Edited 12/24/20. I recommend rereading! The changes are small but important, as I found an opportunity to introduce an important plot thread much earlier than I initially planned.
Chapter was renamed from "Reluctance" to "Blessing" in accordance with those themes.
Hama's words were cold comfort, and they only got colder when Katara watched them drag Bao's body from the infirmary and across the main compound like so much trash only hours later. His back left streaks of pus and old blood on the metal floor.
Chen had grabbed her hand when they first heard that someone had succumbed to their wounds in the infirmary again, but her fingers went lax as soon as she saw Bao's face. Katara knew without looking that her eyes were as glazed over as the corpse's, as they always got when she retreated inside herself. Katara hugged her, fruitlessly seeking comfort, but she was like a doll in her arms, still and quiet.
Bao would never leave me alone like this, Katara thought. He would face things head on. The only reason he's leaving now is because I let him die.
True though they might be, her thoughts were no comfort.
The temperature around her dropped, further and further until her breath was visible and Chen was shivering in her arms, eyes still glazed. Katara could have soothed his burns like this, could have given him one small kindness in the hours before his death.
Instead, she'd turned her back on someone who needed her.
Katara let the tears come. There was no one she feared enough to hide them from, down here. They felt icy where they soaked into Chen's shirt.
There was shifting around her, but she paid it no mind for a few long minutes, until someone whispered, "Agni, is it this cold in the South?"
"Stop whining, brainless, this is nothing compared to the pole," someone else hissed. "You gonna let a little girl show you up under the arena as well as in it?"
Chen's jolt was what finally roused her. Her friend was shrinking into her chest, using her body as a shield between herself and the group of Firebenders that now surrounded them.
The Firebenders kept their distance from the Earthbenders (and especially Katara) everywhere in the compound, invisible country lines enforced even if they were all prisoners here. They kept to one side of the main room even when sleeping, and though Katara had never been allowed to take her meals in the cafeteria she suspected it was the same way there.
Even so, she recognized the faces of the men and women around her, though she didn't know their names. All of them had been there at least as long as she had, veterans of the arena. All of them had watched her be taken away to the palace, had seen what a few weeks there had done to her written plain in her gaunt face and new burns, before Hama had the chance to turn them into scars.
It was cold enough around her that those closest to her were breathing out steam, but she realized, with mounting confusion, that many of the Firebenders were breathing thin white smoke, as if to hide it. Around the ring of Firebenders, she could hear the veteran Earthbenders, the ones Bao had often spoken with (and often been whipped alongside) talking and arguing loudly.
They were hiding her from the guards, while the others distracted them.
"Why?" Katara asked, so quiet that she could barely hear herself.
Many stole glances at her at that, but the only one who met her gaze was someone she did recognize. Chit Sang, the top Firebender in the arena, whose sole obstacle to freedom was that Hama still lived. Katara stepped back, and only her desire to protect Chen, still cowering behind her, was what kept her from fleeing.
"I don't want to hurt you, kid," he said, eyes sad. "We all know what the Puppetmaster did to Tyro for even trying."
"You're lying," Katara accused. She could practically hear Hama urging her to escape, to leave Chen behind. "You're a Firebender. You're just like the rest of them."
"Don't make much difference what I am, down here," he refuted. "My girlfriend was a Firebender, and it didn't stop the guards from killin' her. My best buddy was a nonbender, and a Firebender was the one who killed him in a duel. A guard still whipped me when I wouldn't bow to him. They tell you that we're all countrymen when you get here, that we're better than you, but we all been here long enough to know that don't matter when you're a prisoner."
All around her, his grim-faced Firebender compatriots nodded in agreement. A few of the closest Earthbenders knocked on the metal floor in agreement, though quietly.
"It matters when you're an ice rat," Katara spat. They shifted their weight and muttered at that, but no one refuted her. Chen squeezed her shoulder with a quivering hand.
Chit Sang sighed. "We all got it rough, though some more than others. And… kids don't last long, in the arena. Least we can do is make sure you have a fighting chance when you get there. So calm down before the guards notice the frost."
Katara hesitated, then nodded, surprised that she had been able to cool the air and frost the ground without trying. She coaxed it to melt, and the temperature slowly rose as she did.
The bunched group of benders dispersed and quieted. Many of the newer Firebenders were glaring at her, but no one ratted her out to the guards.
The few nonbenders, all of Fire Nation stock, didn't look at her at all. It was rare for one of them to last long enough to become a veteran. Katara had been there longer than almost all of them. Being a Waterbender in the Freedom Duels was a raw deal, but they, she thought for the first time, didn't have it a lot better.
They waited until the full moon to send Katara back to the arena. Hama had been locked up since the previous morning, the guards watching her apprentice like hawks in case she spontaneously decided to start bending blood.
The guards came for her after letting her eat and bathe in an isolated cell. This was her second-ever bath since she was first captured, and that was how Katara knew they were making her fight again. She usually made due with a bucket and a washcloth, while the non-Waterbenders went to the showers. She thought some of the more problematic or bloodthirsty inmates, who these cells normally housed, might be trying to leer at her, but Hama had ensured that only the female guards were allowed to stand sentry. She could feel their eyes on her now, ready to burn her if she decided to use the water for anything other than bathing.
She rated more than just one, now. Katara bent it from her shorn hair instead of drying off normally, just to watch them flinch. They wanted her clean and presentable for the audience, but how could she be, with her hair gone? Her mother always told her how beautiful it was, that hair was a tribesman's pride. But the Fire Nation had stolen Katara's hair, and her mother's beautiful face, and so much more. The bath water cooled significantly around her as she struggled not to give the guards a real reason to fear her.
She took her breakfast in the same cell, wolfing it down without any nausea. She'd vomited, once, after her first kill, but not after her second. Food was more important than guilt.
They led her back to the massive metal doors, the outside of which Chen had scratched at till she lost a fingernail in that first (and only) duel she'd been part of. They loom even larger, now that she's entering the arena alone. Everyone who'd fought that day was dead, besides her and Chen, and an important part of Chen hadn't made it through unscathed. The space around her feels impossibly empty; the prison guards watch her from a distance, unwilling to get too close.
It's almost a relief, when the doors groan open, and bright sunlight stabs into her eyes. The crowd in the stands is already yelling, almost as loud as they had for Hama. Katara hates them, she hates them, she hates them.
There are boos and groans of disappointment when the doors at the other end open, and she has to squint to see the wiry man she's about to fight to the death. The source of the booing appears to be the weapons rack at his end of the arena; he's a nonbender, and the crowd wants someone who can pose a better challenge.
Were they giving her an easy match, because of the injuries sustained at the palace? As far as they know, she's still in poor condition to fight.
"She'll eat him alive!" Katara hears someone heckle, and thinks she might recognize the palace servant that had fished her out of the pond after Azula threw her in when she cranes her head towards the stands. The woman gasps when their eyes meet, and starts waving and cheering enthusiastically. The people sitting around her follow her lead, shouting and grinning and gesturing down at Katara like she's a dancing platypus bear.
Over on the other side, the man is working the stands a lot better than she can. His hand hovers over each weapon in turn, cupping a hand by his ear as people scream for which one they want him to use. Katara thinks her sifu would call him entertaining, with a disdainful curl of her lip. She thinks the Fire Nation would agree.
Katara doesn't know how to showboat. She doesn't want to showboat. She doesn't want these people to cheer for her.
The crowd still roars in approval when the water from the troughs at either side of the door rises in massive waves to cloak her. They've given her more than they gave Hama; they know she's not anywhere near as dangerous as her master, even if they arm her better.
Her opponent cocks his head to watch her, and even though he's playing expertly to the crowd his eyes are cold and hard. She wonders if he'd been a performer, before he was a prisoner. He pivots on his heel, settling into an unfamiliar stance, and the crowd quiets when they realize he won't be using a weapon. He's going to fight her bare-handed.
Katara is glad of it. She can give him the mercy of a quick death. She doesn't have to fear him. She doesn't need that growing dread in the pit of her stomach, the shaking in her limbs, the burning in her eyes. Even so, it doesn't go away.
Katara waits, reluctant to make the first move in a way she never is against a Firebender, and the man advances quickly across the sand. She sends a wave to knock him back, but he flips over it and keeps coming. Every tendril she tries to hit him with, he dodges under or leaps over. Every time she tries to freeze him, he just barely evades, and another chunk of ice drops to the sand.
He's trying to get me to lose most of my water, Katara realizes, and it's working. The wetter the sand gets, the more firm his footing is, and his acrobatics get more dramatic. Some of the crowd is booing, urging him to just hit her already, but many more clap and cheer for every flashy flip and handspring. Katara feels slow and clumsy in comparison, water splattering into the sand with every failed attempt to hit him. He's too fast for her to reform it, darting around her and keeping her on the defensive.
Within minutes her waves and jets of water have shrank to mere tendrils, and he can finally get close enough to strike her. Katara flinches away, expecting a punch or a kick, but only the first two knuckles of his index and middle fingers land hard on her elbow. Her arm goes numb below that point, flopping uselessly, and more than half of her remaining water splashes to the ground.
Katara screams, high and sharp, and stumbles back, lashing out with a sloppy water whip that almost falls apart with only one arm to guide it. It finally connects, sending him crashing back, and Katara takes a second to breathe as she tries and fails to shake her arm awake. He ruined her arm, made it useless, stole her bending—
Many are cheering for him, but just as many are silent with the realization that she's fighting a chi blocker. Katara feels sick at the wrongness, the violation, of what he did to her. He stole her bending—he might as well have ripped out her soul.
No, not all of it, she still has one arm, she can do this. With a glob of water barely bigger than what would fit in two canteens, but she can do this. She has to do this. She'll die, otherwise.
Then he's rushing in again, ducking the wild swipe of her icicle-encased fingers and hitting her in the shoulder before she can flinch back. Her arm goes limp and falls to her side, and she might be able to keep using her claws because they're still frozen but she can't move her arms—
She crumples when he wrestles her to the ground with his full weight, because he's a grown man and she's ten. (Maybe eleven? She doesn't know how the Fire Nation calendar works. She'd like to think she lived past ten.) He puts his foot on her back so she can't run, because her legs still work, but a Waterbender without use of her arms is no Waterbender at all. She elbows his ankle hard enough to make him grunt, because she still has a working shoulder, but he just stomps down hard until she can barely breathe and something inside her snaps, her face smashed into the damp sand and her front soaked through. She's a Waterbender who's about to die soaking wet, what a joke.
He leaves her in the muck for a moment, no doubt to get a weapon to kill her, quick and easy. At least he isn't going to use his hands. Katara desperately tries to get her feet under her, to flee, but her ribs are screaming and all she can manage is to roll over onto her back before he's standing above her with a wickedly curved karambit.
"Sorry, kid," he mutters, soft enough that only she can hear, and kneels behind her. He yanks her hair to make her bare her throat. "I'll make it quick, okay? Nice and easy."
Katara coughs or sobs or both. She doesn't know. She doesn't want to die with the crowd's jeering in her ears. She doesn't want to die before her hair grows back. She doesn't want to die without thanking Chit Sang for being nice to her.
She doesn't want to die.
Hama wouldn't. She'd never be stupid enough to lose all her water. Azula wouldn't. She'd kick flames at him for daring to touch her.
Katara thinks of tea soaking into the rug, of Azula's searing flames. She musters all her will and kicks.
Heat bursts between them, the man screeching in pain as a geyser rises from the sand. The knife flails and hits her collarbone instead of her throat. Katara throws herself to the side, heedless of her blistering back, and kicks backwards blindly, again and again, hearing him scream and gurgle as he's doused with boiling spouts of water. By the time he's quiet, the damp sand beneath her is steaming.
Katara rolls, biting back a shriek as her shoulders, which caught a good portion of that first geyser, touch the sand. She looks around wildly, half-expecting a sneak attack, but he's just lying face down on the ground. His position makes her breath catch. She'd found her aana lying just like that, on the day of the black snow.
What she could see of his skin was bright red, and steam was still billowing from his flesh. He smelled like stew without seasoning, burnt skin and boiled meat.
She burned him she burned him she burned him just like the monster did to her mother—
Everything in the arena around her freezes. Her hair stiffens into icicles and her lashes freeze together. The air is as cold as it is in her homeland, the clouds of steam drifting down as snow. Her back is still hot, already beginning to melt the layer of frost on her skin.
The crowd was cheering, again. Chanting something. Many were on their feet, fists in the air. Some people were even shooting out celebratory sparks. She saw a few catch snowflakes on their tongues.
She rushes to the chi blocker's side and falls to her knees, arms still limp and useless at her sides. She needs to heal him, needs to fix what she did to him, but she can't help him without the use of her hands.
Hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back, feeling like sandpaper against the burns, and Katara wails, "No, let me go, I need to save him, please—"
The last thing she sees before getting forced onto a stretcher and carried out of the arena was Princess Azula, leaning over the edge of the royal box, her smile sharp and her eyes blazing.
It was customary, when two or more people survived a group battle together, to have them fight each other. It was the smart thing to do—it wasn't wise to encourage the prisoners to cooperate with each other, and even the most popular dueling groups and duos would inevitably be pitched against each other once they achieved a certain level of notoriety with the audience. There was nothing the Fire Nation loved more than a good melodrama, save perhaps a good conquest. They tended to be fairly evenly matched, too, which made for the best fights.
But even the guards, and by extension the director of the arena, didn't think the crowd wanted to see the newest vicious Waterbender kill another, much weaker child. Southern Waterbenders were naturally warlike and savage, much like their nonbending soldiers. It had taken a hundred years to vanquish them, after all, whereas the Air Nomad Army was gloriously defeated in one day.
The director was a shrewd businesswoman. She had turned the Freedom Duels from an archaic, seldom-practiced tradition to a thriving enterprise that regularly drew crowds in the hundreds, even thousands. She built cults of personality around the most popular contenders, regularly hired advertisers for popular plays and puppet shows to make posters illustrating high-profile duels, sold woodcuts of particularly memorable matches, wrote dramatic recounts in a newsletter for fans who weren't in the Caldera or couldn't afford tickets, made a small fortune from merchandise of various fighters. (The Puppetmaster was very helpful in ensuring none of the popular fighters survived to sue her for their fair share.) She had scraped and clawed her way to the top, to the point that the royal family itself had their own box and Princess Azula spectated regularly. She was one of the richest women in the city.
Her foolish daughter had somehow gotten pregnant with septuplets and lived to tell the tale, so the least the director could do was leave all of them a comfortable sum. She would leave the arena itself to her favorite, but even she couldn't always tell the girl apart from the rest. The one that managed to befriend the Fire Princess at a match had a good head on her shoulders. Which one was she?
In any case, her favorite granddaughter (whose name was still escaping her—why on earth had her foolish daughter decided to call all of her granddaughters Ty-something, it was hard enough to keep track of them as it was) had sent her a very interesting letter from the palace. She might be a bit of an airhead, but the director had high hopes for her future career in entertainment. She certainly knew what would sell seats, if nothing else.
There were few shows worth watching that didn't involve royalty in some capacity. A warrior royal was even better, considering the trends Princess Azula was already setting amongst the nobility. And the captured ice rat was already demonstrating a knack for showmanship. Spitting her own blood into the sacred flame itself… no wonder the Fire Lord had sent her a missive demanding that the girl have the odds stacked against her in every duel, though discreetly enough that the crowd wouldn't riot if they felt they felt they didn't get their money's worth. (Tickets to Waterbending duels were at a premium.)
The director could hardly believe she'd killed a chi blocker, and with moves clearly adapted from Firebending! No one had ever heard of a Waterbender using heat to fight. People were already whispering that Agni had blessed her claim, had granted her his gifts in exchange for her blood, drawn by her enemies yet freely offered.
The director had heard about the Imperial Guard trainee only hours after their duel. The entire city had heard about the trainee within the day, and a good portion of the surrounding villages, besides. When it came to the chi blocker, the director wouldn't be surprised if the news spread to the colonies within a week.
It wasn't every day a man had the honor of being killed by a princess, after all.
I managed an update within the same year! Be proud of me.