Chapter Twenty-four

The escape was planned for the middle of the night. They sat in a thick nervous tension for a while, hissing plans and reminders and questions back and forth, until Zuko pulled himself up. "This isn't helping anyone," he commented, stretching. "We should try to get a little sleep."

"What, and sleep through the night accidentally?" Toph scoffed. Zuko sighed.

"Fine. I'll stay awake and wake you up later. Just lay down," he continued over Toph's protests, "and try to get a few hours of rest."

Katara obeyed grudgingly, pulling a blanket over herself, but she didn't expect to get a second of rest. How could she, when her mind was going a thousand miles an hour through every possibility the next few hours could hold? It was to her great surprise that Zuko had to wake her up to get ready. She jolted upright with a gasp. "Is it time?"

"Whoa, whoa," he said calmingly. "Yes - it's time." He grasped her hand and pulled her up, where she stood on shaking legs. Now that she thought about it, her whole body was shaking with adrenaline. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself, and clenched her fists to keep them still. "You okay?" Zuko asked, tipping her chin up with his thumb. She hissed out a breath and shook her head slightly.

"I don't think so." She laughed once, a nervous barking noise that startled her. He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back as she pressed her forehead into his sternum.

"You're ready," he promised. "Even if you don't think so right now. You'll be fine, I'm sure." She straightened, placing one palm on his chest.

"Thanks." She tilted her head back farther, raising her other hand to cup his cheek and draw his mouth to hers. Allowing herself only a brief moment of sinking into him, she drew back. "Thanks for the support," she clarified, standing straight and stretching a little, getting into a fighting mindset. "I'm ready now."

They started purposefully across the dungeons, toward the steam pipes where presumably some prisoners were already being evacuated. Where Toph would be waiting to remove her bracelets. Where -

"Katara!" Sokka jogged up to them suddenly. "Come on, there's a change of plans - Toph had to go - you've got to get out of here."

"What? No!" she protested, wrenching her arm free of his grasp. "What do you mean, she had to go? Where is she?"

"Something came up - there was a problem at the end of the tunnel and she had to make adjustments. She'll be back, but you have to leave - go through the tunnel until you find her, and then she can take the bracelets off and you can come back here to fight or heal or whatever. The important thing is to leave before -" He was interrupted by a terrible scream.

"What is that?" Katara spun around, clutching Zuko's arm.

"It's the bait to lure the guards in," Sokka groaned. "Come on, it's too late - you need to go!" He grabbed her again, but she shook him off. Before she could stutter a protest, he backed away. "I have to go," he reminded them tersely. "Zuko, get her out of here." And with that, he took off at a run towards the scream.

"Come on," Zuko muttered, dragging her the opposite direction. "You can go find Toph -"

"There's no time!" she argued, stopping dead in her tracks. "Zuko, take them off." He tried to protest. "No, take them off! I can heal the burns - they don't matter. Come on, we're out of time." She held her shaking arms out pleadingly, and he took them after a second of hesitation.

"If you're sure you trust me," he began, and she almost laughed.

"Of course I trust you. Just do it." The muscles in her arms clenched as he ran a scorching hot fingertip along one metal cuff. Molten metal burned a line down the center of her wrist, and she gasped with pain. He quickly removed the bracelet, and she was hit with a wave of dizziness. As she swayed on her feet, Zuko repeated the procedure with her other wrist. "It might take a while to get your bending back," he warned her as he helped her sit. But she already knew he was wrong. Her bending was like a wave replacing the dizziness, flooding back into her, back into its rightful place in her body. The rush of power filled her like a warm tide, pulling at her to act, to use it, to reclaim it. Easily, as though it were nothing, she flicked one fingertip through the air and drew a stream of water down her wrists, and before she even touched the places that had been burned, she knew they were as smooth and painless as they had ever been.

She rose to her feet, feeling as though she were flying - or floating, that was more accurate, floating through an ocean which she could control at the flick of a wrist. And she could feel Zuko beside her, knew he was reaching out before he touched her, and she threw her arms around him, finding his mouth easily for one more kiss. "Thank you," she said again. The water thrummed against her mind, pulling at her and urging her to get busy. She dropped her arms, jumping away from Zuko and towards the front of the dungeon. "Let's go."

She could feel a steady throng of people moving towards the steam pipes, most still at moderate pace. There were a lot fewer people than usual in the dungeons, from what she could sense, even with the small influx of guards that had come to investigate the scream. They pushed through the crowd, purposefully moving towards those guards, until Zuko grabbed her shoulders.

"Wait," he cautioned. "No one's fighting yet. We don't want to tip the guards off until the last possible moment. They can't see your arms." He was right, she knew, but the bloodthirsty sea monster inside her didn't like it. There was a crowd around the guards, who clustered around the screamer and a few other prisoners; she and Zuko positioned themselves in the midst of the pressing bodies.

The tension was palpable. Anger and anticipation hummed through every person in the crowd. Katara could hear the guard's terse voices, snapping at a woman who lay on the ground sobbing. The prisoners held their positions until one guard reared back a booted foot to kick at her face. She rolled away in time, but that was the trigger. En masse, the prisoners swarmed forwards, overpowering and disabling the unsuspecting guards in mere moments.

All around them, prisoners continued to rush towards Toph's exit tunnel. That was an integral part of the plan; it was an escape, not a plan to capture the palace. The main initiative was to get everyone out. Katara would estimate that about half had successfully gone, but some would have to fight their way out. A few moments after the first guards had been subdued, their comrades realized something was wrong and swarmed into the dungeons. They were met with a fight, but they were armored soldiers under attack by barefoot prisoners. They pushed their way inside, and the battle began.

Katara fought wildly, pulling water from the air and from the sweat of those near her. Her biggest fear was that she would mess up and strike against a prisoner, but she concentrated hard on defense against anyone who was attacking her. She found quickly that she could actually feel a firebending attack coming. The water in the air would suddenly disappear as intense heat rushed toward her, and with this warning and a little luck she was able to dodge most of the attacks. It wasn't long, however, before she realized all the firebending was destroying her supply of water. The air was so hot and dry that she was unable to pull moisture out of it at all.

She felt another attack coming from her left side and spun around, throwing up a shield of ice - but there wasn't enough water for more than a parchment-thin layer of protection. She launched herself to the ground, rolling out of the way of trampling feet as she smelled burning hair.

"Come on." Zuko's voice was urgent as he came out of nowhere, grabbing her arm to pull her upright.

"It's too dry," she gasped as he started leading her away from the fight at a run.

"I know." He paused, spinning around to launch a fireball at a pursuing soldier, who was then pulled back into the fray. "You've done what you can. It's your turn to get out."

She tried to think of a way to argue but came up at a loss. "How are the rest of you going to get out?" she asked worriedly. They had to get away from the attacking guards.

"Don't worry about it," he answered. She bit her lip, feeling sure that that meant he didn't know either. "Toph!" he called, steering Katara through a fast-moving crowd of prisoners. "Stay here and help her," he told Katara, giving her a quick hug. "I'll see you soon." And then he was gone, sprinting away back to the fight.

"Move, people, move!" Toph screamed. She stomped her foot, and Katara could have sworn she heard an earth-moving crash at the front of the dungeons.

"Are you fighting from all the way back here?" she asked in surprise. "At this distance?"

"This is nothing," the earthbender scoffed. "You should know that by now. Although I'm mainly trying to get these people to get moving!" She yelled the last two words at the top of her lungs. "We've all got to get out of here before too many reinforcements arrive."

"How are the fighters going to retreat without being followed?" Katara asked again.

"We need to disable the guards," Toph replied. "When this crowd has gone through, if the fighters retreat here fast, I'll try to put up a wall between them and the soldiers. By the time they get through, maybe we'll all be out." Katara nodded, but her frustration was building.

"I hate feeling useless," she said angrily. "But this air is just so dry. I wish I had a river - an ocean, even." She clenched her hands into fists, striking out at the wall behind her. But her hand didn't meet stone. It clanged with a dull thump against metal. She gasped, rubbing her throbbing knuckles, and then her mouth dropped open. She spun around, running her hands up and down the rough metal, smoothly curved and warm to the touch. A steam pipe.

"Toph!" she exclaimed. "This is steam! This is water, in here!"

"But it's so hot," Toph protested. "How will you - "

"I can freeze a river, Toph! I can cool the steam. You just have to punch a hole in the pipe, and -" She felt Toph hesitate, then rear back a fist. "No, wait! Can you make it at the top? If it comes out here, it will burn us."

"Can I?" scoffed Toph. "I wish you would stop doubting me." She pulled her fist back again and punched the pipe. At a sharp popping noise and a hiss far above their heads, Katara felt the water vapor gushing into the room. She pulled it down, cooling it as it came; she had her river, her ocean. She was ready to fight again.

She took off at a run back across the dungeons, stumbling over mats and debris but not slowing down. As she ran, her newfound river followed just above and behind her head. She twirled her arms intricately, letting the water pull and guide her to block firebombs and retaliate with whips and icy knives. She had never felt more in control of her bending.

"Retreat!" she yelled suddenly as a solution struck her. "Fall back! Retreat!" But as the prisoners around her faltered and backpedaled, running back towards Toph, she lunged forward into the empty strip between prisoners and guards. She planted her left foot firmly to the stones, and then, spinning around and letting her arms flow, she pulled all the water she could into one sweeping, whirling river. She was surrounded by a swirling vortex of water for a split second, but it was as though time had slowed down. Continuing to spin, she locked her elbows and put every bit of force she could muster into the water. And, like a flood, it rushed away from her, flinging the guards backwards and freezing them in a long, curved wall of ice.

As she let her arms fall, she stumbled, the power rush leaving her weak and dizzy. But strong hands caught her and didn't let her fall. One man held each of her arms. "What was that?" Sokka demanded from her left. "What were you thinking, jumping in front of us like that?"

Zuko, on her other side, was quieter. "That was incredible bending," he murmured as Sokka's interrogation subsided into a series of furious mutterings. She smiled at him, regaining her footing and shaking some of the dizziness out of her head.

"Did I freeze anyone who wasn't a soldier?" she asked anxiously as Zuko started leading her once again towards the escape tunnel.

"One or two, but some of our firebenders got them out. They're right behind us. Come on," he urged as she stumbled, "don't slow down. We're almost there."

They kept running, past the pipe still hissing steam high above them; past Toph, who gave a cheer as they approached and yelled, "That was amazing!" Into the tunnel she had created, surrounded by the last few prisoners. Only a few dozen paces in, she heard Sokka's yell echo through the tunnel and Toph's responsive cheer as she stomped the ground to seal the entrance into the dungeon with a resounding crash. Zuko stopped pulling her along, breathing hard beside her as they both slumped to the ground.

"We did it," he murmured, almost to himself. "We did it."