I hope I've done Avatar justice. And, I know, this 'episode' is early in the cannon. But, the tags do state this is a semi-timeline compliant rewrite. Also, a big shout out to Chevalier Lecteur and Jak Fortunefor your awesome reviews!

Big Love, big reads 3

This is officially a finished work which I will be updating once a week while I work on Book Two: Earth. Stay tuned!


The first thing Katara learned to be proud of, is she is her mother's daughter. And when the Fire Nation came for her, she did as she was asked. She ran. She ran when the snow fell black. She ran when the soldiers in red stormed the black shale beaches. She ran when her mother told her to find her brother. She ran to her family's tent and tripped on the body. Father held her. Her older brother Sokka was supposed to be the stoic one, but he cried when she was supposed to as Gran Gran led Kya's rise to Tui and La. Katara watched, and thought it a shame she died inside, away from the snow.

In the South Pole there is no place to bury their dead. Giving Kya over to flames was out of the question, so they had to drag the body far away, so it did not rot in the home. The Fire Nation left the loved ones to do it.


Imprisoned

Darkness presses in. Katara can't get comfy on the cold metal of her cell. Can't sleep. Can't pull herself out of the pit of despair Tyro and the other Earthbenders acceptance of their fate threw her into. Everything she knows about Earthbenders feels like a lie, and that in turn makes her feel even worse. Tyro alone has been in prison longer than Katara's been able to competently bend water. How can she blame him for being so hopeless? How is she supposed to accept these people just want to roll over and wait for it to end? In a war lasting a hundred years, the systematic breaking of spirits has become second nature to Fire Nation torturers.

Effortless cruelty fills this metal place. They don't have to whip or beat their prisoners. That would require too much effort. Besides, physically broken tools can't work. It's in the softly rotten food, not enough to make the workers sick, but tastes like Katara's cleaned Momo with her tongue like an owlcat. The insufficient blanket to prisoner ratio directs the hate easily from the guards to the have blankets and have nots. Old bones creak, ache with cold, stiff as the constant metal, slowly debilitating until bowing to metal is the smart choice, not the desperate one.

The hopelessness of it all worms its way into Katara's heart. Alone in this cruel metal place, alone with her cruel, miserable thoughts. How did it come to this?


Eleven Months Previously:

The Boy in the Iceberg

Katara's furs more than keep the cold at bay as morning gathers its breath across brittle, fresh fallen snow. They have to get up early if they want to dig the snow walls. Wait too long in the day and even the fragile South Pole sun makes the snow too soft to carve safely. But carving in the heavy furs is stiff work. No condensation gets into the oiled fur. No heat gets out. Worst part is she can't lower her hood. Makes breathing the frigid air hard work. Pull it down and risk getting snow-shift down the neck when the snow-girls stomp around like Whale-seals.

She sweats as she tunnels away from the gossip of the snow girls. It's not safe for the elderly, and the women of her tribe don't like going below the ice. Tui and La dip from the sky into the water, not the ground. They scrape away the shavings before they can melt and refreeze, build the walls up. It's heavy work that leaves them all exhausted, but Katara's the only one who comes away half-frozen while the suns up. She's the Ice Carver, the only girl no one cares to remember ever doing it.

The Tiger-Seal bone is hard to grip in her gloved hands as she swings into the solid wall of ice. To be an ice carver, they say your strikes must be hard and heavy to break. Hers are precise and fast so they slice.

Despite the voices above her, she is alone in the deep ice. Her existence is vibration, the echo of her own breath, and air so crisp and thick with her breath it feels like she's swaddled in a quilt of Hawk-Bear blubber.

A new river of sweat runs down her neck, chaffing the necklace against her throat. She used to try and scratch the itch away, only for her mittens to paw futilely, irritating the area further. She still wants to. Even after four years, the sting of the chafe is a raw misery. She started at thirteen. Old enough to screw, old enough to crew. At least that's what the men say to each other. There isn't a mantra for Katara yet, and the works too hard for her to think of one.

"Hold. Hold. Hold!" It's a few more swings before she realises Ulma is yelling at her. "Katara!" She's above with the others, though she must be at the mouth of the tunnel if Katara can hear her yelling.

"Why the freeze?" Katara asks, annoyed. She doesn't like being interrupted.

"Why the freeze, the little Ice Carver asks," old Dakoda chuckles, and she can picture his white whiskers shaking.

"Shifts in the snow above you," Ulma snaps. She's the elder for the band of diggers. Third generation but still got the lung capacity to boss the girls of the Southern Water Tribe around in place of their missing warriors. "Hold. We're scraping the snow before you collapse this whole sheet."

"I'm swinging a club into the ice," Katara calls up. "Course the snows shifting. I've got less than a sheet to go. It'll hold."

"A year scraping ice and she thinks she knows the shifts," old Dakoda drawls. "Remember the words of our illustrious tribe. Patience and clarity. Be still like the water. Listen to your elders."

Water thrashes, it roils. It breaks ships like Katara breaks limpet-snail shells. If the elders could do what she could, maybe listening would have its merits. But they are slow in hand and mind. Sometimes she feels like they want her to be just the same.

"I'm a sheet away," Katara presses again. "If you think it's the club doing the damage, I can just take off my mitt and-"

"No! No waterbending, Katara, you're too inexperienced." They'll say it's for caution. Katara says it's their fear.

Sokka would tell her to listen to Ulma. Two years her senior makes him think he's a sage, gives a swagger to his step like a warrior. He's never known a battle, and, unlike Katara, father never let him see mother's body.

"If the sun comes up and heats the ice before we get the bones in, then the walls will definitely buckle." They're less against her then they are her bending. Somehow, that hurts worse. "You're being a cold-guts, Ulma!"

Silence on the other end of the tunnel.

Shouldn't have said that. But she's quiet, and Katara's disgust grows against her will. Insult the woman, in front of the carving team, and she's quiet as an arctic fox-owl. She's scared. The woman was born hard as ice, but after the black snowfall she shivers when the suns up. Shivers from what? Fear. Fear of their conquering overlords, the Fire Nation? They came once, butchered Katara's mother and a few of the men for good measure and haven't bothered to come south since.

Her people, however much she loves them, are weak. They were left that way in the shadow of their greatest tragedy since the hundred-year war began. The people are hard as ice, yet skitter at their own shadows, afraid they'll rise up from the ground and start firebending. But Sokka would have her believe they're warriors; he would remind Katara to respect her elders because he counts himself as one. Even though she's of age, even when her Declaring ceremony rises with today's sun, even though she took on the title Ice Carver a year ago because he claimed he was too busy protecting the tribe to do it himself, he would say her "blisters have not yet become callouses."

Finally, Ulma remembers she's supposed to be in charge. "The ice isn't stable."

She will obey, even though it is as maddening as the itch at her throat. "Fine."

She wonders if Ulma and Dakoda know how close she is. Probably. Probably just don't ever think anything is worth the risk. Probably think the second Katara swirls a snowflake between her fingers, the Fire Nation will catch a whiff and come sailing down.

The Fire Nation rule this world. That's the way things were and will ever be. The people of the Southern Water Tribe just try to scrape by in their huts, chewing on leathery seal-shark blubber, waiting for the men to return or their sister tribe to the north to finally reach out to them for the first time in a decade. No rising. No falling. Nothing worth the risk of ending this war. Katara's mother found that out at the end of a cruel mans clenched, fiery fist.

Nothing is worth risking. Against her neck, Katara feels her mother's necklace shift against the slick sweat.

Without the hall this foundation will provide, more of the tribe will have to pack themselves into their small, crumbling huts. Sokka will take on more night watches so she can have the space to sleep. He doesn't know how her blood thrums with the rise of the moon. Some of the boy's over-hunt the wildlife to try and build lean-tos of pelts and bones, stupidly going after the bigger games for bigger space.

She looks at the filmy wall in front of her. It's already beginning to weep from the heat of her body.

Before she knows what's what, she's tossing back her hood, taking her mitten between her teeth, and pulling off the glove. Her dark skin slicks against the wall, palm flat. She waits for the cold to penetrate, staring at her milky reflection. Her father claims she has her mother's eyes. Katara can barely remember. Breath mists between her and her element.

If she were a better bender, she could harness it, sharpen it into a new, better knife than the one her brother carves from walrus-bear tusks.

But sharpening is beyond her deep breaths, nor what she focuses on. The wall resists, so she searches out the water particles held captive in the ice, matches her heartbeat to their stillness, and gently tugs.

Nothing happens.

Then, the sheet of ice quivers, collapses into a wave and washes over her. She gasps from the cold, then laughs. "It worked! Ha ha, it worked!" She's so busy basking in glory, it takes Ulma a few tries to shout her down.

"All right, Katara. Clear the chaff. The sun's coming up. Bring yourself and that snow up or you'll be late for your Declaring."

Her Declaring ceremony.

Southern Water Tribe custom at its heart. They've never been as sticklers for tradition as their cousins to the north, but this one holds. Once a member of the tribe turns sixteen, they are declared a true member of the community on the first day of the spring season, old enough to work for its betterment. The war destroyed many of Katara's tribe's customs, and she missed her true Declaring due to a heatwave making her Ice Carving hours difficult to handle, but she was determined to keep hold of this personal treasure. It's an individual, deeply rooted celebration of each life.

The Fire Nation's war took much, but it cannot take away the watertribes sense of family.

Scraping the snow and her drenched body up the tunnel, Katara, dripping and bedraggled, emerges smiling as pink and peach world exhales, and the sun breaks the horizon.


Imprisoned

Aang's gentle tap starts her from uneasy sleep. She forgets how lightly he moves sometimes, so used to trekking across grass and the earth. His ability to pad across the metal would be disconcerting, if she weren't so happy to see him, Sokka, and Appa floating above her beloved ocean.

"Your twelve hours are up; where's Haru?" Sokka leans as if the broad Earthbender were hiding behind her. "We've gotta get outta here!"

And her beloved ocean must wait for her return. "I can't."

"We don't have time!" Sokka balks, waving at her impatiently as he looks nervously around. "The guards are everywhere. Get on!"

"If we stay here, we're going to get caught, Katara," Aang adds softly, unsure what's happening, why Haru isn't with her.

"I don't care." She squares her shoulders under their questioning gazes. "I'm not giving up on these people."


Eleven Months Previously:

The Boy in the Iceberg

Gran-Gran brushes the snow from her hair, but no matter how many times she strokes, Katara knows her hair will be a damp, tangled mess for her ceremony. Still, Gran-Gran persists, the frost-irises sliding from her damp dark locks.

"I finished digging the foundation," Katara mumbles half-heartedly.

"Hm?" Gran Gran's fingers tie the irises in place.

"They'll be packing the bones into the ice at this moment. If we bunked my ceremony, I could go make sure they're not messing up my work."

"Or you could hold still and let my poor, frail fingers work." Gran-Gran tugs harder than necessary when Katara tries to protest. "Of all the days to dive the Ice, child. Would you have me needing to prey to the spirits for luck on such a happy occasion?"

"How lucky can they be? They're all dead," Katara huffs. She has all the luck she needs; it's called her work ethic. Thanks to her, the members of her tribe will have a place to sleep by next moonrise.

She winces when Gran-Gran tugs a little too fiercely in an attempt to get the iris to stay. "Why do I need these frilly weeds in my hair? Sokka didn't wear anything special for his Declaring. I should just bend the snow, do something no one's seen before."

"Throwing knives is a lot more impressive than throwing snowballs."

"It's not more impressive! I could throw the water and freeze it in the air. I could reverse the snowfall, slick the ground and fuse skates to the bottom of my boots. I could-"

"Can you do all that, Katara?"

Katara deflates. No, she can't. She should, where else would she have gotten the impulse to try but faith in her potential? Bending breeds the innate creativity in her, but in her homes wasteland there is no place to explore it. But she could, with the proper training.

Gran Gran's excessive tugging softens. "I am sorry, child. You know your gift marvels and amazes me. And it is a gift. Your father's a fierce warrior, but he's never known the snow like you. And your mother…"

Her voice goes frail. Kya may not have been her daughter, but Gran-Gran loved the mother of her grandchildren like she was. Sometimes Katara forgets other people are allowed to miss her that much.

"Gifts are not always given fairly," Gran-Gran sighs in a way Katara is woefully familiar with. If she turned she'd see the worry, the apprehension her grandmother looks at her with whenever she bends. "You already stand out so much with that fire in you."

"Gran-Gran!" Katara exclaims, disgusted at the notion. Do the others see her so repulsively?

"You do not hate the sun so much just because it burns. Hush. When the boys of this tribe become men, Sokka will join your father. You… you might want a companion in his absence."

Katara's nose wrinkles. She was twice the age of the youngest of Sokka's 'warrior's in training'.

"I can see your reflection in the ice, Katara. I know it's not what a beautiful young girl like you should hope for, but this war only takes. I won't be around forever. I fear leaving you alone."

Katara couldn't bring herself to argue that she never feared being alone. Sokka wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. "I know, Gran-Gran. Spirits guide us, in their own ways."

She straightens, shaking out her head. The deep purple frost-irises slide, but Gran-Gran's expert braiding keeps them hanging limp in her hair. She twirls to face her grandmother, giggling when she has to push a heavy, damp curtain of hair off the left side of her face. "It looks great. You've saved my ceremony."


Imprisoned

It takes some convincing, some arguing, then because if there's one sure way she can get Sokka's cooperation, some smooth talking and delicate ego stroking. True to form, he comes through.

And she has to say, his is a stroke of genius. It takes almost the whole night to close off all the vents but one, and Aang's filthy by the time he climbs out. They agree blowing the coal into the courtyard needs to wait until the prisoners are there to bend it, so Sokka and Aang hop back onto Appa, and Katara sneaks back to her empty cell.

The door squeaks open under her touch. But as she's walking hesitantly back to her hard, cold pallet, she halts when no responding squeak says goodnight.

"So, you're the one on the flying bison?" The warden's shadow and pinched, satisfied voice engulfs her. "My men report seeing the offending animal fleeing from my rig, and then on the patrol rounds I find your cell empty. So, why exactly have you been out of your cell, young lady? Failing to incite anymore rebellions on my rig?"

Katara gasps, spinning around, almost bending the water from her rations on instinct. Fire Nation guards flood her cell before she can. The warden grins smugly as she's taken to the ground. She struggles, thrashes, kicks. A meaty hand tries to pin her shoulders, slips upwards and grips around her neck. She bites on instinct and gets a slap across the mouth before she's grabbed and dragged roughly back to her feet.

The warden gleams over her. "Want to try that again?" Katara glares, swallowing the blood from her split lip. "No? Are you quite certain?"

"You only capable of talking in questions?" Katara spits. A spot of blood lands on his shiny metal boot.

He looks down at it, back at her. "Ah, a hostile prisoner then." He straightens. "Take her below. Something's happening in my prison, I can feel it. Throw her in solitary then do a sweep, now!"

Heart and mind racing, Katara's feet move under her without thought as she's shoved along. Above the high prison walls the sun is beginning to rise. She can feel her power waning as the moon fades with the coming morning. Sokka won't come back until he sees the coal, but Aang won't spring the trap until the Earthbenders are woken in the morning.

The ocean thrums in her blood, but once she's beneath the layers of metal she isn't sure she'll be able to feel it. She pictures it lapping against the rig, feels the vibration of the soft impact. It's low, until she finds the tug in her gut and pulls. The water slaps the metal higher. She feels the spray in the air as she's led across the walkway.

Come on Sokka, she thinks as she tries to harness the push and pulls. Impossible for her inexperience yet she tries until her knees go weak. See the water, see something's wrong. I can't keep this going much longer.

Push and pull. Push and pull. The sun breaks the horizon. It's still cool but Katara sweats from the effort of creating a tide, pushing and pulling, battering the metal. Until she tries to pull the waves over the sides of the rig and it becomes too much. Her gut wrenches, too strong for her primitive understanding of her element. Katara gasps, collapsing to her knees.

"Get that girl back on her feet, now!" the warden snaps. But as she's climbing back up the rig shakes, her feet slipping once again. "What in Agni's warmth-"

A solid, black hurricane bursts from the vents. Chunks of coal bounce across the deck, ping off the guard's armour. It rains down across Katara's back, and with each stinging whack she smiles, knowing Sokka will come.

"Get her down below, now!"

They drag her down, knees scraping the floor. She can't fight their strength. Never before has she summoned the ocean, brought it to her whims. It bought them time at the cost of her freedom. But Sokka will be on his way, the Avatar will lead the Earthbenders.

And she hears it; Aang inspires. Sokka stands his ground. Tyro, their fearless leader and his brave, sweet son, whip the Earthbenders into a frenzy so loud Katara can hear it all the way down in her solitary cell. Together, they'll fight. They'll win. They'll come for Katara. Since the day she met Aang, he's never let her down.

All she needs to do is wait, keep her faith.


Eleven Months Previously:

The Boy in the Iceberg

"And then you inhaled those flowers and sneezed pollen all over the elders!" Sokka guffaws as he paddles the canoe. Slumped at the back, Katara does her best to ignore him as she undoes the braids and drops the offending frost-irises in their wake. "And that caused Ulma to start. She sneezed so hard she headbutted the snow drifts. And what do you do? Come on, don't leave me hanging, Katara."

She glares at his profile against the stark, midday sky. "I slipped when I tried to salvage the disaster with a traditional water tribe movement of expression."

Sokka howls, harsh and exuberant and so tickled by her mortification. It echoes across the open sea, bouncing off the floating bergs. "You know none of that would have happened if your hair was dry enough for you to tie it back?" He makes a pointed look at her now styled hair, complete with hair loopies. It was still wet, not that he would care to know.

"It got wet because I was clearing the ice for the foundations this morning. Something no one else could do, you know." Her own pointedness makes his shoulders hitch up to his neck. Sokka hated sharing his duties as interim-war chief.

"Whatever. Prowl your dark tunnels. Means my baby sister isn't going to be pawed at by some Northern envoy now she's of age."

He hides his relief in the mockery of their own tribe's customs, and Katara's never loved him more. "As if. I've been of age for a year, but there hasn't been an envoy from the North since before your voice broke."

"Okay, don't go making me out to be some ninny-late bloomer. I was nine? Maybe ten?"

"So, it's basically been a decade?" Katara frowns. Passages of time shift like the glaciers surrounding their home; chipping off bits at a time until a great mass breaks away. Where had the years gone? Was she really seventeen now? How has her dorky older brother almost seen twenty winters?

"Who cares? They got their problems, we have ours. I can't waste my time preparing for envoys. I have to focus on protecting the tribe."

Katara buries her snort in her parka, looking out over the side of the canoe. Protect them from what, running out of blubbered seal jerky? She becomes lost in the swirling water, so deeply fascinated by the simple machinations of her element she doesn't realise Sokka's stopped rowing.

"It's not getting away from me this time." From the corner of Katara's eye, Sokka raises his fishing spear. She's too caught up in her own fish to really pay attention. "Watch and learn, Katara. This is how you catch a fish."

She doesn't. Another's swum its way to her side of the canoe, sloshing contentedly in the shallow space between deep and crest. Almost as if it were daring her. Chancing a glance over her shoulder at Sokka, deeply engrossed in his own attempt at getting their lunch, she peels off her mitten for the second time that day.

Her arm reflects in the chopping water, tracing the lazy circles the fish turns. Breathes slow; in and out. It's not about the fish. Feel the water slosh and flow. Tui and La. In and out. All important things come in pairs. Her hand begins to move back and forth in time with her breaths. In and out. Back and Forth. Tui and La.

The water ripples, then plucks loose of the sea. The fish continues to swirl, unaware it's left the ocean in a perfect ball of water. Katara gasps, quickly ripping off her other glove so she can hold the water with more stability. "Sokka, look!"

"Shh, Katara!" Sokka admonishes without turning to her. "You're going to scare it away. Mm, I can already smell it cooking."

"But, Sokka, I caught one!" Juggling the ball proves more taskful. Katara bites her lip as she moves the water, feeling like she was rolling a snowball uphill.

Still he won't look, so she brings it closer. Too close, forgetting her brother's total lack of spatial awareness in the canoes. Water truly was her domain yet seemed to love Sokka more as he draws back and bursts her bubble all over himself. The fish flips harmlessly over the side of the canoe to disappear back into the depths.

"Why is it that every time you play with magic water, I get soaked?"

"If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times. It's not 'magic', it's waterbending, and it's…"

"Yeah, yeah, 'an ancient art unique to our culture', blah, blah, blah. Look." He finishes shaking out his gloved hands and begins working on ringing out his wolf tail. "I'm just saying that if I had weird powers, I'd keep my weirdness to myself."

Outrage was an ocean force inside Katara, swelling in her blood. "You're calling me weird? I'm not the one who makes muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water!"

He pauses his flexing indignantly. "I'm taking a physique update, not making-"

The canoe lurches. All their years on the ice and they can still bicker their way into rapids. Sokka seizes his ore as the slim boat is pulled swiftly towards the jostling icebergs colliding and smashing against each other. Katara grips the edge, caught by the ridiculous notion she could pull the canoe to safety. Sokka paddles furiously, gaining speed until Katara thinks her sea-prune and gull eggs from breakfast are going to make a reappearance. Two looming bergs tilt together, but instead of swerving, he plunges them down into the salt spray. Katara's end bounces as they skim through, the crash of the bergs ringing in her ears as they speed along.

"Left! Go left!" She isn't aware she's screaming, waving an arm in a loose suggestion of her commands.

The path narrows. Sokka rows but he won't be able to get them out of the impending crash. So he veers them to the right in a desperate attempt to salvage the canoe. But, like Sokka and Katara before them, the ocean demands its catch. Three large chunks of ice pin them in. Sokka abandons his ore, reaches back for Katara, and throws them both out of the canoe, dragging her up by the hood when she nearly slips off. He keeps pulling until Katara can go no further, collapsing onto the ice floe face first, inhaling the fresh flakes.

"You call that… left?" she wheezes once she gets enough breath back. Water and ice floes surround them on all sides. Them, and a distinct lack of their canoe.

"You don't like my steering? Well, maybe you should've…" He mock waves his hands in the air. "waterbended us out of the ice."

Katara's vision narrows. It's only them on the floe, it's easy to zero in on her idiot, insensitive, brother. "So, it's my fault?"

Even cast in shadow from the floes around them, Sokka's despicably smug face grates against her last nerve. "I knew I should've left you at home. You want something screwed up, leave it to a girl, especially a girl who can't even get through her own declaring ceremony!"

She leaps to her feet. Oh, she fails at being a girl? Fine, she'll slap that shit-eating smirk off his face like the man he wishes he was, arms swinging at him. "You are the most sexist… nut brained… I'm embarrassed to be related to you!"

And of course, Sokka couldn't care less. It fuels her rage, arms swinging wider, hooking above her head like she's trying to wrestle the air. And it appears to work as Sokka's face morphs into one of terror. Good. She attacks the air with more ferocity.

"Ever since mom died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier! I go on hunts! I help build the huts. I became the first ever female Ice Carver! I even wash all the clothes! Have you ever smelled your dirty socks? Let me tell you, not pleasant!"

"Uh… Katara…" Sokka squeaks, raising his arms at her placatingly.

Her rage feels like it could shift the water beneath them. "No that's it! I'm done picking up after you! You want to be a warrior so badly, then do it! I dare you! Stop pretending your fighting lessons mean anything to those kids and go out on your own!" she screams, before a deafening crack and a force of water knocks her off her feet.


Imprisoned

Through the rocking of the rig, the crashing and war cries of the prisoners, Katara holds on to her belief. Sokka and Aang will come. They'll win. They'll figure out she's been taken to the lower prisons.

Through the cries to get to the ships. In the fading echoes of escape. As silence closes in again. Katara waits for her friends.

Waits. And waits. She waits so long, she doesn't realise she's fallen asleep until the door is being pulled back and a bleary, bald figure steps into the light.

"Aang," she breathes in relief. But when the figure turns its head, something thin protrudes from the top. Momo?

"As you can see, my Prince, not all was lost when the Earthbenders fled the rig." The warden simpers. He's nervous, his smaller shadow fidgeting with thin hands. Katara's too dehydrated and foggy to understand why. "While the Avatar led the savages mad dash back to the mainland, an escape we're still tracking, might I add, we were able to hold onto one prisoner."

"She's more than one of your earthbending captives, warden," rasps a voice Katara's sure she only hears in her nightmares. Nightmares of flame and rage, where two molten suns glare from behind a scar. "Neither is she yours any longer. I'll be removing the Watertribe girl from your custody. She's the perfect tool to bring the Avatar to me."


As always, Kudos welcome, likes, dislikes, comments and complaints. Let me know what you think!