Shell Shock

Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep.

Katara POV

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Lady

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She brushes my damp hair after my bath, as always. It is more to keep the daily ritual than to rid hair of tangles. My shorn hair is far to short to warrant tangles.

I should be wary of this girl, fire nation screams itself in her clothes and slanting yellow eyes. But my instincts scream back at me Gran Gran and I find I trust the earnestness I find in her face.

Our innocent chatterings turns to the state of the world and suddenly we are entrenched in deep discourse. I had heard from Zuko and now I hear much the same from her.

I ask about my people, I have yet to see any water tribe outside the small window of this igloo, not quite ready to venture out. She tells me the slaves are segregated from the main buildings on the outskirts of the encampment. They are kept in two huts, men separated from women. I see the obvious logic behind this. No watertribe children, no avatar.

"You are lucky" she tells me,"to have the Prince to protect you. He watched over you so carefully when you were not well. He must care deeply for you...

She hesitates.

...and you care for him?

My first instinct is an adamant No! but then I think of when my mothers murderer lay bled dry at my feet and vomit burned its way up my throat and I tried not to cry. I remember how he held my trembling blood soaked hands up to the rain and washed them clean. I remember the bolt of blue light, meant for me, scorching a gaping hole in his own chest. Then I think about finding him in the bath, the way the drops of water caressed his skin, the heat of that skin underneath my fingers, his darkening eyes. I find I cannot trust myself to answer.

I lick my lips, unsure. I do not know how I feel. I am afraid to know. I say nothing.

Her eyes smile with girlish excitement as if we are two confidents talking about our lovers. I can almost believe it myself. There is a kind of comfort in the sham of pretend.

I play along and ask her in return.

"Is there a special someone for you Jing. A valet perhaps or a solider?"

She smiles a secret smile.

"No... no solider... no one like that."

I know what such a smile means and I wonder.

But then the smile fades and her brow furrows and she worries her lip between her teeth.

I have been swept up in my own world that it seems odd that there are people outside it that have worries as I. I feel the rush of shame at my own selfishness, I never even noticed before, never thought to ask. What is wrong.

A useless question when so much of the world is just that. When I ask she just smiles again, this time a sad smile and a half shake of her head. She hugs herself around the middle, protectively. My eyes follow. I understand, if only a little. Not all troubles can be shared. It is left at that.

The prongs of the comb massage my scalp, the easy comfort of the familiar motion causes my body to relax further into the brush strokes. Ever since I escape from the coils of my mind everything appears brighter, fuller some how, and I gaze at everything as if it is the first time I have done so but avoid looking to long at my reflection off the ice. I am afraid to see myself and the ravaged remains of my hair.

Finishing, she lays the comb down and rises to leave. I catch her arm in my hand. The igloo feels far too cold and lonely for me to stand alone. I am conscious now of time and how slowly it moves, I cannot curl in on myself and sleep the day away. Not anymore.

She sits again beside me and we talk of nonsense, of nothings. Of home and and the faces that made it that. Of family. We talk and remember together and for a moment escape this reality for one past. I tell her about the time Sokka tried to get one fishhook out with another and ended up with two in his thumb. She laughs at this and I join. We laugh together. I can't remember the last time I laughed.

We laugh so hard that my eyes tear. Than those tears are real and pouring down my face and the laugh stills in my throat and sobs its way our. Sadness floods me. Brother.

She holds my hands, her face anxious.

"Do not cry my lady."

I wipe the tears from my eyes and attempt a smile. It feels wobbly and strained on my face. Foreign.

"Please, call me Katara" I say.

I am lady of nothing.

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ironically I imagined snow white and the old crone talking over apples about prince charmings as I wrote this.

mostly a pointless semi-fluff chapter between katara and jing besides some clues I threw in for chapters to come.

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Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed- bob dylan