I don't think there are a lot of people interested in this AU. Luckily for this story, I still am! I don't know for how long, but for the time being, here's another chapter. It's pretty much just description/internal monologue, but there'll be more dialogue and character interaction once Katara finds people she actually wants to talk to.
Just to be clear, this will be following Katara for a while. Zuko will show up in a few chapters. Sorry, Zuko fans, but Katara's my fave so I'm focusing on her exclusively for now.
Katara waited for what felt like a full day, if not more. Her arms and legs were stiff, her hands numb. She had slept for a few fitful hours, and drooled on the floor, unable to stop herself because of the gag. Without anyone to take her to the bathroom, she had wet her pants, which made her eyes sting and her face burn with shame. She hadn't done that since she was three!
She was so thirsty.
Eventually, someone came clomping down the metal stairs, and made a noise of disgust at the smell. They went back up, making Katara whimper with both relief and disappointment. Would they leave her down here forever?
The person returned a few minutes later, carrying something she couldn't make out. She couldn't even see their face from her position on the floor. Something jangled, and the bars slid to one side, and then closed behind them.
"All right, kid, up you get," they said gruffly, in a man's voice. He pulled her up into a sitting position, undid her ropes, and took out the gag.
"I wanna go home," Katara whimpered hoarsely, as soon as she could speak.
"Tough luck. Change into this, and you'll get food and water." Something thumped to the floor beside her.
Katara, still sore, undressed slowly. The man was kind enough to turn his back, allowing a modicum of privacy, although Katara was too young and too overwhelmed to worry much about such a thing. She hesitated to remove her parka, because her emaa-emaa had sewn it for her, but it was uncomfortably warm in the ship and sweating would only make her thirstier. She pulled on the shirt, more of a shift on her because of her age, and made a face at the rough texture and dull red color.
"Um . . . I'm done," she said quietly. The man turned and set a tray on the floor in front of her. On it was a small cup of water and a bowl of plain brown rice. He himself was fairly young, with a crooked nose and an ill-tempered expression that scared her. Katara busied herself with gulping down the water to avoid looking at him.
"Leave the tray by the bars when you're done," he grunted, then grabbed her clothes and set them alight.
"No!" Katara yelped, scrambling backwards. Frightened, she started to wail.
"Calm down, brat, I'm not gonna hurt you," he said sourly. Katara didn't believe him, and even if she had, she still would've been upset by the loss of her clothes. When her crying didn't stop, he amended, "I won't hurt you if you don't give me reason to. That means do as I say and shut up."
Katara clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide, body still shuddering with sobs.
"Eat your rice, brat. That bucket in the corner is for doing your business. You're probably too young to bend much, but if you do, you won't get anything to drink. Understand?"
Katara nodded silently.
He grunted again, satisfied, and stomped back up from where he'd come.
It took a long time for her to gather the courage to eat the rice.
Things quickly settled into a routine. The guard, a junior soldier apparently burdened with watching her, stopped by regularly with rice and water. He emptied her bucket and brought her a thin futon to sleep on. Every so often, she was given a clean shirt so that the dirty one could be laundered. She had no shoes, as her boots had been burned, and no covers, as it was warm below deck, and they were considered an unnecessary luxury for a prisoner, besides.
She had no way to know if it was day or night, and no way to mark the passage of time. She was on the very bottom deck, below the ocean surface, so no sunlight or moonlight reached her, and she was too young to recognize the moon's effect on her bending. The lights, a dim red color, never turned off. She could only tell if it was nighttime by the different lengths of time between her meals.
The soldier rarely spoke to her, and if he did, it was either an order or a reprimand. Katara's defiance had long since deserted her, and she did her best not to displease him. The only comfort she had was the swaying of the ship in the water, and even that was greatly reduced in this strange metal boat.
Her diet had very little variation. Occasionally she would get tea instead of water, or a pickled plum with her rice, but that was it. Katara was getting very sick of rice. She spent hours fantasizing about seal jerky and sea prunes and arctic hen and five flavor soup. She felt like Sokka. The comparison made her giggle, and then cry.
It could have been weeks or even months until the boat finally stopped moving.
Katara sat stiffly on her ratty futon, her stomach growling. The soldier, whose name she still did not know, hadn't brought her food yet. It was impossible to tell, but Katara was sure that he was very late. Maybe he had forgotten — he had done so several times in the past — or simply hadn't bothered.
She could hear shouts from above, but they sounded exuberant, cheerfulness lurking in their indistinct voices.
It reminded her of when the men in her village returned from a successful hunt, bearing bounties of meat and fur and bone that kept the tribe supplied with clothes and weapons and fed for weeks at a time. There was always a big celebration when they got back, and the women, overseen by Gran-Gran, made a feast in the main lodge that the whole village was invited to.
She and her aniingaq would tussle and play under the tables and listen to stories at the feet of the village elders. Sokka always got so mad when the older boys refused to let him roughhouse with them, even though he would turn around and do the exact same thing to the kids younger than him. Katara, at eight, was the only other child close to his age in the tribe, and she was content to keep her brother all to herself (not that she'd ever let on that she was).
And then, once the fires burnt low and the elders and babies dozed off, they'd all go home to their igloo, and she'd curl up beside her brother on their soft bed furs and then her father would kiss them goodnight and her mother would —
Katara realized that her homesickness and fear were threatening to overwhelm her again, and bit back her tears. Crying did nothing but make her thirsty, and it made the soldier uncomfortable and tetchy if he saw her. It was best to save it for what she assumed was the nighttime, when no one could hear her begging for her mother.
A long while later, something heavy started clanking down the stairs. Katara saw red and black and spikes and cried out. It was the monster! The monster was back, and he was going to burn her just like he had done to her aana —
"Oh, shut up, brat," it grumbled, and Katara's eyes widened at the familiar words, uttered so often during her time in the cell. The soldier! The soldier had turned into the monster?! No, the monster had sounded and even looked different — she would never forget.
The soldier gripped his new head and pulled. His familiar, scowling face reappeared.
It's armor! Katara realized. She had seen her father in armor before, but his face had always been completely visible. This armor was so alien to her that she had assumed that it was some terrifying beast, like in the stories Sokka told her to scare her.
It meant that the monster was a man.
The thing that had burned her mother was a person.
The soldier, unaware and uncaring about her epiphany, stomped into her cell with ropes in his hands. He barked orders that she obeyed without protest, standing and presenting her wrists to be tied in front of her.
"If you try to run or bend, I'll burn you. Understand?"
Katara nodded silently, still reeling from her earlier revelations, too overwhelmed to even contemplate escape. Fire had never been anything but a source of warmth and light to her before, but now it was a weapon, a threat, and she would never regard it the same way again.
And then, for the first time since she arrived, she stepped out of her cell. The soldier tugged her along by the rope like livestock, uncaring of her shorter legs. The metal stairs bit into her tender feet. It was madness to go anywhere without socks and boots in the Southern Water Tribe, even indoors. A person would get frostbitten within hours. She had never gone anywhere barefoot in her life. Even sleeping was better done with socks.
Katara was pulled through dim hallways swarming with other monsters, other soldiers, who didn't bother to look at her as she stumbled past. They went up three more flights of iron stairs before arriving at the top deck.
The first thing she noticed was the sun. It stabbed at her eyes like the glare of snow in summer. The second was the heat. It was pervasive and all-encompassing, like nothing she had ever felt before. The third was the smell. The familiar scent of brine and sea salt was there, but she also smelled a plethora of unfamiliar organic scents, like the fruit Bato had once brought them after a trading expedition, but warm and everywhere.
The fourth was the monster.
He stood at the sharp, cruel prow of his ship, surveying his ranks of soldiers like a sharkwhale might a school of fish. His eyes swept over her for a moment, and Katara felt something inside her burn even as she froze, fear a rock in her stomach and rage a fire in her throat.
He addressed his troops, but Katara wasn't listening to anything but her own gasping breaths and pounding heart.
Katara was struggling to keep upright. She had been marching in the middle of a formation of raiders for what felt like hours, and they showed no signs of stopping. She was young, she was thirsty, she was hungry, she had been wasting away in a brig for La knows how long, and she was exhausted. Her feet were bleeding from the many sharp rocks she had trod on, and were caked with dirt. She had already fallen twice, and been pulled sharply to her feet with the rope both times.
"Tsubasa is within sight," a female soldier called, and the soldiers doubled their pace. Katara tripped, but managed to stay upright, and broke into a painful run. She told herself that it was just the raised dust that made her eyes sting.
They eventually came to a halt outside of the tall metal gates and wooden walls that blocked the entrance to the city. It was completely different from the snow and ice that protected her village, but Katara was too tired to stare.
The soldiers organized themselves into parade formation, and the soldier holding her rope eagerly tugged her to the front, with the other spoils of war. There weren't many; the Southern Water Tribe, once as impressive as its sister in the north, had been devastated by a hundred years of raids and war. Katara was the crown jewel of their loot, and she wasn't very impressive.
She tensed as the monster strode to the front, and the gates swung open.
The city was just as strange to Katara as the armor, but what really shocked her were the people. They lined the streets and thronged along the storefronts, gathering to welcome the Southern Raiders home. She felt their curious stares and shrank into herself, walking as far away from the monster as the rope would let her.
She caught the amber eyes of a girl her age sitting on her father's shoulders. The contempt there surprised her; it was like she was looking at an animal. For the first time in a while, Katara thought of how she must look. She hadn't bathed since she had been taken, she was wearing only a rough red shirt, and she was covered in dirt from the road. Her braid had long since morphed into a mass of knots and tangles. In contrast, the little girl was clean and pretty, her dark hair twisted into a bun and her clothes neat.
Shame rose up like bile in Katara's throat, and her blue gaze dropped to her toes.
They eventually reached what the monster referred to as the Waterbender prison. It was an imposing iron complex that reminded her sharply of the brig. She was ceremoniously handed off to the awaiting guards by the monster, who had taken her rope once they came to a halt. As they led her away, she looked desperately at the man who had taken care of her for so long. As frightening as he was, he was the only person she had seen during her time at sea, and she had latched onto him as only a lonely child could. Surely, after so long, he had become at least a little attached to her?
He didn't even look at her.
As the battalion marched away, Katara defeatedly turned and waited for the guards to take her away.
Though it may be the last time she ever saw the soldier, it was not the last she'd see the monster. She'd make sure of it.
Emaa: grandmother
Aniingaq: older brother
I'm starting to think that this AU is worth it purely because I get to learn so much about the Alutiiq! Apologies to any Alutiiq people for any inaccuracies, but your culture is so interesting and beautiful! I really admire it. For anyone else interested, another great resource is alutiiqlanguage dot org
Seriously, though, it's actually so cool to imagine the Water Tribes as based on the Alutiiq. They even have northern and southern dialects! Needless to say, I'm using the southern dialect, though we may see northern words as the story progresses. ;)
Tsubasa is a city I made up, because it didn't make sense for any dangerous and unbroken foreign benders to be held in the capital or a vacation site like the islands.