Title: The Moon's Shadow
Rating: T
Word Count: 777
Time/Setting: Post-war, less than a year after Zuko is crowned Fire Lord, in the Fire Nation.
Summary: Katara has reached her limit. For the sake of the world, she will do what others could not.

Part 1/2

When she crashes into the gray prison tower, her entire body is trembling with feverish pants that growl from the deepest bellows of her throat. She's been running, all the way from the fire kissed palace, the minute after the last intruder fell from a second attempted rebellion and assassination of the Avatar and the Fire Lord, of Aang and Zuko.

At this moment, Katara's eyes are shining with wild and the rawness of a knife twisting and twisting in an old wound again. As she stumbles from uncontrollable footsteps that are directed with anger and frustrated nails dragging along the inside halls of her skin, she freezes any guard that raises his voice to the wall and moves on, forward, forward, looking for one particular man.

It's past midnight, and rays of a full moon drip down the bars of the narrow passage way, dark and wet and engulfing and all that is going through her mind is—wrong night, wrong night.

She stops at the barred cell. Smacks her lips, and the animal like humming doesn't stop. The fallen Phoenix Lord does almost smiles, rising from his feet as she breaks the locks with one slice of jagged, sharp water. Before he is able to open his mouth, she raised one hand, her eyes so violently narrowed that it punches the air out of him. Ozai's body is being raised off the ground, color flushing from his cheeks and limbs melting numbly, stiffly. The energy of his blood is sitting on her fingertips.

Katara throws her arm down. Then again, again, and again. His body slams down on the cracked floor, bones screaming while she gritted her teeth against the hollow sound of flesh beating on stone. His own blood was pushing down against the insides of his skin, then dragging him back up in the air over again, lifting him up by strangled veins and muscles. He landed the fifth time against the splatter of puddles, her arm still and steady before her, holding the very thing that was keeping him alive with the cup of her palm facing upward. She shivered a little, because from her fingertips she could feel the blood sit, but she could also feel it all running outward, rushing and leaking from the open cut on his eyebrow, his ribs, his scraped limbs. All the red liquid was in her control, and she let some flow, let them taste it as it pooled around his face plastered to the ground and settle near her feet.

He was still alive. This was good, this was very good, because she wanted him to see her pierced eyes as she let the silence echo with her feet splashing in his ancient, monstrous blood. He needed to see her kneel before his face, look him in the eye, and let him realize that she knows he has secretly been sending the political revolts and plotting in this damned cage. This man needs to feel she is here for every pain, every death, every scar he has caused. She needs him to understand that she will do what everyone else could not.

Nothing is said, but she narrows her eyes deeper than an ocean and it rips her face in half all the way through, and she is crying silently, I will not let you ruin everything. Vengeance is not sweet—it is quick and cutting and she closes her fist as he opens his gold eyes wide for the last time.

Her hand feels empty, his body is sinking quietly, and she falls back into the red floor. Katara isn't sure how much time has passed before or after this man's heart collapsed with her bare hands, but she isheaving breaths that slice every organ inside of her with every exhale. Bringing her knees to her chest, she tries to suffocate the heated blade inside of her, tries to hold her breath all the way through her body so tightly that she doesn't even realize that voices have arrived and doors have crashed.

They say her name, she doesn't acknowledge them. She doesn't look up, because she knows that one airy, grey eyed voice, and she knows the look on this boy's face is one of confusion and disgust and falling out of love. She knows the touch on her shoulder is warm and scared, and her face buries into his scar as he picks her up. She cries knowing that this boy is the son of a man she murdered.

Her dress is stained, her hands are puncturing tight. She cries harder because there are no regrets and she can't let go.

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