Chapter 8: Resurfacing
From the corner of her eye, she catches Zuko staring up at the sky, slack-jawed. One of his hands reaches out to shakily touch a blackened snowflake, and he rubs his forefingers and thumb together. In the background, three drumbeats sound across the tribe.
"Coal," he murmurs, looking out at the coastline. "Something's going on; we need to find your family."
He leans over her again, peering into her face. "What happened to you?"
Katara cannot respond. She is, unfortunately, no stranger to this feeling. The dual sensations of her mind being on high alert and her body remaining stubbornly limp brings back two very vivid memories: one, of a shirshu's tongue lashing out towards her; two, of the pink acrobat's fingers jabbing her pressure points.
Of course, both memories give way to a more frightening one, and she feels panic rising up her throat quickly, unable to manifest as any verbal warning.
Calm down, she tells herself. She needs to warn her mother, now. She meets Zuko's eyes, and he must register the panic in them, because his own eyes narrow.
"Come on," he murmurs to her, struggling to his feet, weak-kneed. He reaches down, sweat beading across his temples, and grabs hold of her arms. He grunts and pulls her on to his back, and he begins to stagger to his feet.
There is an eerie calm throughout the tribe, almost like the premonition of black snow has sucked clean the marrow of liveliness from the village. Locating anyone is then made infinitely harder, but as Zuko takes unsteady steps towards the cluster of huts by the shore, she guesses that Zuko has the same idea that she does: to find and alert her dad first.
As they approach her parents' hut, it's clear that nobody is inside. Zuko's legs suddenly buckle and he falls to his knees, still supporting Katara on his back.
"Sorry, one second," he winces, setting her down and leaning her against a hut. He turns to her, out of breath. "Where do you think they are?" he asks her.
Katara's eyes slide slowly towards the centre of his village, and his eyes follow the trajectory.
"Guess it's worth a shot," he sighs, then stares down at his hands. Shaking fingers straighten themselves out, and he manages to push out one steady breath. Nothing happens. His eyes shut for a second, and then snap open to look at her. He nods at her, and then they're on their way, Katara once again draped on his back.
As they begin to near the vacant village centre, the three drumbeats reverberate a second time. Katara can pinpoint the noise to roughly about where the healing huts are, and Zuko turns in that direction.
Suddenly, a woman runs by. She turns to them fleetingly and shouts, "come on, hurry!"
Then, she's off, sprinting towards the source of the drumbeats. Zuko follows, albeit slower, but suddenly lowers her to the floor.
"I'm sorry," he pants, "I can't carry you the whole way. I'll get your dad and I'll come right back for you, okay?"
Even if she could speak, she would deign to ask him to stay. So she blinks at him instead, and he takes at as his cue to stagger towards the drumbeats. Then, it's just her, and Zuko has angled her such that she can watch the shore. Unable to help herself from looking for the inevitable, she trains her eyes on the horizon, and waits.
Premonition aside, it turns out that the waiting game is a boring one. Despite herself, her mind starts to wander, and she begins to think about the brief flash she saw of Sokka and Toph by Aang's bedside when she tried to bend against Zuko earlier. It could very well have been a memory of a different life, but she's sure that this exact scene was not one she witnessed before she time travelled.
In the scant time she had to tell Yugoda her decision, Katara was focussed on only how to get to a new dimension, not whether she could ever get back. Not that she'd want to - at least, in this life, she has a chance of protecting Aang and her family - but if push comes to shove, whether she'd even have a choice. She thinks of the scroll Yugoda was reading in the Northern Water Tribe; the warning that actions that anger La can be felt across the lifetimes.
Sokka has not come back with Aang, and there are only a few possibilities. One, Sokka has not found Aang, and neither has the Fire Nation; two, Sokka has found Aang, and they're staying away from the tribe to avoid the Fire Nation's imminent arrival; three, the Fire Nation has found Aang first.
If Katara were a betting woman - she remembers her swindling tricks with Toph - she would bet that Sokka has found Aang. If there's anything she can trust her brother with, it's that he's a tactician and he knows how to get things done. At least, she hopes so.
Her eyes snap to the side as she hears a pair of small footsteps patter their way towards her. A child, slightly younger than Aang, runs towards her, chin wobbling. He looks up at her.
"I forgot where to go," he tells her, two fat tears sliding down his cheeks. Katara's eyes widen in question, and the little boy elaborates. "Mama told me to go towards wherever the drums are coming from to find the hiding place, but - but I forgot," he sobs.
Katara flicks her eyes towards the direction of the noise, and the little boy luckily gets the hint. Wiping his nose with the back of his sleeve, he takes a few steps in that direction.
"Aren't you coming?" he asks her, then steps very close to her and peers into her eyes. "Are you okay, Katara? You're the only waterbender so you have to go to the hiding place!"
She doesn't wonder how he knows her name - they have probably met a while ago. At her lack of response, the boy grasps her sleeve lightly and tugs at it. "Are you sick? Come on!"
Katara's eyes flick back towards the horizon, where a hint of steel begins to crest. They're running out of time. The boy turns towards the shoreline as well, gives her a frightened look, and scampers off towards wherever the drums were coming from.
She's all alone again, and the waiting game is over. The Fire Nation has come for her.
For the longest time, she just sits and stares at the docking ships, at the multitude of soldiers disembarking and forming rank, at their steady march somewhere to the left of where she's situated, angled more towards her family's huts. No doubt they've gone looking for her father.
She can't bend her head but she can hear doors being banged open, followed by the sharp voice of directives that leads to the Fire Nation troops fracturing into two segments, each going their own way.
With little else to do and a steadily-mounting feeling of helplessness, she prays blindly to Tui and La that they don't find her. The gods seem to be acquiescing, because for a while she hears uninterrupted silence. It stretches on, and the lack of information about where the Fire Nation is threatens to immolate her, and suddenly she hears a sharp woosh.
Screams suddenly puncture the silence, and she strains to hear above the roar of fire, "tell me where the waterbender is!"
Shit, shit, shit, she thinks. It's just like her, to have somehow managed to step very surely into the worst situation imaginable, by collaborating with Zuko and sneaking around her family, and then somehow losing her ability to move, and then leaving her Gran Gran's basement, and now she's left here, a lame duck, waiting for the Fire Nation to come roast her.
The common denominator, clearly, is Zuko. He was the source of her headache in her previous life, and he's the source of this mess now.
And if he doesn't return for her now, she swears to god that if she gets out of this mess she'll -
- A pair of boots step in front of her. Katara struggles to shift her gaze upwards, and catches the sight of a downturned helmet.
"You," a voice growls from underneath. "What do you know about a waterbender? Where is the Chief?"
Well, Katara thinks resignedly, if I'm going to die, might as well do it with some pride. She tries to channel her best Toph look, and the mask stares indifferently at her for a second. A pair of guards suddenly swarm her periphery. The man standing in the middle nods to both guards, and suddenly, she's being hoisted to her feet. Her head lolls forward and she's once again staring at the curled boots. A rough finger hooks itself underneath her chin and wrenches her head up. The man's helmet is tipped back and she looks at brown, beady eyes.
"Answer me," he commands. At no response, he amends, "answer me, or die." He holds up the palm that's not supporting her chin and fire blooms in it. If Katara could flinch away, she would - it's too close and it might be singing off her eyebrows for all she knows.
After a beat, he steps back, still forcing her to look at him. "Very well," he says, and moves to strike.
"No!" someone shouts, and a spear whizzes through the air and lodges itself in the man's arm. Roaring with pain, the man withdraws his hand from under her chin to support his other arm, and both guards flanking her drop her unceremoniously to the ground. One side of her face is smushed with snow, and she looks at her father, Bato, and a few other men duelling the Fire Nation.
Her father's fighting style is familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He moves with the fluidity of a Water Tribe man, the same type of fluidity she recognises in her own bending. But she remembers how her father used to fight in her other life, before he had left the tribe, and there was more coordination and brute strength. His slower moves now seem to hold up fine, but it's clear that the Fire Nation is gaining advantage.
Suddenly, someone has hooked their fingers under the hood of her parka and is pulling her upright.
"Sorry I'm late," Zuko says. He is clutching his ribs and doubling over. He is clearly exhausted. "It took a while to find your dad."
Together, they watch the commotion in front of them. The warriors in her tribe move as a unit, the way they would when hunting. They are too slow to defend against firebending, and the Fire Nation presses their advantage by standing more than a spear's length away and volleying fireball after fireball, such that her tribe is on the defensive. One Fire Nation soldier circles around, punching fire forwards, which hits Bato squarely on the shoulder. He cries out with pain and Hakoda turns to him, distracted. A Fire Nation soldier notices her dad's distraction, and readies himself in a stance.
"Watch out," Zuko shouts, but her dad is too slow to react, cannot duck fast enough even when a flame is heading straight for his abdomen.
Katara's horror morphs quickly into confusion when the jet of fire is knocked aside almost carelessly, and suddenly Zuko's on his feet, arms cloaked in fire. He breathes a steady flame at the Fire Nation soldiers, who recover quickly from their shock to attack Zuko in formation.
Katara has to admit, begrudgingly, that watching Zuko in action was pretty fascinating. The six Fire Nation soldiers are no match for him, and he attacks with a fierce surety that has the soldiers scrambling for purchase in the snow. This Zuko clearly has more bending ability than the Zuko she left behind, and she dimly hopes that she doesn't have to go against him any time soon.
The clashing fire brings her father's shocked expression to light from where he stands off to the side. He watches as Zuko spins mid-air to form a cartwheel of fire with his legs and then lands with catlike precision.
"Firebender," she hears her father say.
Zuko manages to take out the soldiers, one by one, and delivers a swift kick to the stomach of the final soldier, who crumbles to the side. Zuko falls to his hands and knees suddenly and coughs blood. Eyes watering, he lifts up his head to look at Katara first, and then at her father. Hakoda stares back at him levelly.
A chorus of screams reverberates through the air, and Hakoda motions to the other Water Tribe men. He turns to Katara.
"Stay here," he tells her. "Someone is coming for you."
He takes one last look at Zuko, and then they're both gone.
Zuko groans weakly, arms trembling and sweat beading at his brow. "I feel like shit," he explains to her.
Enemy or no, the healer in Katara struggles to watch Zuko suffer like this, curling up into the snow and coughing up more blood. If she could only bend, she could fix what she is sure is internal bleeding.
But the punishment of bending is heavy on them, and they are both incapacitated.
The waiting resumes.
It is Kya that finds them in the snow.
"What happened to you?" she asks Katara, cupping her face and peering into her eyes worriedly.
"I don't know," Zuko fills her in, pushing himself up on to his knees. "She just... she tried bending, and..." he gestures helplessly to her. "I don't know."
Kya nods grimly. "I wondered why the two of you didn't come to the hiding space when Hakoda hit the drums. Can you walk?" she asks Zuko.
Katara knows he can't; she's seen him cough up blood for the better part of an hour, watched him lie on the snow, shivering. But she's coming to learn that Zuko doesn't give up, and so she is entirely unsurprised when he nods and wobbles on to his feet, clutching at his ribs and nearly doubling over. He turns to spit a bit of blood onto the already stained snow, wipes his mouth with his sleeve and then says, "let's go."
Kya leans down to pull her daughter up by the waist and drapes Katara's arm around Kya's shoulders. She begins to walk towards her hut, apologising to Katara as her unresponsive feet drag along the snow. Once inside, Kya sets Katara on a chair and presses the back of her hand against Katara's forehead. She hums thoughtfully to herself, and then turns to Zuko.
"Lie down," she instructs, motioning to a cot. Zuko does, lowering himself gingerly on to the cot, suppressing a grimace. Kya hands him a block of something green and somewhat slimy, and Katara watches as Zuko surveys it queasily.
"It'll help with the internal bleeding in time," Kya explains, eyeing Zuko sternly until he presses the block into his mouth and chews on it. He shuts his eyes and swallows, suppressing a gag.
Satisfied, Kya turns back to Katara.
"I don't know what's happeneing to you, sweetheart," she murmurs, simultaneously smoothing back Katara's hair and searching for some medicine within the deep cupboards. "This happened when she started bending?" Kya asks Zuko.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Turn around," Kya says, and Zuko dutifully flips over the other way. "We need to look at your tattoo, Katara. If it's an issue with your bending then Tui will tell us," she says to her daughter. She pulls Katara's parka off her and loosens the bindings around just the top of her hipbones. She looks up at Katara, startled.
"The tattoo's fading," she says tersely. "I'm not good enough to heal this; we need to get a healer."
The tattoo's fading? How is that possible? She knows that her Gran Gran's tattoo, in this life and her previous one, is as prominent on her skin as the day she got it. The tattoo was supposed to invoke Tui's protection, and the conclusion is too easy to draw. Tui is no longer looking out for her.
Kya tightens Katara's bindings and then pulls her parka on, before turning to face Zuko. "You can turn around now. Keep an eye on my daughter."
He flops back over to look at Katara as Kya leaves the hut. They stare at each other for a second.
"So," Zuko begins uncomfortably, "this sucks, huh?"
Katara manages, with great effort, to roll her eyes.
And then, things go south quickly.
"Get Katara," Kya hisses to Zuko the second she barges back in the tent. "They're coming here next, and the two of you can't be here."
Zuko struggles up and out of the cot as Kya pulls up the corner of a tapestry adorning her wall. As Zuko pulls her on to his back, Katara sees that there's a small hiding space that Kya intends for them to step in to.
"Get in!" Kya demands, nervously glancing at the hut's entrance, where a pair of footsteps seem to be drawing nearer. Zuko does, propping Katara up against a wall and sitting down himself. Some colour has returned to his face but he's still clutching at his stomach painfully. They both turn to Kya, but she does not step in to the hiding space with them.
No, Katara thinks, looking wildly up at her mother.
"Listen to me," Kya tells Zuko. "No matter what happens, I need you to stay in here. Got it?"
Zuko struggles to reply, but Kya continues more urgently, "I need you to take care of my daughter. Okay?"
Zuko clenches his jaw. "Okay."
Kya relaxes minutely, smiling tightly down at Katara. "It'll be fine," she assures her daughter. Then, she's pulling the tapestry back to neatly cover them, and the two of them are cloaked in darkness.
The door bangs open.
"Enough lies," someone growls. "Where is the waterbender? And where is Zuko?"
Beside her, Katara hears Zuko's breath hitch.
"I've never heard of a Zuko, and there is no waterbender left. You've taken them all," Kya adds bitterly.
A loud sound like something is being knocked over. "No more lies. I've fought with Zuko since I've come here. Where are you hiding him?"
"I don't know who Zuko is!" Kya cries.
A pause. Katara can hear her heartbeat hammering in her ears.
"Then tell me," the man snarls. "Who is it? Who's the waterbender?"
"There are no waterbenders," Kya retorts. "The Fire Nation took them all away a long time ago."
"You're lying," the man hisses. "My source says there's one waterbender left in the Southern Water Tribe. We're not leaving until we find the waterbender."
No! Katara begins to struggle internally, willing her body to move, to do anything, to alert Zuko, who's still curled up next to her and gasping in pain. Please, she prays wildly to Tui and La, to anyone listening. Please, let me bend.
But her body remains stubbornly still, and Kya continues talking, defeated. "If I tell you... do you promise to leave the rest of the village alone?"
And this is it, this is the scene Katara was not privy to in her previous life, but she knows what it will culminate to, and she had promised herself that she wouldn't be weak again, but look at her.
Zuko seems to realise the same thing, because he tries to struggle to his knees and ends up collapsing again. "No," he breathes.
There is a grunt of affirmation, and then:
"It's me," Kya whispers. "Take me as your prisoner."
Tears are sliding freely down Katara's cheeks now, and she redoubles her efforts to get any part of her to move - maybe if she caused a distraction, the Fire Nation soldier would come for her instead -
"I'm afraid I'm not taking prisoners today," the man growls. There is the sound of fire coming to life in the man's palm, and she hears her mother's hitched breath, and Zuko's fingers are suddenly by the nape of her neck. He presses down blindly, and Katara loses consciousness as the beginnings of a scream begin to manifest in her mother.
When Katara comes to, she's hidden behind one of the huts nearest to the shore. Zuko is on his knees next to her, struggling to stuff what looks like a couple of essentials into a small bag. Among the clutter is both halves of the torn scroll, as well as the scroll she stole from the library, Advanced Forms.
Zuko glances at her, and his eyes widen when he finds her squinting back groggily at him. "We need to leave," he explains, gesturing to the clutter by his knees. "As long as we're here, nobody is safe."
For a loose second, she thinks that this is all a dream, how quickly her life has been twisted upside-down. Her eyes focus towards the sky, where the moon shines down gently at her. The presence of nighttime does not stem the flow of war in her tribe, a fact she is made painfully aware of when screams keep echoing through the village.
Zuko ignores this steadfastly, and she would think this didn't affect him if not for the tell of his shaking hands and his hitched breaths whenever a rush of fire sounds throughout the village.
There are muffled shouts, and multiple heavy footsteps rush towards them. Zuko's head snaps up.
"Stay here," he whispers to her, as though she had the option of doing anything else. She is entirely useless.
Zuko gets up and creeps towards the other side of the hut, and Katara suddenly hears a grunt and the sound of feet being dragged forwards.
"Firebender," a voice says. Her father.
"S-sir, I can explain - "
"Your people killed my wife. And they tried to kill my daughter."
"I'm - "
A sudden shout rips through the air from another cluster of huts, and it's a young voice.
"Get Katara out of here. Keep her safe. Do you understand me?"
"Sir, I - "
"Promise me, son."
"... I promise."
The footsteps walk away, and so does Zuko. She spends the minutes waiting for someone to find her, wanting to call out for her father, and trying not to succumb to the dam of memories threatening to break.
Finally, Zuko walks back around the hut. His face is white. "We need to go," he tells her. He slings the bag over his shoulder, bends down and gathers her in his arms. Her head rests on his shoulder and past the cords of his neck she sees the orange glow of her village on fire. Zuko walks towards a boat he must have procured and sets her down gently. He pushes the boat off the shore and jumps in, painstakingly staying in the shadows of icebergs so that no docked Fire Nation ship may spot them.
The screams slowly diminish in volume, until it's just the silence of the night and the sound of a paddle swishing through heavy water. Katara looks up at the moon again and it's like the fight has drained out of her.
I'm sorry, she thinks, unsure of who she's apologising to. Her mother, her tribe, Sokka, Aang. Everyone.
Suddenly, the strength in her body snaps back into her, and as though she is resurfacing from the water, she gasps for air and sits upright, nearly tipping the small boat in the process.
Zuko sets the oar aside. "Careful." He's watching her closely. "Are you okay?"
Unable to begin pondering the answer to that question, she changes the subject. "We need to go back."
Zuko blinks at her. "No."
"Either turn back around, or I'll jump off and swim the whole way back by myself - "
"You can't."
"I think you'll find that I can - "
"No, Katara, you can't. If you go back, you put your tribe in danger."
"No I won't, I'll be able to fight - "
"With what skills? The last two times you tried bending it didn't work out for you! You'll just be a liability."
"What do you want me to do? Nothing?" The words are too loud even in the vast open.
There is a furrow in Zuko's brow and something akin to understanding in his eyes. "Yes," he finally says. "It's the only way you can protect your tribe."
This is it, she thinks, this has got to be a nightmare. The silence remains, unperturbed, as Katara stares at herself in the water's reflection. She hears Zuko pick up the small bag by his feet and shuffle things around in it.
"I - here," he tells her rather hopelessly, scooting to the edge of his seat and stretching his hand to her. "Your dad gave this to me."
She reaches out to him and he drops something heavy and familiar into her palm. For a long second, she stares at her mother's necklace, and it's like something clicks, and she thinks that some things might chase her across the lifetimes.
Her mother is dead.
Tears drip on to her lap as she presses the pendant into her palm further. They blur her vision so that all she can see is the hazy outline of icebergs towering over them, watching passively as they drift aimlessly in the infinite ocean. She cries and cries, curling up into herself, pain splintering across her body as they remain adrift.
"I'm sorry," Zuko tells her tentatively. "About your mother... I'm sorry. That's something we have in common."
"Shut up," she hisses, tears sliding down her face. She hates him.
Suddenly, two fingers tentatively touch the hand that's still gripping the necklace. Startled, she looks up at him, and behind the sheen of tears she sees a red scar. His hand inches further into hers. She grips Zuko's hand back desperately as sobs wrack her body, the empty sound reverberating coolly between the tall icebergs. She hangs on to the only familiarity she has left, the only reminder of home she has taken with her, and it's just the two of them under the indifferent nighttime and the lights twinkling playfully above.
Disclaimer: I do not own A:TLA.
A/N: It was an absolute pain to write this chapter, as you can probably guess by how long it took to upload it. I might come back to this chapter and review a few things (key plot points will still remain, sorry) at some point. Please, please review! I read every one of them.