Katara
Lu Ten slices Zuko's fire attack. I pull out the water from my vial on impulse, staring at his angry glare and the soldiers' faces, their helmets and masks with pointy designs resembling blades and skulls.
A painful beat squeezes my chest at the recognition – the recall – of such danger. The soldiers that raided the Water Tribe had those same helmets.
I could knock Lu Ten out and leave the soldiers leaderless, weakening their stance, though I don't know if I count with enough water (or skill) to hold back all of them after that. Lu Ten orders all the fronts to attack. Zuko goes for the ones we are facing directly, Aang is tired and he can't react fast enough to the men at his side.
"Aang!" I push him out of the way and catch the fire with my water, it extinguishes as soon as they touch.
I look up and throw the water in a cutting swing that breaks a nearby tree branch, it falls in front of the soldiers' path before they can approach. I do the same to keep the soldiers from getting closer to Zuko and block the ones on Sokka's side.
"Run!" I tell the boys.
The fire already spread across the forest; wherever we go, there are razor-sharp blazes. Lu Ten orders his men to follow us, they bend openings for themselves trespassing the flames; Zuko opens some for us, but we are too slow and the soldiers are riding komodo-rhinos and Appa and Momo can't rise, they could catch fire from the tips of the trees. I throw my water again, to cut more branches that will block the soldiers' way. The current sways repeatedly, angrily, as strong as I can make it.
"Get. Away. From my. Boys!"
The fire is evaporating my water; I can see the threads of steam. They are dense.
They give me an idea.
"Aang, you can enlarge air with your airbending, right?"
He frowns but nods.
"I need you to do something for me."
I pass the water close to the fire, a few times until it dissolves completely. The steam sprouts.
"Expand the steam! Create a curtain!"
He does, and it stretches around the trees enough to obstruct the soldier's line of sight. The steam is not heavy the way smoke is, this cover won't hurt their lungs or ours.
"Well thought, Katara."
Something tickles me on the inside at Zuko's voice; it contrasts the pain I felt earlier.
We run until we get to the spot where we hid Druk. He goes up, his scales protect him from the harm of the fire and he cracks down the treetops for making another opening, Hawky is soaring above it and he squeals for signaling the opening is big enough that we can pass.
I yank Sokka to Druk's back after Zuko climbs up, Aang rides on Appa. The switch of the temperature on the cool sky makes goosebumps stand in my arms, and the sight of the forest burning under our feet shakes me in a shiver. The trees are already ashy black, like matches, and the flames arise like the pointy blades of the Fire soldiers' uniforms.
Aang frowns again, in worry. "We can't leave the forest like this. Katara, can't you do something with your waterbending?"
My shivers are suddenly caused by shame. "Sorry, Aang, I don't have any more water."
And even if I did, I wouldn't know how to bend a current big enough to put down the fire.
"Zuko, what about your firebending?"
"I don't know if I could contain such a massive fire by myself. And I don't think I'd fully extinguish it."
A fireball is shot to us, Druk has to skip it. More come in a jumble, the soldiers are sniping at us from the ground. Druk and Appa snake erratically to avoid the blasts, it's like being in the middle of a meteor shower. (Better when you are not in the meteor's way.)
Druk's cry breaks through the sky when a fire whip hits his foot. Zuko shouts, "Druk!"
We tumble to one side and he slips. I grab his hand, he clutches mine; Sokka keeps me from falling next.
My teeth clench at the stretch of my muscles and skin. Hawky and Momo try to help me pull Zuko up, yanking the shoulders of his coat with their respective claws and beak. I hiss at the beads of his bracelet nipping my palm.
"Katara."
Between gasps for air, chilly puffs clouding my vision, I see his eyes wide open without a clear expression, his face unbelievably pale, masking panic as he watches me hang awkwardly from Druk's side, small, panting and grimacing. I, in fact, hear his voice telling me to let go. I don't know if it is the memory of when he and Sokka fell down that pit in the Southern Labyrinth, but I can hear it:
'Let go'. 'You will fall'. 'You'll get hurt.'
I put on more strength that matches my resistance, the same I had when he told me to leave him behind at Zhao's warship.
Why are you like this?
I pull at his hand.
Why the self-sacrificing?
It doesn't work so I pull again.
I don't want it. I don't want to lose you...
"Druk, you have to land," my words are a strained sob because of the dull pain, "I can't pull him up like this!"
He descends to a semi-open area where we can barely evade the flames, the pain on my arm finally eases as Zuko touches the floor.
But another fire shot comes behind his back. The pain passes to my throat for my own scream, "No!"
The shot hits his back, I can't do nothing.
In another second, I get a… faint perception… of his voice going through his very thought process.
I don't know either if I am imagining it, but I can… feel him sensing the fire coming…
Because I know how sharp his senses are…
Then him realizing that if he skipped it, the fire would hit Druk, Sokka, or me…
Because I know how good his reflexes work…
And him deciding to use himself as a human shield.
Unconscious tears stream from my eyes, I count the emotions as if they were punctures: an injection of sadness, of rage, and one of recognition.
Why would you do this? Why do you sacrifice so much of yourself?
That hurts! I know for the memories appearing. Myself at the Water Tribe for years, trying to protect everyone even though I was… I couldn't. I remember that kind of pain, too. Being deficient, trying so hard to be the guardian everyone needed when I was weak. And wounded. And nobody protected me. Being alone. It kept hurting. So much. Who looks after the people that looks after everyone?
I will. "Zuko!"
The fire hit his upper back, between his shoulder blades, I examine it closer after I jump to kneel beside him. The burned hole in his coat shows his fair skin grazed by the strike, not too damaged, his coat was thick enough to protect him. Like with Zhao's shot to his stomach earlier today. (I'm not sure how much inner damage it caused to receive another attack so soon.)
He isn't unconscious, he is awake. And groaning, and trying to stand up like the noble hardhead that he is.
The anger in me stings some more.
Aang manages to land Appa, he and Sokka rush panicky to check on Zuko, Druk also tries to see him despite the slap on his foot. Hawky comes to stand next to his head, and Momo licks him.
"I'm… fine."
No, he is not. And the komodo-rhinos are coming closer.
"Anybody has some water with them?" I query.
"I have this bottle," Sokka pulls a water bottle wrapped in leather from his belt.
I shake it a bit; it is up to half, "I can make this work."
The water waves out imitating the movements of my hand. I freeze it once I get it all out, the ice isn't even the size of my fist, but that's okay. I don't need a brick, I need a bullet.
By the time the soldiers find us, I stand with my back to the boys. I know how I look: the untrained waterbender, a teenage girl acting like she can shield everyone and a dragon, and defeat a group of Fire Nation soldiers to top. What a good thing that I don't care about 'looks'. My emotions are lying low, save for the black resentment amassing, restating where my focus should be; it is more controlled than regular rage, more calculating.
The soldiers ride their rhinos to circle us. I throw the ice to one of them on my right, below the edge of his helmet, where it smacks between his eyes. Hard. He bleeds, becomes disoriented, enough to lose control of the rhino and fall from his seat. The ice shattered, so I make the pieces float and reassemble to make a cut on the next soldier's leg, loosening the leashes of his rhino and making him fall from his seat as well. The soldier next to him tries to firebend at me, I use my ice to cut his knuckles and stab the exposed side of his face when he distracts himself hissing. He screams for the stab, scaring his own rhino and losing control over the latter. They both crash against the other soldier and rhino in the line, the four of them end up in a mess of grunts on the ground.
Sokka stopped midway while trying to help Zuko up; all the boys stare at me with impossibly big eyes.
"What?" I say. "We have to leave!"
I melt the ice and return it to the bottle (just in case), and help Sokka move Zuko to Druk's back.
"I'm so, so sorry, sweet friend," I tell the poor dragon, petting him, "You're going to have to fly for a while longer. When we get out of here, I'll cure your wound myself."
He nods, making some sound that hears itself affirmative. I kiss my palm and press it to the side of his head.
I tell him to rise, but burned branches fall from the trees, halting our path. Other soldiers keep coming, too many for me to handle with the water from Sokka's bottle. Zuko's injured and I don't know if Aang is better yet – or if it'd be a good idea at all to use airbending and run the risk that the air encouraged the flames.
The soldiers finally surround us, Druk continues his attempts to rise. It is difficult, the fire reached everywhere, like we were inside one of their fireballs. If he went up, we would burn.
The soldiers use more fire whips to tie his feet.
"No!"
A water tentacle comes out of… nowhere… and disintegrates the whips.
"What…"
A huge blast of air pushes down the standing trees, making a much wider aperture than what Druk did before.
"Kids, are you alright?"
"Gyatso?" We all look down to him.
He is battling the Fire soldiers. In hand-to-hand combat. And winning.
And he isn't wearing his Air Nomad robe, he is wearing an indigo blue one with a white neck and details in the ends of its sleeves with some flower-shaped symbol. It looks like that lotus flower we found drawn in the Southern Labyrinth…
"Go to the top of the mountain," he says.
"What is…"
"Go to the top of the mountain!" he repeats – much fiercer than he has ever talked to us. "And that's an order! Go to the top and don't return to the forest! Kanna is waiting for you there!"
"Kanna?"
"You mean our grandmother?" Sokka finishes for me.
He's just as confused as I am – we all are. We have… never mentioned Gran-Gran to Gyatso. He could mean someone else. But then… how did he know we would recognize the name?
"Just go!"
We do. I direct Druk to the top of the mountain, to the remains of the air temple. There are… people there… wearing the same robe Gyatso was wearing in the forest… Gran-Gran…
"Katara! Sokka!"
She is smiling.
She is here.
I fall down, as though I fainted.
Sokka catches me.
I only register the night sky.
Sokka is saying my name. Zuko, Aang. All of them want to wake me; I am… beaten… by every new shocker showing up out of the blue. Until she says my name:
"Katara!"
I blink. She is here. Gran-Gran. She is here.
"Gran-Gran… What are you…"
I stand up. My feet touch the floor. I don't know when we went down from Druk's back.
I gasp, "Druk!"
Hysteria is the first emotion that I distinguish from the unclear fog inside my brain, I run to him, and then…
"Zuko, are you okay?"
Gran-Gran takes my hand. "Katara, Katara, calm down. Everything is fine."
No, it isn't. What is 'everything'?
Is my hair loose? When did my braids fall apart?
What is happening?
"We should get you all inside," Gran-Gran says.
Sokka comes to hold me when she lets go of my hand, Aang scoots closer to us. Zuko is at our side, his eyes follow Gran-Gran and the other elderly men accompanying her. When he looks back at me, there is a single glint of moonshine in them. The familiarity of it is enough to shake off a tad more of the numbness.
I keep stumbling as we walk, my limps are waking up… slowly.
They take us to a corner of the wreckage, where the pieces of stone were… brushed away, and there's a compartment in there. A door. We get inside. There's darkness, a long road of darkness. It is… endless, with misleading proportions as if we were walking a straight line, but I notice we are walking downhill. We finally get to… I don't know. It's a second floor, the boys and I can see the ground floor better when we get closer to a metallic railing. There's another opening at one side of the wall in there and Druk and Appa come through it. This place is… big. Like it could fit an underground city. It's empty – at least this space – there's only the ground floor for Druk and Appa to rest. Looking up, there's a small window embed at the top of the mountain – the mountain is very ceiling of whatever this place is.
"What is going on?" The numbness makes my question come out much calmer than what I'm feeling. I turn to Gran-Gran.
"You entered this place once, didn't you?"
I look at Sokka.
"The underground amphitheater?" he says.
"It's… much bigger than that," she answers. "But… if you were at the amphitheater, you saw the White Lotus insignia?"
White lotus insignia, like the ones in the robes Gyatso was wearing and that Gran-Gran is wearing now.
"What is going on?" I repeat.
"See, kids, there are things I never… I never had the chance to tell you." There are tears in her eyes.
Kanna
I don't remember much from that day. The voyage is a sequence of short yet significant moments with people I haven't seen since then. The one ingrained in my head is before I stepped onto the canoe. I felt dainty, weightless. I didn't have anything, except for my necklace. The canoe was light as well, made of thin materials, it wouldn't last long. I did consider all the horrible possibilities and outcomes, unafraid. If I died, I died.
I wasn't pessimistic though, I was friendly and polite; it earned me lots of friends that gave me food and new clothes, and materials to build new boats. It's not a time in my life that I resent, it was interesting, and I felt adventurous although I wasn't sure that I truly was.
I was impressed by how easy it was to talk with everyone, I had few friends back at home, the divisions between the nations couldn't stop my voice from travelling and being heard. It was idealistic, but it was my belief.
One of those friends I met used to do nothing but compliment my conversational skills during our friendly games of Pai Sho. Probably the reason why I always won.
He introduced me to his other friends, enthusiasts of the game. I beat them all.
Hama was slightly more difficult to defeat, but I did. That was when I received my Lotus tile and my robes.
Someone so adept at conversation and who could charm so many people from so many parts of the world would be an asset for an international organization of such renown.
Katara
She was born in the North Pole.
She was engaged in an arranged marriage with a man she didn't love.
She fled.
She lied.