Eleven Months Previously:
The Avatar Returns
Aang is everything Katara imagined of an airbender. Carefree as the breeze with an open, quick face. Quick to crooked smiles, quick to genuine laughs that tip his head back so far, his blue arrow disappears from sight. He's joyful and sincere, no storm inside his lithe, agile body.
Naturally, the children of the village love him. He's fourteen but basically a taller, gliding version of them. But it goes deeper. Over the few days he and his bison, Appa, rest, the elders nod their heads to his enthusiastic waves. The women on the dig team wave prettily back when he stops by during work hours. Katara's chest swelled with pride the first time his face opened in awe as she emerged from beneath the ice.
"An Ice Carver? That sounds amazing. It's so daring and brave, it's incredible, it's courageous, it's… What is it, Katara?"
Every morning for the next week, he's there. Her stories of being under the ice never change, but he's wide-eyed and listening each time she recounts the few feet of ice she was able to carve through that shift. Ice Carving is a new phenomenon to him. When she first tried to explain he thought she was referring to swimming beneath the floes, citing how that made sense for her, being a Waterbender.
Sokka doesn't like him, and she's sure when he realises how much the young boys like spending their off time playing with Aang instead of practicing their spear thrusts, he doubles their training regime out of spite. How he loves to lord over Aang how his magical flying bison has yet to magically fly. When he found them penguin sledding for the fourth time, he was quick to derisively tell his flying sister joke again.
"You're right, Sokka! She's gotten so much better. The air she's catching almost beats mine!"
Sokka scowled, huffing, "Great. You're an airbender, Katara's a waterbender. Together you can just waste time all day long!" before stomping off to go hunting.
Good thing he did. In the same breath of laughter, Aang asks why she never uses the snow to help her go higher the same way he does with the air. She's so used to not being proud of her bending, Aang asking her so openly brings her up short. It's no fun for her to talk about how lonely she feels in her own tribe. It's worse when he suggests leaving to look for a teacher.
"This isn't right. A waterbender needs to master water. What about the North Pole? There's another Water Tribe up there, right? Maybe they have waterbenders who could teach you."
"Maybe, but we haven't had contact with our sister tribe in a long time. It's not exactly "turn right at the second glacier". It's on the other side of the world."
It's hard being so different from her family. It's even harder when Aang gives her the chance she's been waiting for to go, and she knows she can't.
Aang is young, but he's wise enough to let the subject drop, and they go back to sledding.
Her days begin to pass quicker. The cold doesn't bite quite the same. The warmth in her chest fuels her bone axe swings because she knows an afternoon of sledding with Aang, giggling with the children, and stories of a world beyond her pole waits for her. It gives new purpose to the work, fills her with a sweet ache as she realises she'd forgotten what the laughter of her tribe sounded like. If she were a powerful enough bender, she'd freeze time, put aside her own dreams and let her tribe live in this wonderful peace forever.
It all comes crashing down when Aang convinces her to explore the wrecked Fire Nation ship with him. He'd been obsessed with it the whole week, ever since he caught sight of it when they strayed a little too far atop their penguins. She knew going along with him was a bad idea, but the idea of him going alone was even worse.
Swallowing her fear, she didn't try to stop him. This time she followed him towards the wreckage, hiding her shaking hands behind her back, blaming the cold when Aang looked at her curiously. He thinks he convinces her with some pithy spiel about bending being about letting go of fear. It's because she's afraid she goes after him.
It's a horror straight from her nightmares. If she closes her eyes, she can smell the soot from the day they came. Not this ship. It's older, clunkier. The metal's so black and cold she's afraid her skin will stick to it. The Fire Nation claiming another piece of her for their greed, so hungry, insatiable one-hundred years later.
"This ship has haunted my tribe since Gran-Gran was a little girl. It was part of the Fire Nation's first attacks."
That's how Aang learns he's a hundred and twelve years old, learns everyone he's ever known must be long gone by now. It puts the horrors of Katara's own past aside, at least for a moment. For an instant he's devastated, and she somehow feels responsible.
It's that responsibility she holds onto, like a suit of armour, as she and Aang trudge wearily back to the village. The flare soars lazily through the sky, burning like a sullen coal behind them and turning the afternoon sky sickly yellow. She sees it and thinks bitterly of freshly sparked flames, sees her shadow stretching before her and gags at the smell of smoke in her memory.
Sokka crests the sea of angry, suspicious faces, but the children break in waves to rush towards Aang. He responds in kind before the glowers of the Tribe pull him up short.
"I knew it!" Sokka accuses, pointing at Aang. "I knew it all week! You watched, you waited, then you signalled the Fire Navy with that flare once you learned our defences! You're leading them straight to us, aren't you?"
The responsibility Katara feels for Aang drives her forwards. "Aang didn't do anything! It was an accident!"
"Yeah." Aang's protest is weak. He's built to dissolve conflict, not face it. "We were on the ship and there was this booby trap, and, well…" He rubs his head, reminding Katara of the child he really is. "…we booby-ed right into it."
"Katara, you shouldn't have gone on that ship! Now we could all be in danger!" Gran Gran's horrified. It's sixty years ago, the sick yellow flare as horrifying now reflected in her blue eyes as it must have been back then.
"Don't blame Katara," Aang begs. "I brought her there. It's my fault."
"Aha! The traitor confesses! Warriors, away from the enemy. The Foreigner is banished from our village."
Her brother's eagerness to be rid of Aang makes her sick. It's a selfish, vindictive piece of his soul. A piece she knows exactly why is there. "Sokka, you're making a mistake."
And he knows she knows, if the nasty sneer he answers her protest with is anything to go by. "No, I'm keeping my promise to Dad. I'm protecting you from threats like him!"
"Like you 'protect' this village?" she spits. "Protect us from what? The difference between sun and snow burn? The turtle-seals out numbering us? Face it, Sokka, you protect us as well as the ice does! Stop hiding behind a lie dad told a stupid little boy who could barely lift his tiger-whale axe to keep him from killing himself and actually do something worthwhile!"
She's gone too far. Not only does her brothers crushed face make her realise it, but it's the way his boys shift uncomfortably before him. He notices too, face hardening as the truth hits home. He was never their fearless leader, their protector, their mentor. He was the oldest boy left in the village, because all the men were gone.
He turns his cold rage on Aang. "Get out of our village."
But Katara can't let this go. Sokka's angry at her, not Aang, and he has every right to be. "Gran-Gran, please. Don't let Sokka do this."
In the end she doesn't. Aang does, making the decision for her that she'll never be a waterbender. He leaves on Appa, and even though she knows she should hate him for leaving her behind, she turns on her family. She yells at her Grandmother, throws Sokka's consoling hand off her arm, and storms back to her hut like a child.
She doesn't come out until the ice shakes beneath her. She'd felt the tension of the camp all day. Nervous murmurings outside her tent. Sokka stopping by only briefly to drop off some food before he rushed back out. She'd ignored it, too wrapped up in her own misery, until…
CRACK!
It rocks the deep roots of the glacier. Her hut rattles. Outside the tribespeople stare into the fog in horror. Sokka stands atop the wall as if he alone, face coated in warpaint, body wrapped in tradition and terror, can save them from the hulking shadow.
When last they came, the approach was a silent omen of black snow. They'd climbed the black shale in their metal, clinking armour. So disgusted with the world, they wrap themselves in their cold, lifeless metal. Now that metal splits their ice. The monstrous bow of the navy ship shatters the strongest force Katara's ever known, pulverises it into cold mist before her eyes. The children can't comprehend, screaming as their mothers flee from the wreckage. But to where? Where can her people go?
Its shadow descends across the village. Smoke and ash. Burning. So much burning, but the flames are somehow wet, fetid, and humid. But the sky is bright. She can't see the flames she feels burning her from the inside out, and all she wants is her mother's arms to hold her and tell her everything's going to be okay.
But it's not her screaming. Memory shatters. Wako, Sokka's youngest student, wails where he's fallen. He doesn't see the crack the sharks tooth of the ship cleaves through her home, and before she knows it she's running to him. Scooping him into her arms, she rushes to the tent Gran Gran cowers in and tries not to think about how she felt her heel slip into open air for that brief second.
Sokka does not move. She can't watch that mist turn red, not after the last thing she said to him. "Sokka!" Hysteria grips her, chokes her cries. "Get out of the way!"
Raising his club above his head, Sokka buries his feet in the snow and lets loose a war cry their ancestors couldn't miss. It's what saves him. The snow crumbles beneath his weight. His cry chokes off into a surprised yelp as he's pushed back the few feet which keeps his body whole instead of pulverized between metal and ice.
Steam hisses from the black monstrosity. The bow opens forward, a shark opening its mouth in another jet of heat. Metal meets snow, and the walkway sinks as the heat melts it. More steam hisses. It forces Sokka back but not away, standing bravely, stupidly, between his village and three mist cloaked figures making their descent.
Her eyes go to the scar first. Even from the distance the black metal puts between them, Katara can see it. Livid, ridged, and pink against pale skin, covering an eye she can't make out the colour of. Ruined skin disappears under the pointed war helm of the Fire Nation, but she's too afraid to take pleasure in one of their own getting a taste of their greed for himself.
Sokka lets loose another cry and charges, club aloft. Alone he sprints up a ramp filled with soldiers, the scarred boy at their head. Alone, his club is kicked aside and, without resting or resetting his stance, the scarred boy swivels, and kicks Sokka off the ramp with the disinterest of swatting a fly. It's over quickly, Sokka's indignant protests buried in the snow.
He passes to the right. Whatever he's looking for is not there, somehow offending him. When he moves left, he stops directly in front of Katara. She's not surprised the eyes beneath the scar are gold. Fire Nation only know greed; no surprise it composes their souls. She is surprised by how young he is. The skin of the left side of his face, of what she can see, is mottled and hideous. But his unmarred right is smooth and sharp angled, breaching manhood.
Both eyes burn disdainfully across the villagers. How eager are her enemies to turn their young so ugly.
"Where are you hiding him?" Unused to how the cold can steal the breath, his voice rasps. Katara's ashamed of her flinch when his arm lashes out. She cries out as Gran Gran's ripped from her arms, the soldier holding her up by her parkas hood. "He'd be about this age, master of all elements?"
He shoves her grandmother unceremoniously back into her arms. Katara clutches her frail body, glaring with all the hate she can muster up at the invader.
He feels nothing, shows nothing. It's eerie, especially when, without warning, the fire bursts from his hands. It whips the air above the villager's heads, tearing another shriek from Katara against her will.
"I know you're hiding him!"
He draws back to fire again, then rocks forwards. The metal clang of Sokka's boomerang reverberates long after Sokka's caught it, poised to throw again. The scarred boy has to fix his askew helmet, but when Katara sees his livid, gold eyes, she feels no victory for her brother.
Daggers of flame appear in the boy's hands. Snow at his feet melts to slush as he spins dangerously to face her brother. Most of the war paints gone from Sokka's face but he's every bit the man their father knew he'd become as he faces the Fire Nation scourge alone.
"Prince Zuko," barks a rockslide voice. Descending the ramp is the oldest person Katara's ever seen, aside from Gran Gran. A once compact now soft from age frame is swaddled in robes, giving the man the impression of an upright, waddling Polar bear-dog. "In my vast experience there is one rule of investigation, and that is not to antagonise the locals."
The boy scowls, but his daggers sputter out. Sokka, prepared for a bitter, outmatched fight, doesn't know what to make of the old man. Unlike the vile boy glowering before Katara, Sokka does not threaten innocent elderly people, and lets him pass. He's rewarded a grey ponytailed nod from the many folds of cloth.
"We came all this way, Uncle. I will not leave empty handed!"
"Did you bother to ask these people before you started melting their snow?" He's comfortable in the face of his boy's wrath, a smile on his face. "And by that, I mean, did you bother to ask them nicely?"
"It's snow!" the boy snaps. "It doesn't belong to anyone!"
"Would you say the same if these people invaded our sands? Swim against the tide all you like, but do not disgrace yourself by acting the fool, Zuko."
Now Katara doesn't know what to make of it. As far as her experience with invasions go, this is by far the most bizarre.
"Fine! We'll do it your way!" The boy rounds on his waiting soldiers. "Round them all up, and do not let them talk to each other. I don't want to give any of them a chance to corroborate their stories. A team of you will watch the children."
"I will do that," the old man volunteers, tone brokering no argument.
The boy knows to leave it alone. "If it'll keep you out of my way, fine. Bore the children with more maxims of Sunblood for all I care, but do not let any of them out of your sight. I will lead the interrogations on these savages myself."
Her home hasn't felt so violated since she tripped over her mother's body. Fire Nation soldier's pulling back the seal skin for her, politely ordering she wait inside, throws rotten whale blubber over the happier memories of her childhood. Mother stewing sea prunes while she helped. Sokka would tussle with their father, and when he couldn't get his attention, try to heft the Tiger-whale bone spear twice his size and practice his war cry.
He would have made their father so proud today. He was brave, would have fought that vile Zuko knowing he was outmatched. Anything for his tribe, to keep his promise to their father. It's how she knows he's in his own hut now, telling them exactly where Aang plans to go, how he's getting there, what they can expect from the world's last airbender. She wouldn't make it so easy. She'd fight, show Sokka what a true warrior does in the face of their enemies, show these Fire Nation thugs they can't come to their pole, shatter their ice and scare them into giving up the last hope anyone has of ending this war.
"Good, you're ready."
White light casts his broad, armoured body into shadow, throwing water over the fire of defiance Katara was stoking. Helmet under his arm, but she can't see the scar like this. It's there, she feels its presence more than the golden eyes raking her up and down.
Striding in without invitation, he sits across from her at the low driftwood table and sets his helmet beside his leg. Despite how much his steps clink, he and his armour fold with ease, legs crossing into lotus. As if this creature meditates. There's no peace where he's from. His kind devoured it a long time ago.
"Your betrothed told us everything, so don't waste my, or my men's, time."
Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "My betrothed? What are you - are you talking about Sokka?" Her face twists. "I don't know how the Fire Nation conducts its couplings, but that's disgusting. He's my brother."
His eyes flick down to her mother's necklace before coming back up to hers. "My mistake." Without the helmet she can see how much the scar dominates his face. His left eye is a ruin, unable to open all the way, and thanks to the odd stylings of his bald head and black high ponytail, his mottled ear is on full display. Can he hear out of that thing?
While the left eye is permanently frozen in the suspicious, lidded gaze, the right joins suit. "It's rude to stare, peasant."
She's repulsed by her heartbeat of shame. Why should she care how this monster feels? Except she can't get an image out of her head, the last time her, Sokka, and their father had been together as a family. Sokka ran ahead of her, reaching Hakoda first. Their father's hand had cupped his son around the head, covering his ear as he pulled him close...
"I said, it's rude to stare."
"You said my brother told you everything?" she claps back at his snippy tone. He blinks, both eyelids working, nods. "Then your mistake, indeed. Sokka doesn't know everything."
"He knew enough by the time I was finished with him." Katara glares at him. He stares impassively back. "You're not helping your brother or yourself. All you have to do is answer my questions, then my men and I leave your tribe."
"Until the next time the Fire Nation want to steal or terrorize the 'lesser nations'." She smile's mockingly at him but it feels more like a baring of teeth.
"Nothing has been stolen from you." She bites down on her lip. What about my mother, you spoiled bastard? But she owes this monster nothing and says just as much. "We show force only when met with resistance. We are no one's enemy."
"Of course you're not."
His lone eyebrow raises. "Who do you consider your enemy, peasant?"
"The Fire Nation," she answers without room for hesitation. "So, you. By extension."
"I don't consider you my enemy. I wouldn't have been so stupid to come here with such a small force if I did." His smile is a white slash in a pale face. Without looking he plucks a discarded frost-iris from the floor, twirling it between his fingers. "As my Uncle said to your village, we are here to conduct an investigation."
"An investigation you started by ploughing through our land and attacking my brother and Gran Gran."
"As my uncle said this morning, the ice is white, the floes are white, the snow is white. I had never seen any of it until a week ago."
She doesn't soften as he intends her too. She doubles down, crossing her arms over herself. "It's a miracle you didn't kill someone. Good thing someone with a little more depth perception was steering."
The ingratiating façade drops, his whole face contorting, scar wrinkling deeper into its own folds. "I don't know why I expected more for a Southern Watertribe peasant." He drips poison. "You will tell me where you've hidden the Avatar so I can leave."
He can't see her hands clenching and unclenching under the table. If she didn't already have her own suspicions, she'd have given herself away to surprise as easily as her interrogator does to his frustration. Luckily, she isn't ruled by hate, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up to meet his loathing eyes. "You're looking at her."
Sokka told him about Aang. She'll tell him the other last thing he'll expect to hear.
"You? You're the Avatar?" He snorts contemptuously. "If you expect me to believe that, you're more of a simple peasant than I-"
She sucks the snow from his armour, twirling it in a ball with her fingers over her palm. Only because it's so small can she make it look easy, when, really, it takes all her concentration.
"Impossible," Zuko breathes. He started back when she first bent the snow, hands lifting instinctively, sparks flickering at his fingertips. Now, he watches in awe, hands resting dumbly in his lap. The frost iris sits in his palm, purple petals stark against pale skin. "There aren't supposed to be any waterbenders in the Southern Watertribe. The Southern Watertribe isn't even supposed to-" He cuts himself off. "Bend another element."
The switch of his own train of thought jars her, but Katara's able to hold her own. "Do you know how long it takes to master one element?"
"You're, what, sixteen?" She shrugs non-committally. "What have you spent your time doing?"
Katara allows her pride to shine through. "Working, princeling. You're talking to the Southern Watertribe's Ice Carver."
"Ice Carver? What in Agni's name is… do you mean Icediving?" Now, he laughs. "You? You're the Icediver?" He found her revelation of being the Avatar less amusing.
"Is that so hard to believe? Why, because I'm a girl?" She hates how much she bristles under his mockery.
He shakes his head. "Not at all. Women make some of the best Helldiver's in the Fire Nation." She's never heard the term before. "It's hard to believe because no diver of their nation could possibly be so young."
Curiosity grips her, dragging her head above the waters of discord she's been trying to drown him in. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"The art of Helldiving in the Fire Nation involves only the bravest, most skilled benders descending into the volcanos to harvest the Amber Phothenite, or Agni's Soul, because it burns from the inside." So does he, practically forgetting she's there as he reminisces. "My uncle told me stories of the Helldivers, and their sisters beneath the ice."
"What did they dive for?" Katara breathes before she can stop herself, leaning across the table. His superior knowledge of her culture should disgust her, but she's too enthralled to care right now.
He meets her across the table, close and conspiratorial. "Pearls, according to Uncle. And treasures centuries past. Species the light of Agni never sees. He used to say there were whispers of people living down there, possibly the first Waterbenders themselves."
Breathe stolen. Picturing it, the most powerful of her people. Coming from a Fire Nation princeling at that. She can't bring herself to be disgusted anymore, but she can't thank him for giving her a piece of her culture either. "I didn't know that," she settles on, because she hasn't breathed since he started talking.
His head tilts towards her, breath fanning her face. She catches his victorious smile as it sharpens, turning her insides cold. "But if you were the Avatar, and you were a hundred years old, you would."
He unfolds in a blink, leaving her stunned and stammering. "N-no. I am the Avatar. I can bend water."
"And nothing else!" Zuko throws the table over and marches into her space. He towers over her, glaring. "You've wasted enough of my time. Tell me where the Avatar is and maybe I'll consider not telling my father the South has been violating the civil-assimilations agreement."
Heart hammering. Ribs aching from its beat. Sokka, Gran Gran. What would happen to them if it was known they'd been harbouring a criminal? What would those soldiers do to them when she was dragged away? What would they do to her?
"I…"
"Where is the Avatar?"
"I'm right here!" Aang meets Zuko's shock with a cool, eerily flat, grey-eyed gaze. "Looking for me?"
He backs up as Zuko rounds on him, leading him from the confines of the hut. It allows Zuko a good look, and he's clearly displeased by what he finds. "You're the airbender? You're the Avatar?"
"As much as you're antagonising these innocent people." Aang lifts his staff. Zuko matches, twin daggers of flame sparking from his hands. But whimpers from the watching crowd quell the anger in Aang before it can ignite. He sees the way the terrified eyes watch the fire which has done nothing but torment them. His staff flattens as he uses it to bridge the gap between himself and Zuko. "If I go with you, do you promise to leave these people alone?"
Zuko looks down at the peace offering. Like he told her, he'd never seen snow before, and each frightened face he sees, the horror, adds another footstep marring the pristine snow of his divine destiny. Few men truly like seeing beauty destroyed, so he accepts the staff Aang hands him with a nod.
Soldiers swarm the boy. He's willing to go peacefully, yet they still wrench his arms behind his back, locking his wrists together.
Katara can't stand idly by as they lead him away. "No, Aang don't do this!"
"Don't worry Katara." Aang forces a cheerful smile as he's shoved up the ramp of the ship. "Take care of Appa for me until I get back."
She watches in despair as the Fire Nation lead him away, Zuko barking orders at their head. "Set a course for the Fire Nation! I'm going home."
Black shale clips and slides beneath her feet as she paces. Sokka watches her. Neither of them has set foot on this beach in almost ten years, yet he followed her wordlessly down to the shore when she stormed off. They bicker, scream bloody murder, and drive each other crazy, but Sokka knows her mind better than anyone. Up the drifts and across the cavernous rift the Fire Nation ship left in their berg, the village puts itself back together in the melancholy wake of Aang's capture.
"We have to go after that ship, Sokka. Aang saved our tribe, now we have to save him."
"Katara, I-"
"Why can't you realize that he's on our side? He came back for us. If we don't help him, no one will. I know you don't like Aang, but we owe him and-"
"Katara!" She snaps around, mouth open to scream at him, but his sweep towards his canoe silences the words before she can think them. "Are you gonna talk all day, or are you comin' with me?"
She's hugging him before he's finished gesturing to the boat. They almost bowl over together into the water. "Sokka!"
He's just as fierce, pulling her off her feet for a few seconds. "Katara." Pulling apart, he stares down at her. They know each other's minds, but in his eyes is something she's never seen before. "I'm sorry."
"You're… you're sorry? Sokka, why?"
"Because you were right." Shame. That's what she sees, and it kills a piece of her soul. As long as she's been alive, her older brother has been the most confident, selfless person she's known. And she made him think otherwise. "Dad left me here to make sure you had someone to look after you. But you haven't needed looking after since you jumped down that ice hole and got to carving because no one else would. I could have left but…"
He rubs the back of his neck until she takes his hand. "You couldn't have, because then I'd have been completely lost. You think I knew what I was doing? Let's not forget who corrected my form those first months so I wouldn't keep throwing my shoulder out. Or taught me how to properly control my breathing so the cold air wouldn't give me frost lung."
He thinks he has to justify his inaction. Really, she needs to remind him how much she needed, needs, him. How alone she'd have felt if he'd left her behind.
"What do you two think you're doing down here?" Gran-Gran doesn't step down onto the shale. It holds just as much bad memories for her, but it will also send the poor woman's feet out from under her. So she and Sokka scramble shamefacedly back up. They both dwarf the hunched woman yet bow their heads. They both miss the smile, until they hear it in her warm voice. "You'll need these."
Their sleeping bags dangle from her crooked fingers. She hands them both to Sokka before taking Katara's hands in hers. "You have a long journey ahead of you. It's been so long since I've had hope, but you brough it back to life, my little waterbender." Katara hugs her then, reluctant to let go. When she does, Gran-Gran turns to Sokka. "And you, my brave warrior, be nice to your sister."
Sokka grins. "I will if she will." But he softens at their grandmothers admonishing look. "Okay, Gran."
Their Grandmother looks at them as if the last decade has lifted from her shoulders. "Aang is the Avatar. He's the world's only chance. You both found him for a reason." Purpose swells in Katara's chest. When she looks at Sokka, he stands three inches taller. "It is my only wish to see my grandbabies safe, but I must let you go. Your destinies are intertwined with his"
