Author's Note:

artsyelric: ah, trombe, i've been blonded! i mean, i always thought of myself as blonde, but i was like a light brown-dirty blonde). thanks to your lovely sister, i am now like... bright yellow blonde! wah!

Trombe: I can't even tell. And as for the reviewers, thanks for your constant support and eagerness to read the story. Makes it worthwhile to put out a chapter earlier then expected.

What I Don't Like About You

Chapter 25: Faces of the Dead

There was a mild stench in the air. A smell of decay.

Everyone stopped as they realized what they were looking at. Prisoners were shackled to the cave walls, manacles dangling from the stone haphazardly. At least eleven people in varying conditions were visible on the walls, which curved away so the firelight didn't reach it. The worst part was, they weren't all soldiers, or old men, or people who might be prisoners of war. They were everyday villagers, young boys, women, old folks. The idea of it was frighteningly real. One man, who had been wailing, glanced up at the arrival of the newcomers. "We're saved!" he rasped into the bright light.

Aang seemed to be having troubles taking in the sight, and Sokka's jaw was clenched tight. Zuko couldn't see Toph's face as her back was to him, but she pushed up her sleeves with determination and started towards some of the nearest prisoners, pulling her bracelet off as she did so. Whatever his friends were thinking, Zuko knew his own face must have a very displeased expression as well. "I didn't know spirits made prisons like this," Aang whispered, following cautiously after Toph. "Who brought you here?"

"Aang," Zuko whispered. "I don't think this was spirits."

"We need to see to these people." Sokka had gotten a grip of himself and started moving off to their left, shepherding Aang along side him.

The man who had spoke first groaned and slid to the ground as Toph managed to loosen his shackles. Zuko realized she'd made a key from her bracelet again, the same way she had back at Hama's, and was using it to pick the locks on the prisoner's bindings. Then, another depressing thought struck him. "The boy." The prisoners glanced at him, their haggard faces cringing in the light of his flame. "Has anyone seen a boy come in? He went missing two days ago."

"Yes," a woman beside him called. "There's a boy, a child! She brought him here yesterday!"

"Where?" Zuko demanded.

"In... there..." The woman's voice trailed off as she eyed the darkness around the corner frightfully.

Cautiously, Zuko moved around further to their right, brightening the fire in his hands again so he could see around the bend. As he approached, he began to notice a very rank smell.

He rounded the corner and held up his make shift torch, then stopped dead. The reason for the stench was suddenly abundantly clear.

This room was just as full of shackles as the first one, but all of them were filled, not with living people, who cried out and begged to be saved, but with emaciated bodies, some which blinked and moaned, others that hung limp in their chains, and still others that were already rotting, or being eaten away at by cave creatures.

Zuko felt the contents of his stomach threaten violently to resurface.

And then he saw it, the face of the boy. The child was standing on a table in the back corner so that his hands could reach the shackles, and he was much more alive and healthy looking than the rest of the room, much fresher. But his eyes were lifeless. All around him were the dead, and the dying, and the boy's dirty face was streaked with tear stains, his body limp in his bindings, and his eyes not even seeming to register Zuko's presence. He simply stared straight ahead, the torchlight glinting harshly in his vacant eyes.

Zuko considered himself a strong person, used to the horrors of the world. But this...

"What's in there?" Zuko flinched before he realized the voice was Aang's. The young Avatar was following the prince, his light coming around the bend. Zuko immediately dropped his flame, letting it wink out of existence, and turned to stop Aang before he could enter the room, holding his arms out wide to halt the boy's approach. Whatever else Aang had been through in his young life, Zuko knew this was one memory he didn't want the Avatar to have. "Zuko?" he asked, stopping in front of his firebending teacher.

"Don't go in there," Zuko warned.

"Why?" Sokka asked. "What's wrong? Are there more prisoners?" Behind Zuko, one gave a feeble cough.

"Trust me, Aang," Zuko cautioned. "You don't want to go in there."

Aang must have seen something in Zuko's eyes, because he swallowed and nodded, grabbing Sokka before the Water Tribe boy could protest. Across the front room, Zuko could see Toph's eyes. He could block Aang from seeing into that room, but somehow he knew Toph already had. Her blind gaze was heavy. "Come on," Aang told Sokka. "Don't we have a mystery to solve?"

"Zuko!" Toph called, tossing something across the dimly lit hall. "Here." He snagged it out of the air and glanced down. It was the key she had fashioned from her bracelet. "Can you handle that?"

"Is it even going to work on all of them?" he asked, turning to face the darkness behind him again.

"Hey they're not really complicated locks. It should work on all of them."

Even ready for it, he felt his hand tremble as he held the key too tightly in his hand. The light from his newly lit flame spread across the room, and he took a deep, putrid breath before beginning. The first task to freeing these people would be determining who was still alive. As he released each handcuff and checked the limp prisoner's pulses for life, he tried to focus on what Sokka and Aang were saying in the other room, rather than the sickening task before him.

"So tell us who did this to you," Sokka was prompting. "And you better not say it was the moon spirit!"

"It was no spirit," a woman denied.

"It was a witch!" the first man declared.

"A witch?" Sokka demanded. "What do you mean?"

"She seems like a normal old woman," the voice of the lady who had directed him to the back room explained. The clanking of chains implied Toph was freeing her with metal bending. "But she controls people. Like a dark… puppet master."

The word hung threateningly in the air for a moment before it clicked solidly in all of their minds. "Hama," Sokka growled.

"Yes!" a new man's voice called weakly. "The inn keeper!"

"I knew there was something creepy about her!" Sokka condemned.

Zuko's mind reeled. He had suspected the old woman too, but… To think, the woman who had fed them, who had shared their table, had done this? He started to feel sick again, suppressing his boiling rage simultaneously.

But then, Aang said something that completely sobered him. "Katara!"

"Ah!" Sokka wailed. "She's supposed to be with Hama right now!"

The chill that came over the prince had nothing to do with the cave around him. He dropped the corpse he was checking and stumbled towards the turn. As he did, his toe caught on a rock, hidden in the shadows, and he grunted as he hit the ground. He glanced up towards the bend. Around it he could hear Aang's voice. "We have to stop Hama!"

"Go!" Toph insisted quickly as the prince stumbled to his feet. "Zuko and I can get these people out of here. We'll use earthbending to get back, and you two go!"

"Forget that," Aang denied, and Zuko heard fire flare around the Avatar. "I'm gonna blow all that gas back up out of this cave. We're running, Sokka. Let's go!"

Zuko bumped into the far wall as he came around the curve, but Aang and Sokka's torches were already fading back up the cave. His eyes narrowing, he made to give chase. But before he had taken more than a few steps, a small, strong hand closed on his wrist, stopping him. "Where are you going?" Toph's voice demanded.

"Katara needs help!" Zuko roared, wondering why she didn't understand.

"So do these people!" Toph pointed out with equal fever, glaring into the prince's eyes. "Aang's looking after her," she stated in a book-no-nonsense tone. "Now I need your help here."

Zuko's chest heaved, but the worst part was that he knew she was right. Hadn't he been the one just moments ago who tried to stop Aang and the rest from entering the back room? Besides, if she was in trouble, it was Aang Katara wanted. The realization came like a blow from a dull blade.

He couldn't go to her.

Never the one to back away from a fight, Toph was still staring him down, but she seemed to sense that he had broken, and she released his hand. "I want a piece of that woman too," she admitted in a dangerous tone. "So let's take care of these people as quickly as possible." She glanced around the room. "Is anyone in fit enough condition to make it back to the village? We're going to need help."

"I'll go," the vociferous woman spoke up. "But my husband, he has a hurt leg."

Zuko sucked up the war he was loosing inside himself and turned back to the woman, trying to sound more reassuring than he felt. "We'll take care of him," he promised.

"This room is all unshackled," Toph declared. "Can you finish the back room while I walk her out?"

Zuko nodded, and the earthbender grabbed the volunteer woman's hand, pulling her out the door at a quick pace. The prince turned back to the cave, now alone with the prisoners. "Anyone healthy enough to walk, come and help me in the back room. There are people there who need help."

The prisoners nodded, the more bedraggled of them moving aside so the stronger ones could help. Zuko passed some of the weaker prisoner he'd loosed to the three who'd offered assistance, then began releasing the people who were still lucky to be able to draw breath. Every starving face looked like Katara's, and worry for her gnawed at the pit of his stomach worse even than the smell of the dead. Only when he was on the final living man did he realize he was saving the boy for last, as if he was afraid that when he approached, he would find the little boy as dead as the rotting corpses he was trying to ignore.

"My wife," the last man groaned as Zuko released him. "Help her."

The prince spared a glance to the woman chained beside him. "She'd dead, old man," he declared. "Let's get you out of here."

"No!" the gray haired man refused, pushing himself to his knees on shaking limbs. "She's still alive. She was just talking to me moments ago!"

Zuko eyed the pasty body he was indicating with doubt. No breath stirred in her chest. "She's not breathing."

"Check again," the man insisted, grabbing Zuko's wrist. The prince turned down on him, opening his mouth with a pained expression. "Check her again!"

Deciding it was easier to do as the desperate man wished then spend time arguing with him, Zuko moved back over to the wife. How would I feel if this was Katara hanging here? Then another thought hit him. Is this what Mai looks like right now? Back in the Boiling Rock?

Gritting his teeth, he suddenly felt his heart go out to the prisoner, and he reached out to touch the woman. He almost jumped back in shock when she gave a trembling breath and coughed, before relapsing again into an almost lifeless state. "You see?" the man cried. "You see! She's still alive… My Maiko."

The similarity of their names seemed to break Zuko's trance. This isn't Mai, he told himself. Get a grip on yourself Zuko, and this isn't Katara. Katara is safe… with Aang.

With a sour sense of purpose, he grabbed the woman's cuffs and fitted the key into them, jamming it into the lock until he could force it to turn. It clicked, and he lifted the woman up, passing her gently out to a man in the front room as another prisoner helped the old man.

There was only one living person left, and Zuko hoped so badly that child was still alive. He took a deep breath, and then went straight for the boy. As he stepped to the back of the room, the dead bodies curving around the walls seemed to press in on him, and he lifted a hand quickly to the boy's mouth. A huge sigh escaped him as he felt breath on the back of his hand. Of course he's alive, Zuko reassured himself. He was just captured less than two days ago... But it was still a heavy relief. Working Toph's key into the manacles, he felt the terrible eeriness of the bodies around him goading him to move faster. As he struggled to loose the lock, the child's eyes suddenly refocused, and almost immediately he began to scream.

"Stop," Zuko told him. "Stop yelling! I'm here to save you now, so stop screaming."

But the boy continued to shout hysterically, calling for his parents, fresh tears rolling down his face. Zuko groaned and glanced behind him. All three of the people helping him had left, dragging the living out of the room, and he was alone with the boy, and the dead. But at least no one was there to see him.

Tearing the metal bindings off the minute the lock clicked, he grabbed the child, perhaps harsher than needed, and buried the boy's face in his shirt. "Don't look," he told the weeping child. "Don't look at anything but me. Your father sent me to find you. You're safe now."

The boy hiccuped. "You know my dad?" he asked.

"I do," Zuko nodded. "He's worried about you, and wants you to come home with me." As he talked, he moved towards the exit, edging his way back out into the light. "Just hold on to me, and everything will be all right. I promise." The boy nodded as Zuko rounded the bend and let darkness fall on the room behind him, abandoning forever those he was too late to save.

Toph was just returning from the cave at a run out of the darkness. "Help should be arriving soon," she stated aloud, before turning to Zuko. "I took that lady all the way to the end of the tunnels, so she's headed back to town all ready. And it seems like that gust of air Aang sent out earlier took care of most of the gas in the cave too. I plugged up the other tunnel just in case."

He nodded, feeling a level head returning to him now that he was surrounded by the living, instead of corpses. "We should try and get these people at least out of the cave first, just in case. We wouldn't want someone from the village coming and causing an explosion. We at least know to smell for the gas."

"My thoughts exactly."

Zuko glanced around. There had been twelve people chained in the front room, four, maybe five, of which looked like they might be able to make it on their own. Minus the woman they had sent ahead, that left six invalids from the front room, and six more Zuko had pulled from the back, who were in absolutely no condition to walk, plus the boy. "Any ideas how?" he asked, surveying the group.

"I can carry… ten, tops." Zuko raised an eyebrow at her, but the blind girl couldn't see it. "That leaves seven."

"How many of you can walk?" Zuko asked, and the three who had been helping him raised his hands. "All right, you three, help those two," he directed, gesturing at two of the stronger looking prisoners. "Can you manage?"

"I think so," the old man who had spoken first decided as they paired off and formed into two shaky groups. "How far?"

"At least the mouth of the cave," Zuko replied, lighting and extra torch and handing it to the odd man out. "Be ready to put that out immediately if I tell you too." The man took it, and nodded solemnly.

"My wife," the sick man from the back room wheezed. "She's not well. You must help her."

"We know, old man," Toph insisted, freeing herself of his hands as she moved to the wall of the room. "Zuko, can you handle her?"

He nodded, and handed the boy to the torch barer as well. The child started to cry, but the man seemed to recognize him and spoke softly. Eventually, the boy calmed, releasing his death grip on Zuko's shirt, and the prince moved over to lift the frail older woman in his arms. He hoped she survived the trip, but was sure her husband was right. She had more of a chance being carried by him then whatever massive move Toph had planned for the rest of the invalids.

As if his thought had cued it, there was a huge rumble and some of the people cried out in surprise as a large slab of rock detached itself from the wall. "Look at that!" "The wall just came apart." "I think it's that girl!" "How did she do it?"

"What are you doing?" Zuko hissed at Toph through his teeth.

"Making a litter," she replied. "It's the only way to get everyone out."

But the less delirious people seemed to have caught on. "She's an earthbender!" the old man who's wife Zuko still held accused.

Echoes repeated him around the cave as people whispered to each other. "What's an earthbender doing here?" a woman demanded.

"Saving your hides," Toph growled, detaching a second slab. "I'm from the colonies, okay?"

"Why would you save us?" the man who'd been screaming for help called throatily. "We're your enemies! What more could you do to us?"

Zuko felt his teeth grind. "Enough!" he shouted, letting his firebending send flames dancing around the cave roof. The display might have been over the top, but they needed to be reminded that he was a firebender like them too. Plus, it felt kind of good to steam off right then... "What does it matter if she's an earthbender? The only way we ever would have found you was because she is. You should be bending over and thanking her for your lives! If you distrust her so much, then stay here and rot like the rest of your friends, for all I care. But I'm getting out of here, and I'm taking everyone I can with me. So if you want to live, get on the stone carriers."

The people stared at him for a moment, then hustled to do as he'd directed. "That was a foolish thing to do," he chided the earthbender. "What if Azula hears about this? A blind, earthbending girl? Saving people?"

"Then we'll just have to hope she doesn't," Toph stated.

"You really think that'll be enough?"

She shrugged. "What else could I do? Besides, you seemed to handle them well enough."

"They're Fire Nation," Zuko explained. "They just needed clear direction and a good dose of anti-prejudice."

"Well," Toph smiled. "I think you gave them that." She glanced at the litter. "That's all I can take. There's still gonna be one odd man out."

Zuko hefted the woman in his arms and surveyed the people on the stone carriers. One was the husband of the woman who'd run off to town. He looked in decent condition other than his leg, which was bent awkwardly and seemed to be bruising. Zuko walked over to him. "Do you think you can hold on if I carry you on my back?" he asked. "I have to hold this woman with my arms."

The man glanced around at the state of his fellow prisoners, and nodded. "I'll try."

As Zuko hefted the second prisoner onto his shoulders the man clung on, and he struggled to his feet. He didn't think he could have held them both if either one hadn't been so emaciated. "You ready?" he asked Toph, and she raised the carriers off the ground a few inches with a grunt. "You five?" he asked the walking prisoners, and they nodded, still eying the small girl awkwardly. "Let's go."

"Bloodbending."

The word hung in the air, cold, and dark as the night.

Katara didn't want Hama to continue. She didn't care for this technique, she knew that all ready. Her mind screamed for her to leave now, to just turn and run from the clearing, but the rational part of her could see no reason to, yet. All the woman had done was talk. Though somehow she knew that the minute that word had been uttered, it had become something so much more than talk.

"Controlling the water in another body," Hama explained, her voice rasping and dangerous. "Enforcing your own will over theirs. This was the technique that freed me from my cell.

"Once I had mastered the prison rats," she revealed. "I was ready for the men." Katara swallowed hard, trying to picture something she had never imagined before. Visualizing something so foregin as bloodbending seemed as difficult as discribing stars to Toph. "And during the next full moon… I walked free, for the first time in decades, my cell unlocked by the very guards assigned to keep me in." Though Katara could not fully envision it, Hama seemed to be revealing in the memory. Her hands dropped back to her sides as she half turned back towards Katara. "Once you perfect this technique, you can control anything, or any one."

"But… to reach inside someone and control them?" She shuddered. "I'd never want to do that."

"Come now," Hama coxed. "Has there never been a time, ever in your life, where you wished you could control someone else? Think of the possibilities! The power."

Katara realized she was doing a bad job of refusing. "I… I don't know if I want that kind of power."

But Hama seemed unwilling to take no for an answer. "The choice is not yours; the power exists! And it is your duty to use the gifts you've been given to win this war."

"No," she denied. "There must be another way."

"Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture. Your mother! Think of her, of what she must have suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation, before you refuse."

"I know," Katara whispered. "I think of her every day."

"Then you should understand what I'm talking about!" Katara was beginning to get the sense again that there was more to what Hama was telling her than was on the surface. "We are the last waterbenders of the Southern Tribe," the old woman continued, the note of insanity in her voice again. "We have to fight these people whenever we can, wherever they are, with any means necessary."

And suddenly the second meaning behind her words became clear. Sokka's mystery! "It's you," she realized. "You're the one making people disappear during the full moons! It all fits…"

Hama's jaw set angrily. "They threw me in prison to rot," she accused, "along with my brothers and sisters. They deserve the same!"

"No…" This was spinning out of Katara's control far too fast; she could hardly believe the angry old woman before her was the same kind, caring inn keeper who had taken them in and made them dinner.

"You must carry on my work. There are so many more who need to be punished! Think of all the good you could do! Katara, you must become a bloodbender!"

"I won't!" she declared firmly. "I won't use bloodbending, and I won't allow you to keep terrorizing this town!"

"A town of firebenders!" Hama cried.

"A town of people!" Katara shot back. "People just like anyone else, Hama! You've become what you hated most; you've become no better than those raiders! It's you who needs to be stopped!" Her finger flew up to point angrily at the other woman across the clearing.

A startled cry escaped from her lips as her hand jerked uncontrollably to her left first, and then swung back hard to her right, dragging her body violently after it. It twisted behind her and she spun, grabbing it with her left hand and struggling against the force manipulating it. But then the rest of her body fell pray to the bloodbender as well. "You should have learned the technique before you turned against me!" Hama reproached, forcing Katara's body to become as stiff as a board. "It's impossible to fight your way out of my grip. No one has even done it before! I control every muscle, every vein in your body."

Katara cried out as she was dragged back and forth across the clearing, snapping around like a puppet on loose strings. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped, and Hama began to move her hands downward in a commanding manner. Katara felt her body begin to bend submissively; felt Hama's will overpowering her own. Every fiber of her body was falling pray to the strange bending, and this last, domineering move was the most painful of them all. A battle of pure will power. And Katara was loosing.

"Stop!" she cried, as she lowered towards the ground. "Please…"

But Hama just laughed wickedly at the tears that rolled down Katara's face.

All fight left her, and the younger woman slumped to the ground, bowing in a humiliating fashion to the elder, as the laughter still cackled through the trees. But, even through her own defeat and the sense of overwhelming control, Katara realized she could still feel it. The moon.

Light from the silver orb shone down on her, and she could feel it's pull in her blood, stronger than Hama's, if she just wanted it.

Her hands balled angrily into fists. She meant the old woman no ill will, and pitied her beyond belief, but she would not allow this to continue. She would not be manipulated; she could not be controlled! And she would not allow Hama to do this to anyone else, ever again!

Tears dripped off her face, but as her fists closed, she focused not on the terror of Hama's power, but on the strength of the moon within her. Water gushed from the grass around her. She would use the old woman's techniques against her. Her gaze rose back up to Hama's as the inn keeper continued to hold her on the ground, humbling her utterly with the strength of bloodbending.

But now Katara could ignore it. The force of Hama will was nothing compared to the pull of the moon. The inn keeper bent against her, but Katara ignored the pull, enforcing her own command over her body, and rose to her feet, pulling the water she had gathered from the grass with her. "You're not the only one who draws power from the moon," she condemned. "My bending is more powerful than yours, Hama."

"That is impossible!" the woman roared. "No one has ever escaped that submissive hold!"

"Then you've never used it on another waterbender." Katara's tone was cold and powerful as she faced the older bender. Her eyes blazed. "Your technique is useless on me!"

Water leapt up around her, dancing at her command, her power doubled by the moon, and she cast it at the old woman. Hama caught the wave and redirected it, her hands twirling over her head, and the water shot back towards Katara, who pivoted, absorbing the force of it and whipping it around her.

But as she turned back to send it towards Hama again, she saw the woman had pulled water straight out of two more trees, causing them to explode, and now a triple blast twirled together in midair, aiming straight for the defending waterbender. But Katara already knew now that her will, her strength, was greater than Hama's, and as she watched the water approach, she felt no fear.

She took a breath, and then reached out, easily finding the exact center of the attack, and then smashed it back. The water hit her hand like a wall, and exploded in a huge arch away from her, rebounding on its master. Hama was left staring in awe at the pure strength of Katara's resolve.

But Katara didn't waste a heartbeat. While the older woman gaped, she leapt forward, bringing her arms together and smashing two more streams of water in at Hama from either side. The puppetmaster's body careened out of control, completely thrashed between the opposing streams of water, and she spun through the air before crashing into the ground.

Katara breathed heavily as the woman coughed and pushed up on her arms. "It's over, Hama," she proclaimed.

"Katara!"

Her eyes darted up behind the other bender to where she now saw Aang and Sokka moving out of the forest at a run. "We know what you've been doing Hama," Sokka declared, waving an arm accusingly.

"Give up," Aang added, taking a bending stance. "You're outnumbered."

"You solved it!" Katara started to call, glad of her brother's and Aang's arrival, but then something else distracted her.

Katara watched in horror as Hama's face, which had previously held the angry look of someone defeated, twisted again. The boys were behind her, so they didn't see the expression of insanity that came over the aged features. "No!" she shouted, pushing to her feet. "You've outnumbered yourselves."

"Don't!" Katara begged.

But it was too late. The boy's bodies went stiff, and she knew Hama was bloodbending again.