Title: Benders in a Strange Land
Rating: PG? I think? K+?
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the conceits and headcanon.
Summary: The GAang wind up set adrift and drift all the way to Tortall.
Notes: Assume each season of AtLA is a year, not just a few months.
Notes2: Any canon from Tortall that comes up after The Immortals tetralogy is at best being cherry-picked. Any canon from outside of Avatar the Last Airbender the TV show is also at best being cherry-picked. That means author interviews, comic books, other shows, other books, movies, pilots and everyone else's fanon. Also, I'm messing around with canon anyhow. Here's the thing though, I want you to imagine that the Tortallan universe is on one hemisphere of the planet and the Avatar one is on the other.
Notes3: So, there's this one scene sort of near the end that I wanted to do, and I wrote this whole fic to justify it.
It was no use. They'd been caught and there was no way out. Sokka glanced at Suki from his spot, chained down next to her in the small metal cell. They were alone, at least for the moment, but they had no idea where Azula had taken the others, or what she planned to do with them . . . or had done with them.
"How's the view from over there?" Sokka asked in what he knew was a weak bid at being funny.
Suki shot him a look, but didn't do more than roll her eyes. "Probably not any better or worse than where you are," she said dryly.
"We should probably complain to our hosts," he continued, doggedly. "I mean, the accommodations are-"
"Really? You . . ." Suki interrupted him, then trailed off, her eyes narrowing at him. Her face softened. "We've gotten out of tight spots before," she said. "Katara and the others will be fine, and if they're not, we'll get them out and then they'll be fine."
She'd said just what he didn't want her to say. Every bit of his fear surged to the surface now that he couldn't distract himself. "And what if she's not? What if they're not? Aang's the Avatar. If Azula does away with him it means the next one is in the Tribes, and the Fire Nation will come down on them like the wrath of La. We need Zuko to be the Fire Lord next because he's the only one young enough and not-crazy enough to properly take the job-"
The sound of chains clinking and Suki edging close enough to take his hand cut him off from his desperate rambling to avoid panicking about Katara. He knew all those things were important. He also knew that Toph was only fifteen and deserved better, that Aang was only fifteen, that they were all his friends. But Katara was his sister. The girl who looked just like his mother. The girl who had bandaged his scraped knees and learned to cook sea prunes for his birthday, whose scratched arms he'd bandaged when she'd been too enthusiastic with a polar bear-dog as a child and who was a lunatic and did silly things and believed in fortune-tellers and was his sister.
His fingers tightened on Suki's because it was the only thing he could do.
"Isn't this sweet?" Azula said as she strode into view.
"Where are the others?" Suki demanded. Sokka was grateful for that, because he knew that if he spoke right now his voice would crack and they couldn't afford to show any weakness.
A slow smile spread over the firebender's face. "Oh, you'll see soon enough." She turned to a couple soldiers Sokka hadn't noticed before - he really needed to get it together - ordering, "Take these two up to the deck. Don't let them go for a minute, don't loosen the chains and keep your eyes on them. The girl is an excellent fighter and she must see something in that Water Tribe oaf, so watch him closely too."
Whatever you might say of Azula, she was smart, and that probably put paid to any plan Sokka might use relying on them thinking he was an idiot. He tried anyhow, because that was what you did. It wouldn't cost him anything to play the fool and it might open a chance. Azula was already gone, so he turned to the two soldier. "So, is there a chance we might get some food in here?" he asked. "I mean, it's been a pretty long time since we last had anything to eat and I've heard some good things about Fire Nation food."
"Silence," said one of the two from behind his helmet. It was a flat statement. Authoritative, forceful, but not an exclamation. There was no emotion behind it. Sokka wondered how much of a person was behind it. Someone who worked with Azula in the way this man did probably didn't have room to have any personality.
He kept going. "I'm just saying, you know? Rule of three, wasn't it? Three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours in extreme cold, three minutes without air-" The world suddenly went wobbly, his ears filled with a ringing sound and his head hurt. When he came back to himself, they were on the deck of a Fire Nation ship. One about the same size as Zuko's old ship. Sokka spared a moment as he glanced around the now familiar metal surfaces, the unadorned darkened steel and thought back to the first time he saw it lunging out of the distance back home. He'd thought it was so large, then, and now that he knew the real size and weight the Fire Nation brought to the war it looked tiny.
Then he saw them. Katara, Zuko, Aang and Toph, unconscious on the deck. "What did you do to them?" he demanded.
"As I was saying," Azula said, sounding put-upon, "I've given them kesu root."
Suki breathed in sharply, suggesting this was worse than just drugging them into unconsciousness. Sokka didn't ask, because either this was something he should know and didn't, in which case it was a weakness Azula would try to exploit, or it was some relatively obscure thing she was just waiting to gloat over. So, he just glared. Suki spoke instead. "But why are you doing all this?" she asked.
The sadistic and manic light in the princess' eyes told Sokka the answer before the other girl spoke. "Just because I can. You see, I want you, and Zuzu and the others, to know what's happening to them as you all die. I want you to have that painful hope and for it to be smashed to pieces."
"What are you going to do?" Suki asked.
It was creepy how elated the princess was as she spoke. She looked kind of like the way Suki looked when she and Sokka were making love. So creepy. "I'm going to leave you chained up here, then we're going to start the engines and point the ship east. You'll just keep going until the engines give out. Just out into the wild blue yonder," Azula told them. "You'll die alone and lost and thinking the whole way that someone might save you. But no one will."
"Okay, so I get that you're crazy and evil," Sokka said. "But the one thing I seriously don't get here is your motivation."
Azula shot him a look as though he were the one who was chaining people up and drugging them and about to do something to kill them slowly. "To win the war?" she asked slowly, as though he were a particularly stupid child.
"No, no, I get that," Sokka said. "But, okay. So, your plan works and we all die in screaming agony and despair. You won't know when it happens, you won't see it, all you get to do is imagine it, but for all you know we'll get sick immediately after you send this off and we'll all die relatively peacefully in a day or two, in which case half of your plan doesn't go off. Also, you don't get to gloat to us or anything. So, you're getting something out of it, sure, but really. Isn't gloating half the point of something like that?"
"Oh, Sokka," groaned Suki. Right then he realised that he might wind up goading her into killing them outright, and however hopeless Azula made the situation, there was a chance if they were alive. There was no chance if she just killed them.
Luckily, the princess' eyes just narrowed and she snapped a few orders before striding off.
The soldiers snapped into action, and Sokka heard the engines winding up as the soldiers and engineers got them going. After a few moments they all came racing out, hurrying across the tiny bridges connecting two ships on either side that were being used to guide their initial direction. And then suddenly they were free, the ship abruptly speeding to plow forward through the waves and the others turning back towards the Fire Islands.
Sokka met Suki's eyes and for a moment he knew they were both wallowing in the hopelessness of their position. He took a deep breath and said, "Okay. Well, we'd better try to get these chains off and see what we can do."
Suki nodded and they shifted, first just seeing if there was any way for either of them to work the chains off themselves. It was clear pretty quickly that they couldn't, so Sokka began to wriggle his way over the deck, searching for something they could use on the chains. As he looked, a thought occurred to him. "Azula said she wanted the others to know what was happening, but aren't they unconscious? I mean, they're not even tied up, which means she doesn't think they'll wake up-"
"They're awake," Suki said grimly. "Kesu root does something to benders. It's like it puts out their inner . . . spirit . . . whatever it is that lets them bend." Sokka turned to stare at her. "The writings about it indicate that they'll be awake and asleep the way they would be normally, it's just that taking away their bending like that takes away something so essential to a bender that they seem to be unconscious."
Horrified, Sokka stared at the other four. "So, they know what's happening and can't do anything about it."
Suki nodded.
At that Sokka redoubled his efforts at squirming across the ship and made it to the door. It was open and he worked his way over the raised threshold of the door and promptly fell down the stairs. "Ow!"
Distantly he heard Suki's voice shout, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah! I just should've watched that first step! It's a doozy!" His arm hurt and he'd brought back his headache. Still, maybe he'd find something down there he could use to get the chains off.
Suki stared at the open door for a moment, worried about the way Sokka had clearly fallen, but turned her attention to inching her way around in search of something to pry away at the chains. Suddenly, movement from the pile of her friends caught her eye. Slowly Katara began moving, working her way onto her hands and knees.
"Katara?"
The waterbender's head came up a moment, then her eyes snapped shut and she dropped down to her elbows, gasping. "Oh," she groaned. "Suki I . . . just . . ."
Waiting with as much patience as she could muster, Suki watched as Katara slowly pulled herself together then staggered to Suki's side. "How?" Suki asked.
Katara winced. "I figured out what they were doing, but I had to bend myself to . . . to heal the damage as it happened. It . . ." she paused, eyes closed in concentration. "It took everything I had to keep it from making me like the others, and I don't know if I'll be able to bend again any time soon."
That was . . . well, she'd heard worse news. "I know you need to recover, but can you look for something to get these chains off me?" Suki asked.
"Okay," was the terse response, and Suki would have felt a little insulted about it if it weren't so clear Katara was barely able to move around as it was. Still, the bender had the full use of both her hands, so she was still their best chance for getting her and Sokka free.
A minute later she heard Sokka's voice, "Katara!" In spite of everything tears pricked her eyes at the relief and joy in his voice. At least something was okay. It still felt like an eternity before Sokka appeared, wincing and limping a little, but free and able to get her loose with the bit of metal he used to pick the locks.
"Where's Katara?" she asked at once.
Sokka looked grim. "She's resting with Appa. They managed to drug him too and he's below-decks."
Suki winced. "She's not all that well, is she? She really didn't seem okay when I asked her to help with the chains, but . . ."
"What could you do?" Sokka sighed. "I think we're just going to have to get everyone below and as comfortable as we can, and then try to figure out whether we can get this ship turned around or else how we're going to eat and drink until we land somewhere."
"We can't turn around now?" she asked. "I mean, the longer we wait, the harder it'll be to get back to familiar waters."
At that Sokka shook his head. "You can't feel that? The engines are running out of fuel, I can tell by the sound. Besides that, we're already outside familiar waters. We've been caught up in a current and it's dragged us away from a direct line back to the Fire Nation, probably even the Earth Kingdom. I don't know how fast we're going and until night comes I won't be able to judge where we are at all, north or south. It's completely possible to be in the ocean on the map and wander around until you die of thirst, just like in a desert." As he explained, their situation settled in and Suki saw how clever and cruel Azula had been. "Between the unfamiliar currents and how long it's taken us to get free already, not to mention the engines were set to running full tilt, I'm not sure we could figure out where we are. We can turn around, but I don't want to do that recklessly, because I don't know how all the pipes work. If we do it wrong we might cause the ship to sink. This isn't like a Water Tribe sailing ship where you can just turn the rudder and that turns you around."
That was when Suki finally glanced up and saw the sun and how much time had passed. They'd been plowing through the waves with the ship going at its full clip for at least an hour, and before that it had been taken far out into the ocean, Suki guessed as close to the edge of known waters as Azula could get. And if Sokka said they'd been caught in a current as well, she believed him. He was Water Tribe, and if anyone knew the way of currents and oceans, it was Water Tribesmen.
"So, basically we have no way to get the ship back home, we don't know where we are and we're caught in a current that we don't know where it's taking us."
Sokka's face was resigned as he agreed. "Yup."
"Right," she said, and they headed over to their friends in silence, in agreement to carry the smaller two before moving Zuko. Suki picked Aang up and Sokka grabbed Toph, carrying them down the stairs and carefully depositing them on Appa, who was probably the most comfortable spot for them to be for the moment.
Katara sat up as they got there, her eyes red from crying, most likely. "I . . ." she reached out a hand and then winced, pulling it back. "I can't heal them." She took a deep breath as though bracing herself. "I don't know when I'll be able to bend again. And I'm so dizzy," she added.
"Just rest for now," Sokka told her. "Worry about getting better. Until you're better there's no point in making yourself sick so that Suki and I wind up having to take care of you too."
Katara nearly bristled, but Sokka's tactless comment was true, and Suki squeezed her friend's shoulder comfortingly before heading back up the stairs after Sokka. In silence they collected Zuko, manoeuvring him down the stairs. In spite of Sokka's request, they arrived to find Katara doing something with some sort of twine in her hands.
"Fishing line?" Sokka asked.
Katara shrugged. "We'll see. I'm hoping that Appa's fur will be tough enough to hold up for that. Meanwhile, can you brush him out? Maybe we can at least use a pile of fur to collect rainwater. I mean, as long as I can't bend."
Suki wondered a little about that. She knew that if she could no longer fight, was no longer a warrior she would feel like some part of her had been stripped away. Did Katara feel like that about her bending, or was it more like no longer being able to walk, where you'd lost some actual physical functional ability? Or was there some other sensation that related to the bending itself that she'd never know about?
Katara felt useless. She also felt ill. The worst was that it was a strange, ill-defined sensation, but something that felt familiar. As though she'd felt it before. Now that she had a minute, her attempts to put Appa's fur to use weren't distracting her from her thoughts, and her mind flew back to the last time her bending had been taken away. Ty Lee and her chi blocking had felt like this.
It was like nausea, but it wasn't quite that. It was also like having a muscle cramp, but it didn't hurt. She felt dazed and like everything was wrapped up in wool around her. She was hot and stiff and uneasy, and every time she reached for her bending it got worse until she stopped. The only bending that didn't make it feel worse was when she closed her eyes and felt the way the water in her body was filled with impurities, things that shouldn't be there. By careful labour she was able to redirect it, collecting it and moving it away.
Luckily for her the ship's head wasn't too far away, because clearing it out of her system left her exhausted, but all those impurities had to go somewhere.
"Are you okay?" Sokka asked as he came across her sitting on the floor, worn out from the effort of pulling that stupid poison out of her body.
She tried to look calm and together as she said, "Just tired. Healing myself so that I can get my bending back is . . . a lot."
Her brother frowned and picked her up, carrying her to a bunk where he and Suki had clearly scavenged bits left lying around on the ship to make something of a comfortable bed. "Just get some rest. We . . ." he trailed off a moment, and Katara nodded. He was trying not to sound like the only reason he wanted her better was her ability to help, but the fact was, they needed all the help they could get.
"I know. Hopefully I can clear this up soon, and then I can pull out some drinkable water from the ocean and we can go from there," she told him. "I think I've gotten the worst of it out of me."
Sokka hugged her. "I'm glad you're going to be okay," he said. That he didn't even try to joke told her how worried he'd been.
"Just don't wear yourself or Suki out, alright?" she told him.
"We won't," he told her.
The Fire Nation's efforts to clear out the ship had been good, but weren't completely thorough. There was a bowl here, a spare bit of metal there, and Sokka set to laying out anything on deck that could be used to collect water. Katara had always been pretty good at making fishing line, and her attempts using Appa's fur weren't bad, all things considered.
When he went to check on her again, after he'd managed to get a fish on board (the line falling apart after the one use), he found her asleep and with a pile of fur that she'd been trying to work into a net. He left her sleeping and headed back up, where he found Suki using the last of the coal rescued from the ship's engines to cook the fish. "If we're not going to be able to use the engines to get back," she explained, "it didn't make sense to waste the coal."
Sokka nodded. "I just hope we can figure out some way to feed Aang, Toph and Zuko," he said. "Not to mention Appa. I mean, hopefully Katara can heal them, but until she's well enough to do that, we're going to have to figure out what to do about that, too."
Suki winced. "I almost think we should ask Katara to heal Appa first. We may be too far from land for him to fly us back, but he could scout if nothing else, look for driftwood and things like that."
She was right, however loathe he was to admit it. "Right," he said. "We'll talk to her when she wakes up." They sat down together, exhausted by the long day, and promptly fell asleep themselves.
It was late the next morning when Suki woke, Sokka still snoring beside her. It was a little dismaying that they'd slept so late, but there was nothing for it. She poked him awake and they headed down into the ship. Katara was looking much less wan, and was able to pull water out of the ocean for drinking. That was a relief. At least they wouldn't die of thirst. Then Katara managed to catch some floating seaweed and some fish with her bending, then abruptly lost control of the water ball filled with things and dropped to the deck, clutching her head.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I just . . ." she looked helplessly at them.
Clearly Katara needed more time to recover. "It's okay," Sokka told her. "We have water and food for the moment. There's a metal bowl, so we'll be able to make a broth to give to the others until you can heal them."
Katara nodded, looking miserable. "Why don't you see what you can do with that?" Suki said, as she carried the fish, seaweed and one piece of wood over. "Sokka and I will see to dealing with the others."
They headed down to arrange Toph, Zuko and Aang. They also discovered Momo hiding in a corner of the ship. "Maybe we can get him to collect stuff off the ocean too," Sokka mused. "Katara tried to get him to get her water once and he came back with so much stuff we were able to sell most of it off for cash."
"Is that how you all can afford to shop whenever you want?" Suki asked. She'd wondered, because she'd never quite figured out the source of their income.
Sokka shrugged. "Mostly. We don't tell Aang that Momo's a little thief, and we just make sure to either keep the useful things or sell anything we can't use."
"Shh!" she told him. "Keep it down. Remember that Aang can hear you."
Eyes wide, Sokka said, "Right." Then he went over to Zuko and started explaining everything that had happened, apologising to the three benders for not getting back to them sooner. As he finished outlining what was going on, he added, "Aang, I know you don't want to have meat, but we're not going to have an option to feed you other than a fish broth. I know it'll probably be awful, but we're doing our best."
Zuko stared helplessly at the inside of his eyelids, railing inwardly over his sister's diabolical nature. He could feel every move Sokka and Suki made to get him and the others more comfortable, but it was maddening to be unable to so much as twitch his fingers. He felt cold and like he was half-buried in snow.
He was very relieved when Sokka and Suki returned and gave him and the others a complete update as to where they were and what was happening. The one piece of information he had, the almost-certain location of the current they were caught in, was going to be of no use at all very soon. The current was most likely the south-eastern current at the far edge of known waters, but there was no telling where it went after about two days travel at five knots. They'd already been caught in it for one day at least, which meant that by that time tomorrow he'd have no better idea than anyone else where they were.
Sokka and Suki left, assuring the poisoned benders that they were going to try to keep everyone alive, and to see what they could do for Appa.
Zuko lay there, stewing in his concern, wondering how anxious Toph and Aang were, and how Katara was doing. Finally he heard her voice. "Okay Aang, I know you don't want this, but this is the only food I can give you right now. I'll be bending this into you, okay?"
In spite of all his worry, Zuko felt some of his tension ease listening to Katara talk to Aang, then Toph. Finally she came to him. He felt her lean in close and murmur in his ear, "You know, when I was talking about you being at my mercy I was thinking of a comfortable bed and maybe some scarves." Just the thought of Katara and lovemaking made Zuko feel better. She felt well enough to joke, even as he felt the strange sensation of liquid moving down his throat without his intervention. It was bland and fishy and awful, but he felt immeasurably better once he had something in his stomach.
Then he felt her curl into him and he wanted desperately to wrap his arms around her, but he couldn't move, could only listen as she whispered to him about how worried she was for them all, about how her brother wanted her to heal Appa first and not the others and how ill she felt. The fact that she still felt hot and muffled made him wonder how Aang and Toph felt. If he felt cold and Katara felt overheated, did Aang feel stifled and Toph disturbingly weightless or something else like the opposite of their bending?
Her words slowed until Zuko realised she'd fallen asleep next to him. It was a luxury neither of them had had much opportunity for. Katara didn't want to deal with Sokka's inevitable older brother hysteria, not while they needed to be both united and focused on winning the war and training Aang, and neither of them had wanted Aang distracted by moroseness and jealousy over Katara. So, they'd kept it a secret from everyone but Toph (who always knew everything anyhow), but it meant that their relationship was carried out in darkness as though it were a shameful secret. In spite of his discomfort and the fact that he wanted to get up, wanted to hold her close, wanted to do something, Zuko couldn't help but enjoy the warm weight of Katara curled up next to him.
Boredom and illness made him fall asleep, and when he woke, still unable to open his eyes or move, he was being carried over to what felt like a lumpy cot. "Sorry about the cot, Zuko," Sokka's voice said from behind him. "I know it's probably not up to your exacting royal standards but it'll be easier for Suki and me to nurse you all if you're not on top of Appa."
Well, he'd slept in worse places while on the run with and without Uncle Iroh.
"Katara's doing a lot better, but . . . well, I know it's not the news you'll want to hear, but she's going to try to fix Appa first so that we can maybe use him to scout for land."
It was a sensible move, all things considered, and if Appa could get them to land they'd at least have a chance at making their way home. The huff of breath from Sokka wasn't quite a sigh, and Zuko desperately wanted to be able to see what was going on. "We'll be okay and we'll figure it out," Suki said. Zuko heard the rustle of movement and another sort-of sigh from Sokka. Suki was probably trying to offer Sokka comfort of some kind and Zuko winced inwardly over his indirect witnessing of a private moment.
"I just really hate that Toph has to be last," Sokka said. "I mean, Aang's not only the Avatar, he can fly and give us better directions than Appa could, and if he and Katara worked together they could bend this ship somewhere. But Toph . . . she's just so limited here, even with the metalbending . . ."
Sokka's guilt was understandable, even as he was making sensible command decisions. Zuko honestly wished he'd been half the commander Sokka was back when he'd been chasing the Avatar on his ship. Lieutenant Jee had been right about him.
A distant rumble that sounded like Appa got Sokka's attention and he and Suki raced off abandoning Zuko to the silence and lumpy cot. He was lost in his own thoughts, not even certain about whether or not Aang and Toph were in the same room as him, and trapped in his own body and mind. Meditation, imagining his altar and its five candles, was what saved him from going just a little crazy.
Aang lost himself in meditation. What else could he do? Gyatso's advice all those years ago, "We can't concern ourselves with what was. We must act on what is," told him that he had to be patient and wait this out. It was hard to lie there, feeling as though he was buried underground, trapped and unable to move, half-suffocated even as he felt the air freely moving in and out of his lungs. Katara had come to nurse him, telling him she was still recovering from the kesu root, and that she felt stifled with heat the way he felt buried in earth. It was both a relief to know the others were . . . not well, but okay. It was more of a relief that Katara was okay.
The fish broth they forced into him was awful, but Aang reminded himself all over again that beggars couldn't be choosers and that even the monks made allowances for food in times of extremity.
In the end, the best thing to do was meditate. He would sink as deep into meditation as he could, like the monks were trained to do, and when he was finally able to move again he'd clear up exactly what had happened and what they would do.
Toph listened. It was something she'd become very practised at as a toddler, helpless and trapped, and now that she was helpless and trapped again, she listened again. She listened to Katara whisper her fears to Zuko, clearly worried someone would hear her be human instead of everyone's mom, she listened to Appa's breathing and the occasional rumble that began to reappear as Katara worked on healing him. She heard Sokka and Suki murmuring, trying not to be heard as they decided not to tell her she'd be the last one healed, both of them sounding upset about the practical decision they were making.
She felt horribly floaty, like those times Appa dived through the air and she was disconnected, not only from her element but from the tiny sense of security the saddle offered. Katara had come and complained of feeling muffled in heat (three times, once to each of the other benders, actually) so Toph had to assume Katara was trying to reassure Toph she wasn't the only one suffering from the root. That was an odd sort of relief, but it was worrying how unsteady Katara's footsteps sounded, how shaky her voice went as she whispered to Zuko and Sokka's dark mutterings about how pale and unwell Katara looked.
Toph had thought she was practised at telling time in the dark and isolation, but now she realised she had been so good at it because of the habits and rhythms of her parents' home. The Bei Fong household had been nothing if not regimented and scheduled, but now that Katara was healing at whatever intervals she could gather the strength for, Sokka and Suki were nursing in between trying to collect and get food and scant resources off the ocean's surface and no one was coming around with any sort of regular timing, she lost track of when she was and could only listen to the sounds of the ocean around them.
And when the storm swept in, all she could do was lie there and hope nothing went wrong.
At first, Suki, Sokka and Katara simply collected everything and dragged it below deck, periodically poking a head out to collect rainwater in their various bowls and bowl-like objects. Katara froze water into ice chips so that they could suck on them without needing to worry about that, but the storm raged on and on. After two days they were out of what fish and seaweed they'd pulled from the ocean, and the three of them braved the elements for more food.
It was hard labour, Katara steadying the ship and the water to allow Sokka the chance to catch something, anything, they could pull up, Suki just there to grab things and catch things and try to keep the siblings from falling in as the ship climbed and fell along the swells and troughs of the sea.
They went back below, making more tasteless broth to feed the others, cooking more fish and seaweed, Suki feeling vaguely nauseated as she saw Katara and Sokka share a glance and far too easily down a fish that was raw past the point of sushi. She couldn't stomach it, even as she understood they were trying to save fuel as much as possible.
But the storm continued. By this time Sokka and Katara agreed there was no way to know where they were or how far they'd gone. Sokka said they were moving fast, faster than he'd ever felt a ship move, even when they'd been on that stolen Fire Navy ship. Katara said she felt as though the ship was on an unnaturally straight track across the ocean, but that didn't help them figure out where they were or gave any hope of making it home.
By now Katara was well enough that she spent as much time as she could healing the others, and it showed. While Zuko, Toph and Aang still didn't look awake, they now twitched their fingers and toes in response to questions, and Appa was genuinely awake and anxious. He didn't seem particularly recovered, and was eating all the seaweed they had managed to pull up, but the fact that he was doing that meant there was a chance he was better.
If only the storm would stop.
No one was sure of how many days it had been, because the sky was black with clouds and time seemed to have stopped as they hoped and prayed for it to end.
And then it happened. They went up again, hoping for some more fish, some more birds caught by the storm, hoping for seaweed or something they could give Appa. Katara stood at the bow of the ship, waterbending to try to steady them in some way, to try to ease Sokka's efforts to pull something up. Momo had insisted on coming with her, alternately clinging to Katara and standing on her head to scold the ocean.
"Katara!" Sokka's voice rang out over the deck, but Katara turned too late.
An enormous wave crashed over the prow, causing the whole ship to shift and sway dangerously. When Sokka and Suki looked up, Katara was gone. They both raced up there, desperately hoping to see her somewhere on the floor, to find her half-hidden behind something-or-other they'd missed. She wasn't there. She wasn't clinging to the outside of the ship, and as Sokka clung to the side of the ship, looking out into the water, there was no sign of her or Momo.
"Katara!"