flank. "You can't go there all by yourself in your current condition and without a glimmer of a plan!"
"No, I can!" she all but shouted, and she wrenched her sleeve from his grasp and clambered onto the sky bison, who grudgingly roused from his slumber with a quiet rumble. "When Korra and Sokka came to rescue me, they didn't have a plan! They just came!" Shaking her head, frustrated and lost, she waved Appa's reins in an expressive rather than constructive way. "She'd—she'd known me for all of an hour then, Zuko—an hour! And yet she came anyway, risking life and limb for…for…and if I cannot do the same, after all this time, then I will not have the right to call myself her friend! I will not have the right to be anything! I have to go!"
"Wait," he blurted, and he gracelessly scrambled up the bison's side and seated himself, cross-legged and immovable, in the saddle. "I'm coming with you."
She gaped at him wordlessly, but at last, she managed to croak, "Why?"
He regarded her with grim golden eyes. "You may not have a plan, but I think I'm beginning to."
Korra drifted groggily back into consciousness and immediately wished she hadn't, as she was greeted by splitting pain. She hoped this was merely a colorful metaphor and not any literal description of the back of her skull, but with her hands bound above her head, she could not investigate the injury to be certain. Narrowly, she opened her eyes—one eye, at least; the other was viciously swollen shut—but even the act of separating the lashes caused pain to lance through her head, drilling and pervasive and as red-hued as the cell. The ghastly scarlet light didn't seem to emanate from any particular source; it just infused the air with its glow and colored the cold iron environment in the awful trappings of an abattoir.
Speaking of an abattoir…
Her mouth and nose were filled with the bitter, dark metallic tang of blood, and she spat out as much of the sticky fluid as she could, grimacing as the spitting and the breathing only served to make her entire chest and back twinge with deeply embedded throbs. Probably fractured some ribs, she acknowledged, and gingerly, she moved on to investigate the damage to her mouth with her tongue, checking to make sure she had all her teeth, and miraculously, she did.
"It's the little things," she muttered, veiling her growing dread in the trappings of grimmest humor, and she craned her stiff neck with effort and a disregard for the protests raised by the much-maligned muscles there. Her hands were indeed bound with iron cuffs, which were welded together on one side so that she couldn't separate them and were then further welded to a plate on the wall so that she couldn't pull them forward, either. Bending with her hands was out of the question, and as she glanced down next, she saw that her feet were just as useless, as they had received a similar treatment, being lashed shoulder-width apart by cuffs that encircled her ankles and were, again, anchored to the wall behind her. This kept her snug to the wall as well, but at least such proximity also kept her upright, although the ache in her wrists suggested that in her unconscious state, she had sagged somewhat and let her body weight apply too much pressure to the joints.
"But you can't win 'em all," she observed further, and she paused for a moment to collect herself, centering her spiritual energy and feeling heat circulate in her veins as she summoned the breath of fire. It welled up in her throat and lungs, sparking and warm, but that was as far as it got, as her injured ribs loudly and vehemently protested the necessary swelling and stretching involved in very deep breaths. A garbled streak of swears escaped past her gritted teeth with the thinly released exhale, and she was forced to concede that there would be absolutely no bending whatsoever.
She peered into the scarlet shadows beyond the cell bars, but she couldn't see any guards, although admittedly, her scope was very limited, and it wasn't as if she could capitalize on their absence, what with being beaten black and blue and chained to a wall to boot. So she settled somewhat against the frigid iron plating behind her, attempting to find a position that wasn't comfortable, exactly—she was too much of a realist to hope such a position existed—but at least one that aggravated the fewest injuries.
She hadn't been contemplating her dismal fate long when she heard a door open, the squeaking hinges drowned out as it shut again with a loud clang. A man well past his prime but possessing a truly evil glint in his eye strode into her line of sight, and he was followed by a more middle-aged man; they were flanked by two soldiers who had clearly been chosen because of their exceptionally intimidating size. Fighting the instinctual fear that raised its alarm in her every atom, Korra straightened as much as she could in an attempt to portray—despite all evidence to the contrary—that she was only still here because she had chosen to stay.
The old soldier smiled, or at least, his mouth tilted up at the corners. "Ah, you have awoken, Avatar. It is a true pleasure to meet you. I am Commander Yon Rha, and this is Captain Zel."
Korra managed to arch one eyebrow. "Oh, no," she sneered, "the pleasure's all mine."
His lips curved a little more, but his eyes remained dark, except for that pinprick of piercing, unholy light in the depths. "You caused a great deal of difficulty for me and my men," he went on to say, more or less ignoring that she'd spoken and certainly ignoring her sarcasm. "However, you also provided us with a gift beyond our wildest dreams! Your capture will reward us all handsomely, and I'm sure that after Crown Princess Azula executes you, we will be given the great honor of taking your body with us as we claim control of the Valu River and from there, Ba Sing Se. I hear Her Highness wants to spike your head above the gates once the city has fallen. How does that sound to you, mm?"
Determined not to swallow and betray that slight weakness, she retorted hoarsely, "Peachy."
That seemed to cause him more genuine amusement, and he slipped a key from his pocket and unlocked the cell door. She watched warily as he strode in with an air of utter confidence and calm, but she couldn't keep the pain from flickering across her expression as he reached up and grabbed her face with rough fingers. He tilted her head from side to side, no emotion present on his own face as he scrutinized her with clinical detachment.
"Hm," he murmured at length. "At least it'll look pretty spiked on the gates."
Revulsion stirred her stomach acid, and she sucked up what little liquid was in her mouth—mostly blood—and spat it directly in his face, managing to catch him in one soulless eye. "Go to hell," she snarled, and then her head snapped to one side, a fresh pain blossoming along her jaw.
Yon Rha uncurled his fist and used those fingers to wipe the offensive fluids from his vision, and he scowled at her. "I should kill you now, Avatar, for your insolence!"
"Yeah, but you won't," she replied, checking her teeth again with her tongue as surreptitiously as possible. "Azula wants to deal with me personally, and you're too scared of Azula—you're all too scared of Azula."
The commander regarded her in a surprisingly serious way as he opined, "You should be more scared of her, Avatar. If you're lucky, she'll execute you right away. But since you are the Avatar, and since I am delivering you to her in chains…well, she might take advantage of the wonderful opportunity that will afford her." He leaned in closer and whispered, "Once, I heard that it took her three whole days to kill someone."
Korra scoffed, but she had a feeling her scorn sounded as transparent to him as she knew it to be. "She's not very good at it, is she?"
"Rather the opposite," he corrected, his teeth showing in a curve like a scythe blade. "Before you're delivered to your doom, though, I wanted to ask you—were you really in the South Pole this whole time? Because I scoured the snow plains for years upon years, seeking out and slaughtering every last waterbender, and I never did discover you. It is fitting, though, that I'm the one to capture you in the end."
Her brain was lagging behind somewhat, preoccupied with trying not to picture how Azula could kill someone over three days, but she heard his words, and soon enough, she understood what they meant. In dawning horror and fresh revulsion, she stared at him. "Wait, it was you?" she asked in a near-inaudible rasp. "You're the one who killed the waterbenders?"
Yon Rha preened. "Not all of them personally, but all of them at my command," he confirmed.
She stared at him without seeing him, every memory of Katara's distant sorrow flashing through her mind, and she lurched forwards, as if she believed she could tear her chains' steel seatings from the wall with brute strength alone. "You bastard!" she roared, the edges of the cuffs biting into her wrists and ankles as she strained against their unyielding hold. "Do you even know what you did to those people? How many families you destroyed? You're a total monster—"
The guards rushed in, though, as Yon Rha stumbled backwards, frightened beyond reason by the fearsome apparition in front of him. With some effort, they slammed the Avatar back against the wall, and the whiplash saw to it that her head struck twice.
Her vision swam as crippling, pervasive nausea stole what strength remained in her frame, and if she'd been standing freely, she would have fallen. As it were, her knees buckled, and she dangled limply from the wrist cuffs, little more than dead weight.
Recovered from his fear and humiliated that it had existed at all, Yon Rha stalked close again, but she couldn't bring his wrathful visage into focus, even when he took her face in his vise-like grip once more and forced her to meet his gaze. "Clearly," he growled, "it is far too troublesome to have you awake, Avatar. For the rest of our voyage, therefore, I will ensure that you spend every last moment of it unconscious, and if you die before we reach the Crown Princess, well, that will just be too damn bad for her."
He released her roughly and stormed away, and she only had a half-second to let her head hang in peace before the soldiers carried out their commander's orders. Perhaps they weren't well-versed in brutality—or perhaps, like Azula, they were very well-versed, indeed—because it took a long, long time for merciful darkness to descend.
Miles of empty water passed beneath Appa's faint shadow, but Zuko didn't bother looking down when he was keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of the destroyers on the southern horizon. The night persisted in this half of the world, cold and dark and long, and he estimated that they had several hours of cloaking shadow left before dawn would brighten the sky and betray them.
The wind would've been brisk on his face, but he had the Fire Navy helmet to shield him from the worst of it. The uniform felt strange on his body, and he acknowledged ruefully that it was strange that this was strange—he was a son of Agni, and he had long worn this outfit. Yet, somehow, he had grown very accustomed to his variety of Water Tribe trappings in the past few days, and while the clothing lent to him by Hakoda's warriors fit the best, even Sokka's and Korra's clothes hadn't been so markedly wrong as the Fire uniform.
It was cumbersome and heavy and smelled faintly of smoke and oil, and he hated it a little.
But he was lucky he had it at all—his own armor had been discarded in the Si Wong Desert, and only tracking down the injured and spared Fire Navy soldier had secured him this set. The man had been initially loathe to part with his uniform, especially when Zuko and Katara swooped down out of the heavens on the back of a massive furry beast and demanded it without preamble, but he had seen reason when they had patiently explained that he might fare better wandering the Earth Kingdom if he weren't dressed quite so obviously as the enemy. It had been quick work after that to don the once-familiar garb and point Appa south across the bay.
Zuko glanced over his shoulder, but he saw that Katara remained asleep where she was slouched in the saddle. He had insisted on steering Appa in the right direction, as she was practically past the point of passing out from exhaustion, and it was a testament to her tiredness when she had hardly even argued the matter. He was somewhat surprised that she had managed to fall asleep at all, given her heart-wrenching concern for the Avatar, but he recognized that this wasn't true, restorative sleep but a sort of restless doze wherein the body just shut down.
She was clutching her necklace in her sleep, too. He wondered why.
Facing front again, he maintained his solitary vigil until he caught sight of the dark cloud hovering ominously above the horizon, but he did not yet wake Katara; just espying the smoke did not mean they were nearly close enough to put their plan into motion. So he waited until the smoke shrouded the bay, bits of soot and ash hanging in the air like poisonous gray snow, and only then did he reach back and nudge her.
She responded almost instantly, her eyes sliding halfway open to regard him. "Are we there?" she asked, her voice the aural equivalent of sandpaper.
He nodded. "I'll guide Appa down to the water level behind the right destroyer, and I just need you to keep him there while I free Korra. Then we'll be off, and hopefully no one will be the wiser until we're well away."
She absently tucked loose hairs behind her ears. "Here's to hoping," she murmured.
His six feet dragging through the wave crests, Appa crept up on the commander's destroyer, which happily remained at the rear of the fleet, almost guaranteeing that no one would notice the sky bison's presence, especially with how the smoke blocked much of the full moon's cold light. There, in the sickly shadows, Zuko vaulted onto the deck, taking care that his landing was silent. He offered a final nod to his companion, but Katara just gazed back at him, every aspect of her being taut and still.
Straightening his helmet and assuming a more confident swagger, Zuko strode across the deck and pulled open the tower's door, struck by the unsettling, foreign familiarity of the ship's interior. He explored briefly, as something seemed off, and found that the majority of the crew was in the main galley and having a raucous party, no doubt in celebration of the Avatar's capture. The dethroned prince identified both captain and commander and slunk away, descending into the bowels of the ship.
There was a guard posted at the entrance to the brig, but Zuko was prepared for this, especially in light of his new discovery. "Hey," he greeted cordially. "Cap'n says I ought to come relieve you so you can get a crack at the party, too."
The guard brightened, his posture perking up considerably. "Really? Ah, ol' Captain Zel is the best, ain't he? It's been boring down here, right enough; she hasn't woken up, and it's awfully dull to watch someone sleep like that. Thanks, mate!" And he clapped Zuko on his armored shoulder and tossed him the key before he walked off with a definite spring in his step.
The young firebender lifted his good brow. "Well, that was easy," he remarked to the empty corridor, and with a shake of his head, he unlocked the door and stepped into the brig. There were four individual cells here along a narrow hall—more than he'd had on his own, rather smaller destroyer—and he didn't have long to wonder why the guard had said Korra was still sleeping. She was in the first cell, and as soon as he saw her, it became appalling obvious that she wasn't catching up on her shut-eye.
He swallowed hard as he stared at her through the bars, and then he glanced nervously at the half-open door.
How was he supposed to get her out now?
As Appa coasted along behind the destroyer, Katara kept her gaze focused on the deck with one hand poised on her waterskin, just in case. Relief flooded her chest when Zuko popped his head over the railing—without his helmet, just to ensure that she didn't attack him reflexively—but it tempered somewhat when she failed to see the Avatar.
"Zuko? What're you doing here? Where's Korra? Is this the wrong ship?" she asked, standing up straight with a puzzled frown.
She could've sworn that he flinched. "No, it's the right ship," he confirmed. "I just need your help. It's a risk to bring you aboard, but it'll be worse if I'm caught with her, as I can't carry her and fight back at the same time."
Cold settled in the pit of her stomach. "What do you mean, carry her?" she asked slowly, every word as brittle as thin ice in the grip of the thaw. "Why would you need to carry her?"
He acquired an expression of grim sympathy. "Just…prepare yourself," he cautioned. "It's…well, she's not in good shape."
"Zuko…" she breathed in warning, but he failed to elaborate further, only extending a hand to help her aboard the vessel. After a moment's hesitation, she accepted it, and she fell in step behind him as he retraced his steps, now with considerably more furtiveness as he snuck her through the destroyer and back to the brig. The other guard was still noticeably absent, not recalled to his post by any natural suspicion or bout of conscience, and Katara glanced up and down the corridor as Zuko hastily unlocked the door and held it open for her.
Once they were inside, he shut it again, but Katara was no longer paying him any attention, not when his reluctance to elaborate suddenly made perfect, harrowing sense.
She choked on something, and it took her a splintering moment to realize it was just air. When she tried to breathe more normally, the air still rattled in her throat and ricocheted around her lungs, as if the shock that had reduced her to this horrified state had also robbed her of the ability to perform simple, automatic actions.
Zuko unlocked the cell door as well, but as soon as he pulled it wide, Katara slipped past him with the slow and distant grace of someone trapped in a trance and approached the Avatar's motionless form. She tried not to look, not wanting to see this, not wanting to be able to remember this, but even so, she couldn't look away. Raising trembling fingers to Korra's face, she traced a tentative trail along the one unmarred stripe of skin.
"Oh, Korra…" she whispered, tears overflowing her eyes, and they seemed to take every last vestige of her strength with them as they fell, drop by agonized drop.
Crouching down to open the ankle cuffs, Zuko thought to ask, although he hardly managed to articulate it, "Is she…well, is she breathing?"
The waterbender recoiled subtly at the question, as if her every cell had just drawn protectively in to its center, as if even the smallest parts of her were aware of that effect on their whole. Her hand slipped down, though, to hover over the Avatar's cracked and parted lips, not quite making contact so as to not smear the thin trickle of blood that steadily leaked from the shallow puddle beneath her tongue. "I…I think so," she said thickly, and she lowered her hand further and pressed it gently into Korra's neck, just to one side of her throat. "And she…has a pulse, but it's…spirits, Zuko, it's so faint…"
Having completed his task, he straightened and reached for the wrist cuffs. "Could you hold onto her?" he requested quietly. "Otherwise, she'll probably fall forward once I've released these."
Katara hesitated. "I don't…even know where to…I mean, I don't want to hurt her."
"She's unconscious; she won't feel it in any case," he pointed out, not unkindly. "And I hate to say it, but you couldn't possibly make it worse."
Suppressing most of a shudder, she conceded that and stepped into her friend, ducking her head under one arm and wrapping her own arms around the older girl's waist so that when Korra slumped forwards, she would slump over Katara's shoulder. She stood stock-still as Zuko freed her as fast as he was able, and she tried desperately to ignore the warmth of the blood seeping into her robe. And then Korra was leaning against her, heavy as a corpse, and she fought against every particle of her being that just wanted to collapse to the ground and cry.
This wasn't Ozai! This wasn't even Azula! This was just some…some fluke, some nameless and faceless enemy, and Korra couldn't die in an empty battle like this, so far from her destiny, so far from where the world needed her…
"I should've gone with her," she lamented. "I should've stopped her. I should've done anything, but I was so tired, I didn't—"
"Tara…'s that…really you…?"
Katara's heart skipped a beat as that voice drifted to her ears, and Zuko stared at the Northerner with wide eyes and a slack jaw as the Southerner stammered incredulously, "K-Korra?"
A groan escaped the Avatar, and she shifted sluggishly, her fingers grasping handfuls of Katara's robe as she tried to right herself. The waterbender spun around quickly so that her friend's arm was draped across her shoulders, instead, and Korra lifted her brows as Zuko did the same on the other side. "Guess it's not…a dream…'cause I'm not usually in this much…pain in my dreams. Although…it does remind me of…the day we all met," she remarked, the sentences stilted with disorientation, with trying to breathe infrequent and shallow. "'Cept…you're not the bad guy now, Zuko."
"The situation is similar," he agreed, still amazed that she was conscious at all.
Katara was staring at her anxiously. "Are you okay? Are you sure you can stand? How're you feeling?" she blurted, her worry causing the words to come out in a jumbled rush. She lifted a free hand, already gloved in soothing water, and cradled it gently against the Avatar's black eye.
"I think…I can kinda stand," Korra mumbled, toeing the ground experimentally, and she spat out the lingering blood. She grimaced, though, and added ruefully, "And I feel like…I'm fourteen shades of purple."
A grin flickered across Katara's face, born more from relief that Korra was awake than any real relief at this assessment, and she continued to filter the water through the diminishing swelling on her friend's eye socket. "You finally got more than seven," she quipped, but her tone was bright and brittle and already cracking.
Closing her eyes, the Avatar remarked in something too thin now to be humor, "I'm…a determined girl."
Less invested in the reunion and therefore more aware of the present, Zuko glanced at the open cell door and the corridor beyond. "How about we continue this outside? We ought to get going as fast as we can, especially since that's kinda relative now."
Korra snorted. "Yeah, I won't…be winning any races…anytime soon," she conceded, and Zuko's observation proved true in the next instant, for as she tried to take a step forward, the mere impact ricocheted up her body and sent her head spinning anew. "Okay," she said through gritted teeth, "it might…be really slow going."
They did not, in fact, get to find out how fast they would go, as they were forced to pull up short before they'd ever begun—Yon Rha and his cronies appeared, perhaps just there by coincidence, or perhaps they had encountered Zuko's dismissed guard at the celebration. Either way, there was a stretched moment in which they all stared at each other, and then the Fire Navy soldiers went to attack just as Zuko and Katara unleashed their elements. It was no contest; the soldiers fell back, one of them smacked jarringly into the wall by a powerful burst of flames, the other finding a water whip wrapped around his head and pulling him sharply into the cell bars.
His guards out of commission, Yon Rha nevertheless adjusted admirably to the circumstances, and he feinted at Korra; when Katara slid to protect her, he switched his attack at the last instant and blasted the fire into Zuko, instead. The dethroned prince barely managed to block, but the force was resounding enough to knock him off his feet. He landed hard on his back, and while the blow was somewhat tempered by his armor, he still could only curl up halfway, his breath slicing through his teeth.
"Zuko! You okay?" Katara asked hurriedly, glancing aside at him for a fraction of an instant, her eyes otherwise never leaving the enemy.
But that only served to pique Yon Rha's interest. "Zuko?" he echoed, and he looked at the boy. "You're Prince Zuko? I heard you were disowned, but what in Agni's name are you doing here?"
He glared up from his position on the floor. "Only what I should've done a long time ago—fighting ruthless murderers like you! Yeah, I know who you are, too, Commander! My father praised your work on the Extermination, so if I needed any more proof that you're despicable, there it is!"
"Zuko, don't," Korra interjected swiftly from where she was kneeling on the ground with her arms wrapped around her middle, as if she sought to hold her torso together with their brace alone.
He arched his good brow at her, not understanding, but then he made the connection, and his gaze flicked apprehensively to Katara.
The damage was done, however.
"Extermination?" the waterbender echoed, and she glanced at her friends. "What're you…" She trailed off, though, as a slow sort of dread-filled comprehension stole across her features. She didn't rightly remember much from the devastating day eight years ago; it was a tangle of emotions, fear and hatred and despair and sorrow snarled and twisted together until the events themselves were little more than a blur, and the details of faces and names were all but lost to the morass. But something like an instinct remained the keeper of that piece of history, and it balked in horrified recognition now.
She might not recall what her mother's killer looked like, not with her brain, not if she tried, but she remembered in her bones.
The jagged pieces of her heart shifted beneath this new—but also very old—pressure and scraped the inside of her chest, scoring fresh scars and reopening ancient ones, and she could only stare at him, at this monster who had destroyed her entire world.
"Y-You're…you…you were…oh, spirits, you were there, weren't you…" she breathed.
Yon Rha furrowed his brow, nonplussed by this segue. "I was where?" he wondered.
She swayed where she stood, her arms falling to hang limply at her sides, and she almost collapsed all the way, except that she caught herself in a step that was all stagger. "You were there!" she shouted, the volume tearing her voice to shreds. "In the Southern Water Tribe eight years ago! You were there, weren't you?"
A dark smile appeared on his face. "Ah, I see. That's what this is about. It explains the Avatar's anger earlier, if nothing else."
Katara whirled on Korra, the shock throwing her common sense to the wind. "You knew?" she demanded, tears flashing fire in her eyes.
The older girl's lips thinned into a near-invisible line, and not all the pain on her face was due to her injuries. "I only just found out," she admitted.
"And you weren't going to tell me?" the younger one continued, her voice approaching an unbelieving shriek.
"I hadn't really made up my mind about that yet!" she protested. "All I know is that I wanna kill him for it, so I can't even imagine how you feel—"
Katara whirled back, done listening, done with everything except the screaming in her head and the unfamiliar siren song of bloodlust that thrummed in her veins and left her deaf to all else.
This is the man who killed Mom…
This is the man who killed Mom!
With her tears blinding her, she let out an agonized howl, like a wounded wolf, and she lashed out with the full force of instinct and pure hatred, grabbing onto him even though he was still some distance away—she wasn't grabbing onto his body, and she wasn't using her hands.
She was using her bending, and she was grabbing hold of his blood.
Wrathfully, she slammed him back into the wall, and when that wasn't enough, she slammed him into it again before dragging him down to smack face-first into the floor. She didn't know how she was even doing this; all she knew was that some innate understanding was guiding her along, and if she'd been in a more discerning frame of mind, she might've thought it strange that she could feel his blood on her fingertips, as if she really were touching it.
As it were, though, she just followed the flow of it to his heart.
Behind her, Korra and Zuko were stricken dumb at the awful scene, forced to witness as their friend hauled Yon Rha back off the floor and held him on his knees. Katara extended one hand, the fingers loosely curled, as if she were holding onto something.
And then her fingers began to close.
He trembled as that all-important muscle was squeezed—that was all the range of motion he was allowed under her control—and he choked on a gasp as his heart's stalled beat began playing havoc with the rest of his reflexes.
Transfixed, Korra swallowed and managed to say the waterbender's name, but she couldn't rise to intervene; all the adrenaline in the world couldn't force her battered body into action, and she wasn't even certain if she should intervene. The man had killed Kya; revenge was rightfully Katara's. Even so, though…it remained unclear if Katara herself would survive this execution, and Korra knew that was the only thing that really mattered.
In the roaring madness in her head, Katara would have to admit that she feared the same, but that was buried too deep, and she couldn't hear her conscience's voice, let alone her friend's. All she knew was that she finally had him, the bastard who'd murdered her mother, and she could kill him, she could kill him, she could crush his heart and kill him…
She paused, her hand halfway closed, as something managed to dredge itself from the depths.
And then what? it whispered. You kill him, and then what?
And then nothing, she retorted. He will be dead, and Mom's murder will be avenged, and it will be over. I'll be free.
Will you, though? What do you really want, in the end?
I want him dead!
No…you want her back. You've only ever wanted her back.
She faltered further, her conflict coalescing into a hurricane in her soul. And she looked at Yon Rha, really looked at him, into the depths of his eyes, but she already knew the shape of his heart; she could feel it in her hand. He was vicious and merciless and cruel, and he undoubtedly deserved to die, but…
She knew the shape of her own heart, too. It was the same as her mother's.
But if she followed through with this, then it would be warped and distorted into something unrecognizable, and it wouldn't matter that she still had the necklace, because her mother would finally, truly be gone.
An image flashed across her mind, strikingly cold: the snow, bright and streaked with blood; this man, uncaring and callous as he walked away; and her mother, motionless on her back, her eyes glassy and blue and fixed on the sky. But instead of her own plaintive cries, which usually haunted these recollections, her father's voice drifted to her ears, instead.
I have never known someone with a purer heart, but then again…present company excepted. You have inherited that trait in full.
And how could she betray that?
Woodenly, Katara released him, and Yon Rha clutched at his chest and collapsed to the deck, gasping for air that he never thought he'd be able to draw again. And she thudded so heavily to her knees as the tears continued to spill.
After a seeming eternity had passed in which she stared into blurry space and the world went on without her, she felt a touch on her shoulder, a tentative brush, and she slowly tracked it to its origin. Somehow, the tears only fell faster when she caught Korra's gaze.
"I couldn't do it," she whispered brokenly.
"Tara…"
"I couldn't kill him," she babbled on, as lost as the eight-year-old child she'd been and, in some ways, still was. "I couldn't do it."
Korra's brow pinched. "You know, that's…not necessarily a bad thing," she said, her voice soft, although it retained some of its scratch. "You're a kind and…compassionate person at your core. I'm not really surprised that you…couldn't contradict yourself so completely."
Katara shook her head as she floundered in the roughest ocean. "I don't…I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, or how…"
She almost smiled. "That's…probably okay, too."
The waterbender nodded in a dull kind of acceptance, and she leaned into the Avatar, her arms wrapping fiercely as she cried into the crook of the older girl's neck, at least until Korra could no longer hold back the winces and pleaded, "Ah, ahh, n-not so tight, Tara…!"
"Sorry," she mumbled, hastily drawing back and wiping her cheeks before she tried to dry off Korra's neck, with mixed results, until she remembered waterbending. "Spirits, we were here to get you, weren't we? I…I'm so sorry—what've I been doing? I still need to heal you…"
"That can wait until we get out of here and onto Appa," Zuko reiterated as he dragged Yon Rha's quivering body into his own cell and locked him firmly to the wall, securing his wrists in the ankle cuffs so that he was forced to sit.
"Your concern…is touching," Korra grumbled as she tried to drag herself upright by grasping the cell bars, but that was unsuccessful until Katara pulled her up and offered her shoulder again. As she gladly sagged on the support, she added, "And it might not matter…that you couldn't kill this sorry excuse…for a human being, Tara. After all, he had the Avatar…and then he lost the Avatar…" She trailed off with a meaningful lift of her brows. "I wonder how Azula…will take that news? What do you think, Yon Rha? I'm guessing…somewhere in the vicinity of…oh, three days to die?"
He stared at her hollowly from his defeated and shackled slouch and did not respond.
"Yeah," she concluded with just a hint of dark satisfaction: "That sounds about right."