Disclaimer: I do not own any part of ATLA or the words of Jane Austen.

Chapter 12: There Is In Every Disposition A Tendency To Some Particular Evil

Katara was looking for something. She was not sure what it was or why she needed it so desperately as she wandered through her familiar frozen village. The cold bit at her nose and finger, an almost welcome feeling after so many months of heat. She had missed seeing her breath fog in front of her, a reminder of her own vitality and warmth. With increasing urgency, she entered one igloo or tent after another. She looked under furs, in pots, and behind tent flaps, still not finding whatever it was she needed. She even sifted through the long-extinguished ashes of the cook fires.

Rising stiffly from one such hearth, Katara realized how alone she was in the hut. It slowly dawned on her that she had seen no one else in the village during her search. She stepped out into the center of the village once more surveying the collection of dwellings huddled together inside the protective ice fortifications. Inexorably, the emptiness pressed in on her. There was such a stillness throughout her home; no fires creating curls of smoke, no children playing, no polar dogs barking, not even a breath of wind to enliven the scene; just the gently falling snow. Suddenly, even her muffled footsteps and quiet breathing sounded too loud in the pervasive silence.

This was not the village from which she and Sokka had left to rescue Aang; this was the home of their childhood from when their mother had still been alive. Everyone had abandoned this village after Kya's murder not wishing to live among the ghosts of the slain. Pressing onward, still looking for whatever it was, Katara pushed away the happy distracting memories of her former home. She could feel the cold beginning to creep into her limbs; she had to keep moving or else she would freeze.

As Katara rushed forward, she tripped over something hidden under the soft layer of freshly fallen snow. Looking more carefully in front of her, she saw the remains of an ice lodge scattered about, slightly obscured. She had tripped over one of the far-flung ice blocks. Some great force had destroyed the lodge leaving all the neighboring buildings intact. What had happened here? Her mind refused to remember. She dragged herself to her feet. She still needed to find what she was looking for.

Skirting the wreckage, Katara noticed that one small room had withstood the destruction. Its door was made of a sheet of ice so thick that she could not make out anything through it. Something about the strange door made her nerves tingle and her stomach roil. Continuing on with her search, she determinedly avoided the little room standing sentinel over the ruined home. She felt the edges of half remembered pain and dread emanating from it. Inexplicably, she knew something she would prefer to forget waited on the other side of that door.

Her search continued to turn up nothing. The need to find whatever it was grew more urgent with each passing moment. Her limbs were now stiff with the cold and frost coated her eyelashes turning them white. This last made it harder to see as each blink threatened to freeze her eyes shut. Finally, having exhausted all her other options, she turned towards the little room with its mysterious door. As she approached the door, her body felt like it was made of ice. Her breath no longer plumed out in front of her. Where had all her warmth gone?

Standing within arm's reach of the door, Katara heard the first sounds not created by her. Soft singing floated out to her from behind the door. After listening carefully for a span of heartbeats, she picked out three voices that were at the same time one; a young child, a woman who sounded much like her mother, and a quavering old woman. Stretching out a shaking hand, she, at last, opened the door.

With a loud clatter of wood hitting wood, a tangle of marionettes tumbled forth nearly striking Katara as they swung about wildly. They were each carved and painted beautifully. One was dressed in green silks with a face painted white with dramatic slashes of red and black for its mouth and eyes. Another was dressed in blue with eyes to match and a tiny boomerang in its wooden fist. Amongst the tangle of limbs, she spotted a bare wooden arm with a blue arrow tattoo flowing down it. There were at least three others of differing sizes dressed in shades of green and brown near the front. It was hard to pick out individuals in the mass of puppets, they were so entangled. Their limbs jutted out at odd unnatural angles. A few looked quite battered or even broken.

Examining the strange assortment of figures, Katara felt a wave of guilt and loss sweep over her. One, in particular, seemed to have suffered the most damage. It was dressed all in red with striking accents of gold. The left side of its face was charred and burned away. All its limbs hung twisted and broken in many places. She was about to reach out and touch this last figure when she suddenly felt a deep surge of rage. In the wake of the rush of emotion, she knew that she had been the one to so brutally break the puppet.

Staggering back in horror, Katara slammed the door shut. This only increased the volume of the singing coming from behind it. Looking down at her hands as she pulled them away from the door, she saw they were coated in bright red blood. She raised her head to see her reflection in the ice. She stared at herself covered in blood the color of the mutilated marionette's robes. Unable to tear her eyes from the gruesome image, she noticed something strange about her face. Leaning closer, she saw her eyes were not their usual oceanic blue. Instead, they were black. The black of her mother's killer's eyes.

Katara awoke screaming. She sat up quickly, drenched in sweat. Holding out her hands in front of her, she frantically examined them for any trace of blood in the moonlight still streaming through her window. Finding only her smooth brown skin, she began to cry with relief and reaction to the nightmare.

The tears were short lived. As the last dripped from her chin, she laid back in her bed breathing deeply for a time, waiting for her heart to stop racing. It was only a dream, just a dream, she kept repeating to herself silently. As her heart rate returned to its normal rhythm a fresh wave of guilt and self-disgust washed over her.

It had not been just a dream. She was a bloodbender. What more proof did she need than what she had nearly- no, actually done to Zuko yesterday. I could have killed him. I almost killed him. She curled into a ball unwilling to even look at her safe comforting surroundings. I'm a monster. How can I ever face my friends again? How can I ever face Zuko again?

After her tidal wave had poured over the cliff and she had seen Zuko collapsed against Toph's wall, she had stood frozen, afraid that she had actually killed Zuko. Move, please just move, her mind had desperately begged the battered prince. Tui and La, let him be alright. He has to be alright.

When Zuko had finally sat up coughing up water, Katara had taken two relieved steps towards him. Then meeting his mismatched eyes, she had halted. He was not one of her friends to be comforted and healed. Moreover, she had been the one to hurt him. That wave of water had washed away the moral high ground she had been sitting on with regards to the firebender for months. With these realizations, she had let her eyes fall and turned away not waiting to hear the admonishments of the group or Zuko's rebuke. She had not returned to the common area until all the others had gone to bed.

As she lay recollecting the near disaster, Katara felt the heat of Zuko's blood again. She pushed away the sensation. It had not been her bloodbending that had nearly killed him. It had been her raw uncontrolled waterbending.

Sometimes Katara wondered if her sometimes visceral terrified reaction to bloodbending was not that she viewed bending other's bodies to her will as truly reprehensible, terrifying in its cruelty and inhumanity. Maybe it was rather a fear of her own power that knotted her stomach and brought tears to her eyes. She could still remember the first time she had scared her family with her bending. She had been almost four when she had become angry enough to shatter a large portion of a nearby glacier. The looks of horror on both her brave parents' faces had scared her far more than the falling ice shards. From that day on, some small hidden part of her had lived in fear of her own bending.

That fear had been brought to the surface by Hama's bloodbending training but now she recognized that it went far deeper than that. Bending any element by its very nature was dangerous. Fire was not the only element of destruction.

Picturing Zuko tumbling helplessly through her engulfing wave, Katara recalled a saying of Master Pakku's. "Even a volcano's heat is smothered by the ocean. Water can be dammed or blocked for a time but never truly stopped or destroyed. It will always find a way to flow." She had never really appreciated how right her old teacher had been.

As afraid of firebending as Aang had been after burning Katara's hands, it had been his waterbending with the Ocean Spirit that had massacred the Fire Navy. The scale of the death toll still made her shudder. She wasn't sure that her friend had every truly acknowledged to himself what he had done.

One of Aang's few faults was his inability to deal with emotionally difficult situations, particularly if they involved himself. He always ran away from them if he could. It was one of the many reasons that Katara had never formed any real romantic feelings for him. With so many people leaving her when she was young, the last thing she wanted was a partner in life that ran away from life's challenges.

With a sigh, Katara arose. She had no desire to go back to sleep and risk another nightmare. Perhaps a walk through the moonlight would better reconcile her to what she had done. Exiting her room into the dark inner passage, her shin barked into something yielding yet hard. A muffled gasp from near her right hip made clear that she had stumbled into someone's knee.

"Who's there?" Katara whispered harshly, not wanting to wake the whole temple. She searched the gloom beside her doorway to discover who was lurking outside her room. The gasp had sounded masculine to her ears. "Dad? Sokka? Uncle Iroh?"

"No," a gruff voice replied quietly. A small flame burst to life illuminating Zuko's apprehensive face and disheveled hair. Katara took an involuntary step back from the prince who was seated cross legged against the wall beside her door.

"Zuko! What are you doing here?" Katara demanded, her tone only slightly accusatory. "How long have you been sitting outside my room?"

Zuko looked away from her uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his neck. "I heard you screaming. I ran over to see who was attacking you. Then... you were just sitting there crying and…" He shrugged helplessly. He had been unwilling to leave Katara alone when she was so clearly upset but also had not felt comfortable intruding on her in her bedroom in the middle of the night. Particularly not after their fight earlier in the day.

Katara looked embarrassed. She too began studying the floor between them. "I'm sorry I woke you. It was just a bad dream. You don't need to worry about me. Go back to bed." A similar scene, lit by green crystals pressed in on both their memories. Zuko chanced a look up at Katara and saw her swallow hard an uncomfortable expression on her face. Turning away from him abruptly, she muttered, "I'm going for a walk."

Sighing quietly to himself, Zuko arose brushing himself off. He was startled when Katara added from several paces away, "You can come with me if you want to." Shocked, he started forward to join her.

The two walked for a long time in silence. As they passed near the site of their sparring from earlier in the day, Katara hesitantly asked, "Are you okay? I was really afraid that I had hurt you earlier."

Zuko looked down at her trying to understand her mood and expression. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it. Accidents… accidents happen in training." He was not really sure it had been an accident. Katara had been so angry with him for so long he couldn't help but wonder if disposing of him permanently had been her real intention.

"I should've had better control," Katara finally looked up at him, her eyes begging for forgiveness. "I am so sorry!" His breath caught. Katara was apologizing to him. Even if she had been in the wrong, he had never expected her to humble herself enough to apologize to him. "I'll completely understand if you don't want to train with me anymore. How could you possibly forgive me? I could have killed you! If it wasn't for Toph-"

Zuko broke in at this point, "It's fine. I forgive you. It's fine." He felt his insides lurch uncomfortably at her obvious distress. He stepped forward away from the disconcerting girl. It was true that she had nearly killed him but it was obvious now that had not been her intent. As he began to walk away from her, he felt her hand close around his wrist, stopping him.

Katara stepped around Zuko forcing him to face her. "It's not fine! Things are not fine between us! Stop pretending like they are! Almost killing someone is not fine!" It was obvious to both of them that she wasn't just referring to what had happened earlier. She took a deep breath and continued, "Look, I am apologizing because I did something awful to you. Don't pretend like it's nothing. Actions have consequences." Zuko stared at her transfixed, not making any movement to pull his arm away from her. "I'm not going to pretend that we're friends or that I'm not still mad at you for what you did, but I promised your uncle that I would give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not doing the greatest job so far but I am trying. I promise that if you decide to keep training with me nothing like that will ever happen again." She emphasized her last statement by squeezing his wrist.

"Alright, I accept your apology," Zuko said quietly, his eyes never leaving Katara's. "I want to keep training with you. I think… I think we make each other better." He flushed. Suddenly, being alone with Katara in the moonlight and her holding his arm was all too much for Zuko. He pulled away from her. With only a terse 'good night', he walked away, back towards his room. She was right things were still not 'fine' between them but he resolved to also try harder.

Katara watched the prince leave with a mixture of relief and disappointment. She was not sure what she had been hoping for. Maybe a real apology to her for what had happened in Ba Sing Se, a heated argument where all grievances were laid bare, or maybe some more concrete resolution and absolution of her own misdeed. She probably should not have told him off, but she had always had a quick temper. Yet another thing I need to be better at controlling. Walking to the cliff's edge, she sat looking out over the ravine letting the moonlight and the breeze play over her skin.

Dawn found a tired-eyed Katara making more apologies to Iroh and the other firebenders. She bowed formally to Zuko in apology and he to her in forgiveness. To Iroh, at least, it was obvious that the two had already reached some sort of understanding the previous night. After a tense morning training and a subdued breakfast, he asked Katara if she would mind taking a look at his elbow. She immediately jumped up to accompany him to the fountain. Over the girl's head, Iroh met Hakoda's concerned blue gaze. With a tilt of the head, he invited the Water Tribe parent to join them.

Zuko had not been the only one awoken by Katara's screams the night before. Hakoda who had more experience with his daughter's nightmares had recognized the tone of the cries. His chamber was next to hers so he had not missed the conversation between his daughter and the Fire Nation prince. After following them stealthily and having been assured that Zuko held no grudge against Katara for the previous day's training incident, Hakoda had returned to bed without either teen noticing.

The massive wave the previous day had frightened him, reminding him of his powerlessness in the face of Katara's raw unstoppable bending. While he had the natural fear of the devastation her bending might cause, it had never been the true source of his terror. He and Kya had lived in constant fear that one day Katara would be taken away or killed for her bending. His instinct was to protect his daughter at all cost. Even the cost of losing Kya. He had never blamed Katara for her mother's death but part of his subconscious had blamed her bending. The need to zealously protect his children had only grown with the loss of his wife; to the point of driving him to the hard choice of leaving them to go fight in a war that threatened them. Leaving Sokka and Katara, knowing he was unlikely to see them again, had been the hardest thing Hakoda had ever had to do.

Hearing Katara's cries in the night had deepened his desire to protect his children. If that wave of water had shown him nothing else, it had demonstrated to Hakoda that Katara was passed the point of needing his physical protection. Now, she needed something much more complicated; his emotional support and unjudging confidence.

Iroh too had heard the cries in the night, familiar to him from his time aboard ship with Zuko. He was determined to get Katara to open up in a way he had never managed with Zuko. Hakoda looked similarly resolved.

Beginning her examination of Iroh's elbow, Katara glanced questioningly at her father as he sat on the edge of the fountain beside her. Iroh dragged her attention back to him when he began, "I was so glad to see that you and my nephew had patched things up after yesterday's accident."

"Accident," Katara scoffed. "More like a disaster. I was so determined to win then I got distracted and lost control. I will not let that happen again."

"I am surprised to hear that," Iroh said in a light tone. Katara was certainly more forthcoming than Zuko. Maybe this would not be too difficult. "I have never known you to become distracted during a training before. What happened to distract you?"

Katara flushed and more determinedly healed Iroh perfectly functional elbow. Not looking at either man, she said, "I felt his blood."

The simple sentence elicited disgruntled and confused expressions from the two men. "Katara, when you say you felt his blood, do you mean that somehow you cut Prince Zuko?" Hakoda asked struggling to understand.

Acting as though she had not heard her father's question, she continued still fixedly looking at Iroh's elbow, "Most living things are mainly made up of water. Grass, trees, even animals. People are no different." Katara did not see the dawning looks of comprehension and fear on her listener's faces. With a swirl of the fingers of her dry hand, water pulled from the air crystallized into ice on their tips. "We are never truly far from water. As long as we are living."

Both men managed to school their expressions into bland interest as she looked up at them. "Did any of the other's mention that we had met another waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe?"

Shaking his head in an emphatic negative, Hakoda said, "How is that possible? There hasn't been another waterbender in the tribe in my lifetime." Shooting a glare at Iroh, he added, "The last of them were dragged away by the Fire Nation before my father took his first steps."

"She was quite old." Katara was back to looking at the water in the fountain basin. "We met Hama while traveling through the Fire Nation after Ba Sing Se. She had escaped the prison they took her to long ago. In my experience, Fire Nation cells are not really designed to hold master waterbenders, not ones that are truly desperate. I used my sweat to break out of mine and Hama… Hama used bloodbending." She stopped speaking, letting the word hang in the air between them.

With eyebrows threatening to escape in search of his receded hairline, Iroh asked, "She trained you?"

"She tried," Katara said, her tone empty. "She wanted me to carry on her work."

"Her work?"

"You see if you can control the blood in someone's body, it gives you absolute control over their movements and… life. Hama was using it to take revenge on Fire Nation citizens. She wanted me to join her. I was… unwilling."

Hakoda felt a little relieved but Katara's tone told him that there was more to come. Both men waited for Katara to continue.

"She tried to force me by bending me to her will. Then when that didn't work she started bending Aang and Sokka to attack me and each other. It was horrible. I had to. I had to stop her. So, I did."

Reaching out to Katara, Iroh lay a hand over hers in a reassuring gesture. Then, he asked, "You did what?"

"I bent her blood. I made sure she could not hurt my friends. My bending overpowered hers. We captured her and turned her over to the villagers she had been terrorizing. But she accomplished what she wanted. I am a bloodbender." Hearing the statement aloud from her own lips disgusted Katara. She stood unable to sit still any longer.

"So, when you say, you felt Prince Zuko's blood, you mean you bent his blood?" Hakoda clarified his earlier question. He was unsure how to react. Katara's bending had always been impressive but it was hard for him to comprehend that his daughter could control another's body like a puppet. He looked at Iroh to see a speculative look pass over the old general's face.

"I didn't actually bend it, I just felt the draw of it as I pulled all that water to me," Katara confessed. "I was so horrified by what I might have done to him that I loosed all the water at once and almost did something much worse." Looking to Iroh for forgiveness, she promised, "I swear it wasn't on purpose and I won't let it happen again. Please don't tell Zuko."

"I am sure you will be more careful in the future," Iroh reassured Katara in a voice of calm understanding. "But unless you learn to control this ability as with your others, I am afraid you won't be able to prevent feeling more people's blood as you put it."

"What are you suggesting, General?" Hakoda asked abruptly.

"I think you, Lady Katara, should begin training daily using this ability immediately. For without practice using and controlling it, you will likely be unable to prevent yourself from slipping into it again. Tell me, have you tested this ability much?"

Looking both apprehensive and relieved, Katara answered, "Only during the fight with Hama and again two days ago on myself."

"Ah, that was a good thought, to begin with yourself. Tell us what did you try to do?"

After explaining her theories about enhanced movements and the possibility of using it in healing, Iroh asked Katara for a demonstration. Deciding against another rock smashing test, she attempted to enhance a jump allowing her to leap almost as high as an inexperienced airbender. She landed hard, shaking with the effort.

"Perhaps, we should try something a little less dramatic next," Hakoda suggested. "Maybe you could try to move one of our limbs."

"What?!" Katara exploded. "You want me to bend your blood?!"

"I admit to a certain amount of curiosity about the process myself," Iroh agreed. "Neither of us are suggesting you fling us around like ragdolls. But we give you full permission for to control basic movements."

Still hesitating, Katara argued, "But what if I mess up and hurt you?"

"It's a good thing we have our group's healer on hand if you do," Hakoda said jokingly, giving her a wink.

"You really are not going to like this," Katara said as she shifted her stance. At first, neither man felt anything. Then as Katara's fingers curled and she brought her hand down, they felt their arms tug sharply downwards seemingly of their own volition. Then the feeling of control returned to their arms. Next, their left legs each took a step forward at the exact same time. It was without a doubt the strangest thing Hakoda had ever felt. He had full sensation in the limb but at the same time had absolutely no control over it. She continued to walk them forward, occasionally moving their arms, until Momo flew over to investigate what the three were doing.

"Enough," Katara said harshly. She stood shaking, her eyes too wide and her face pale.

"That was very impressive," Iroh said encouragingly. "How does it feel when you do that?"

Taking a deep breath to settle her nerves, she said, "Like I am playing with living dolls. It is easier than it was last time even without the full moon. Maybe because you aren't waterbenders or maybe because I'm improving." The thought made Katara fall silent again. Hakoda stepped forward and put a comforting arm around her.

"I can see it upsets you, so let us stop for today," Iroh suggested. "I know you were introduced to this technique in one of the worst ways possible and thus it must seem terrible to you. But this technique like any other is only as terrible as the bender wills it to be. I myself can produce lightning but that does not mean I must use it to kill people. You are a master waterbender. You have the control."

Katara looked up at her father who smiled at her reassuringly and then at the wise old teacher. "Thank you. I will remember."

A/N:

Phew! Not the most upbeat chapter ever but we got to delve into some of the characters' issues that needed exploration. I had originally outlined a bunch of other smaller scenes examining the faults in more of the characters but it got too dark and too long. So I cut them. I should really run these things passed someone before posting them.

The next few chapters are going to be quite fluffy in contrast with this one. They are actually the first chapters I wrote for this story. Less moody contemplative angst and more teenage hijinks. Hope you will enjoy the lighter fare.

While yes, bloodbending is terrifying, I have never thought it was fundamentally evil. I can't quite swallow that burning, maiming, stabbing, electrocuting, crushing, or drowning someone is somehow preferable to temporarily incapacitating them. Obviously, it could be used to kill or maim but all other attacks (excepting airbending) could do the same if not defended against.

Thanks to all of you for reviewing the chapters. I really appreciate the feedback and encouragement. Being a first-time writer, I am not sure what the etiquette is for responding to reviews but know that I read them and they help motivate me to keep going.

Next time a discussion of appropriate boundaries.