Without Saying Goodbye I
He's relieved, in a way, once he and Sokka are airborne in the war balloon, en route for their "hunting trip."
These past few days, life in the temple has felt less like living and more like being caged. He wakes with the dawn, meditates, practices firebending with the Avatar, heats water for their breakfast of rice and curry, and wrestles with the sting of the waterbender's coldness. To the Avatar, she is nothing but warm days and dappled shade. You're doing so well, Aang. I'm so proud of you, Aang. Make sure you finish your breakfast Aang. He's not jealous per se. Not in the way you'd expect.
It's her smiles he's wounded by, the ones she bestows on the boy and (occasionally, coupled with an eye roll) her brother.
It mixes his insides up. He's angry now, more than he's been since he was first banished. His temper bubbles to the tune of Azula's smug accusation and the girl he can't seem to say the right thing to.
Yes, he's relieved. But also…
He thinks of the peaceful expression he'd spied on Katara's sleeping face as he and Sokka snuck out. He thinks of that a lot over the next few days. But most of all he thinks about how the Fire Nation would never accept her with a crown in her hair.
Relief is not something he has the luxury for right now.
Without Saying Goodbye II
The day Zuko disappears on a hunting trip with her brother, Katara makes her excuses and spends the day by the forest streams to the south. She cannot be expected to deal with their absence —that feels all too close to abandonment— and cage the monstrousness tangling inside of her. Hama's legacy.
What about me? A pitiful and furious voice asks. What if I would have liked to go hunting?
The darkness inside of her, the one thirsting for the power of bloodbending, thrills and preens. It senses its opportunity in her moment of weakness. She becomes aware of squirrel-rats in the trees above her. Isn't that how Hama learned? The rats that scurried across the floor of my cage were nothing more than skins filled with liquid.
It doesn't feel like a choice anymore.
She cries as she reaches out with those spidery bending forms, sobs as she finds the liquid highways in the small animals, weeps when Hama is wrong and Katara's strength and skill means she doesn't need a full moon to bring the little creatures scurrying down their tree.
There's something… cathartic in it. The blood song. The giving in. The jerk of her fingers as she makes them circle, scurry, dance.
She breathes for the first time in days.
The shame is still there, though, despite the reprieve of peace. Always the shame.
RHI trivia #14: Did everyone catch that bloodbending is a metaphor for feminine empowerment and how demonised it can be? Yes? Good? Alright, on with the show!
