"Who were those people, anyway?" Toph asked, breaking the tense silence that ensued. "What did they do to you?"
Zuko carefully took a breath as he collected his memories. "I...I'm not sure, exactly." He gave a quick laugh. "You're going to think this is crazy, but...it almost felt like my insides were tied into knots. Like the veins in my arms and chest were just knotted up, and I couldn't move."
A chill ran through Katara when she heard his description. "Knots?" She shared a horrified glance with Aang. "That sounds like bloodbending."
"It was a full moon," Aang pointed out.
Toph scoffed. "Wait, I thought the only bloodbender out here was Hama."
Katara furrowed her brows. "Maybe not." She turned to Zuko, whose quizzical gaze passed from Aang to her. "There could be more bloodbenders with a grudge against the Fire Nation."
A long pause followed as the team mulled over their theories. Could it have been Hama? Katara wondered. But she seems a little old to be involved in something like this. Could she have a gang?
"So, what do we do now?" asked Toph.
"I can send my men out in search of the assailants," Zuko said.
"Weren't they sent out just after the attack?" Katara asked.
"They couldn't find anyone—"
Toph snorted. "That's some crack team you got there."
"—but they didn't search that far," Zuko finished, ignoring the remark. "I'll send them out farther, out to wherever this Hama was."
Aang shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea. If it is Hama, then it'll just be like the Fire Nation is hunting her down again, and that won't go over well." His voice softened as he recalled Team Avatar's run-in with the aged bloodbender. "Besides, you don't know how powerful she is. She manipulated all of us at once."
Katara shivered, remembering all too well the betrayal of her tribeswoman. She could still feel the knots in her veins and the stiff, mechanical movement of her muscles as someone else controlled her like a puppet.
"We have to find the bloodbenders before the next full moon," Aang concluded. "Who knows what the next step will be?" He stood and turned to Katara. Toph had already risen beside him. "We'll have to start the search first thing in the morning." Aang looked at Katara expectantly.
She shook her head. "I have to stay here. If the bloodbenders return, I'm the only one who can take them."
The Avatar's eyes seemed to glint with sorrow, and he fell quiet.
"Katara," chuckled Zuko, wincing as he leaned forward to meet her eyes, "I'll be fine. I can handle myself."
"Not in your condition," scoffed the waterbender. "I'm not taking any risks." To Aang, she asserted, "Go without me. I'll stay here and keep an eye on things."
Aang held her gaze for several moments, seemingly searching her eyes for an alternate answer. Finally, he nodded. "Okay, if you say so. Toph and I will head out and check the colonies first thing in the morning."
After another twenty minutes of light discussion, it was well into nighttime, and the group decided to disperse. Toph was the first to head out the door. Zuko summoned a sage, who ushered him back to his quarters. Aang and Katara stood alone in the foyer, lost in awkward silence. Katara watched him, trying to figure out the emotions in his face. He kept his expression obscure, except for the sadness still in his grey eyes. Finally, Katara stepped forward. "Aang, I—"
He held up his hand to stop her in her words. "Don't. Katara, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have stormed off like that. I just..." Aang heaved a heavy sigh and let his shoulders drop. "I just didn't know how to handle this."
Katara eyed him carefully. "How are you handling it?"
He paused, lowering his gaze and his voice. "It'll take some time."
"Are we okay?" asked the waterbender, leaning in to catch his gaze.
Aang stared at her, and let a small smile creep onto his lips. "Yeah. We're okay." He sat back down on the lounge. Katara followed suit, taking her seat across from him and waiting for him to continue. "I'm sorry about the proposal thing. I didn't mean to push you into anything. I...I thought we were ready." After a deep sigh, he murmured in a defeated voice, "I thought you wanted to be with me."
Hearing the defeat and desperation in the powerful Avatar's words made Katara's heart sink. In this moment, she longed to be able to take back the last few weeks. "I thought so, too. But..." She reached back into her mind, running through her thoughts and emotions throughout their relationship. She found herself struggling to identify a moment when she loved, truly loved, the Avatar. There had been many times she loved being with him. She loved who he was—a gifted boy with a kind heart and a strong soul. Katara had great affection and admiration for him. But love?
"I think I just felt kind of obligated." Katara stifled a sigh as the words left her tongue. Finally, all the questions she struggled to answer and the feelings she couldn't discern came together. She wasn't in a relationship with Aang out of love—it was out of a sense of obligation.
Aang looked puzzled. "What do you mean by that?" he asked defensively.
The waterbender tried to cushion her response with a giggle. "Well, I was a kid. You were the Avatar. I felt honoured at first that you chose me. I was dazzled by it all, I guess—plus, there was a lot going on, and it was hard just keeping our heads on straight." Katara sighed. "As time went on, I just felt like I was in too deep, and..."
"Basically, you felt roped into a relationship," Aang offered.
"Well..." Katara hesitated, but couldn't think of a gentler way to put it. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry," Aang replied, furrowing his brows. "If I had any idea you felt that way—"
Katara shook her head. "It's okay. I'm just glad we're able to talk about this," she said with a smile.
"Me, too." He tried to reflect her smile, but there was still something troubling his face. "So...Zuko, huh?"
Katara raised a brow. "What about him?" she asked, angling her head and peering at him guardedly.
"You're with him now?"
The waterbender lurched backwards and gaped at him. "What?" She wasn't sure whether she should be offended or amused. Her mind reeled at the accusation. "What the hell are you talking about?!" she yelped incredulously. "Are you out of your mind?"
Aang leapt to his feet defensively. "I see the way you two act and the way you two look. I know there's something going on between you."
Still she gaped at him, unable to believe what he was saying. "Are you out of your mind?!" she repeated. "Zuko and I are just—how can you even think—?!" Katara stammered helplessly for another minute until she finally collected herself. "What is wrong with you? Aang, the only reason I'm here is to help Zuko. He was almost killed. He's still in danger, and I'm the only one who can protect him. That's it." Katara glared at him furiously, but inside she wanted to break down and cry. How could her best friend be so mistrustful of her? How could he think something so ridiculous?
They stared at each other, glared at each other, neither knowing where to go from there. Finally, Aang backed down. He took a few steps back, and softened his voice, but his words were still clipped with anger. "Fine. You're right; I'm sorry. It was a crazy thought." He stood awkwardly, shifting on his feet as if trying to work up something else to say. "Never mind," he muttered. "I should get going." He turned and shuffled towards the grand doors. A Fire Sage suddenly appeared to usher him out. "Good night," Aang said over his shoulder.
"Yeah," Katara huffed. "Good night."
"Am I a monster, Katara?"
She looked up from the crackling fire and studied his face. She searched his eyes—they were the same eyes as all the other monsters, but there was something different in his. His amber eyes lit up like the fire before them, but they were softer and gentler than the flame. "You used to be."
The eyes. Those amber eyes. They haunted her childhood. And now she was surrounded by them.
She, Aang, Sokka, and Toph had plunged into the heart of the Fire Nation, hiding in plain sight. It was the last place on Earth she wanted to be, surrounded by people who looked like the monster who killed her mother.
Katara knew how important it was for them to be here, so she never let on how much it was destroying her. With every day that passed, every day that they remained in the Fire Nation, Katara felt more and more of herself being chipped away. She felt lost and bare, felt like she had been stripped of her Water Tribe identity. What was she without her necklace and traditional hairstyle? She might as well have just been one of them.
She felt exposed and vulnerable—these were the same people who hunted her tribesmen down, and she always wondered if they would come for her next. Sometimes, she would try to assuage herself by thinking about what Aang must have been feeling. The Fire Nation took his entire race from him, and still he refused to let that skew his perception and judgment of them. There were good Fire Nation people—he had known a few. But Katara had never known a good firebender, and couldn't convince herself that it was possible. Even when she looked around at the children of the Fire Nation, all she could see were little monsters in the making. She hated when she thought like that. She knew they were as much victims in this war as she, but she also knew what they would become. After all, the monster who took her mother away from her was once a child.
Zuko's joining of the group was traumatic, to say the least, for Katara. She didn't know what to make of it. She didn't even know what to make of her feelings about it. She worried that the enemy had infiltrated her group. She knew she couldn't trust Zuko, not ever again. He had been the one firebender Katara thought might have been good, the one firebender she thought she could trust. In Ba Sing Se, she got the impression that he was as lost in this war as she—that he was a lost boy who didn't know how to find his way out of the mess his family created. Katara was sure he had it in his heart to do what was right and to break the cycle of terrorism and tyranny, but then he stood against her and betrayed her trust, and she was certain that nothing good could ever come from the Fire Nation.
Now Zuko was promising he changed, and seemed desperate to make her believe him. Aang, foolhardy optimist that he was, trusted the firebender's word, and Toph assured her that he was honest. But still Katara couldn't bring herself to trust him, or to forgive him for his crimes or the crimes of his people. The monster stole her mother's life, and Zuko stole her trust, and she was never going to let herself be vulnerable to a firebender again.
But then he offered to hunt down the monster for her. He struck a very sensitive chord, and she couldn't turn down the offer. Katara was skeptical, naturally. What was the Fire Lord's son up to this time? Would he lead her into an ambush? Or the opposite—lure her away so he could ambush and kill the Avatar? But Aang had faith in Zuko, and Katara trusted Aang's judgment, no matter how much she might have disagreed with it. Curiosity and a need for closure overrode her suspicions, and Katara took him up on his offer.
Her resentment had festered leading up to the confrontation. The closer they came, the more Katara played with thoughts of killing the monster. She had a few different methods figured out, from drowning him to stabbing him with ice daggers to squeezing his heart with bloodbending. The moon was full, the dark power of her ancestors pulsed through her veins, and she relished being in control of the monster's body. Katara wanted to end him that moment, but it didn't seem proper. She bent her silky stream of water into shards of glittering ice and menacingly held them over his head. Hatred surged through her, and she didn't know why she had paused. But as she suspended the ice over his shivering, cowering body, she remembered who she was, and she wasn't a killer. Something, the glint of terror in his amber eyes, reminded her of her mother. She imagined Kya must have had that same glint, and Katara suddenly saw herself as the kind of monster she'd spent her life despising. She let the ice darts melt and drench the monster, now reduced to nothing more than an empty, pitiful coward.
Katara and Zuko spent most of the night in silence. They lit a fire on the coast and huddled around it. Katara found herself lost, glaring into the flames, hypnotised by the element as she wondered how her mother had suffered at its hands.
"Katara?" Zuko asked after a very long time. When she didn't answer, he inched towards her. "Are you okay?"
She tried to keep her eyes fixed on the fire, but finally looked at Zuko. She was silent at first, just staring at him absentmindedly. "I don't know." Her mind was blank—or, rather, she wished it were blank. So many thoughts and emotions filled her head, and she couldn't begin to sort through them. One emotion in particular stood out as she suddenly realised how drained and raw she felt. "I've spent my whole life hating that man. My whole life wanting to kill him, and I couldn't do it."
"You're stronger than I am, Katara," said the firebender. "Believe me, I understand wanting to kill him, but I'm glad you didn't."
"I just didn't have it in me," she said dejectedly. "I'm not like him."
"That's a good thing," Zuko replied quickly. "You're not a monster."
Katara shivered, pulling her knees up to her chin and crossing her arms atop them. "This place is full of them," she muttered bitterly.
"What about the kids?" he countered. "They're not monsters."
She gazed back into the fire as a low buzz overtook her thoughts. "But they will be," she said in a voice as frigid as the night air. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the firebender shift uneasily. He was as unnerved as she by the venom in her words.
"Am I a monster, Katara?" he murmured, angling his head down to catch her gaze.
She looked up from the crackling fire and studied his face. She searched his eyes—they were the same eyes as all the other monsters, but there was something different in his. His amber eyes lit up like the fire before them, but they were softer and gentler than the flame. She remembered them being wild with rage. She remembered fearing him and abhorring him. But now his eyes were kind and his presence was comforting, and it felt like it was a lifetime ago that she hated him. "You used to be."