A/N:

I did a bit more rewording and spellchecking. I'm currently sick with Covid so I figured I may as well make good use of my time, I think of writing daily but never actually make myself sit down and do it if that makes sense. Also, when i paste the text over from my Pages app, it doesn't save what I have italicized :') I've attempted to go through this chapter and fix some of it, but I want to move on to the next, so bare with me! I've also fixed some of the timeline issues i have noticed!

Kim

~0~

"June?" Her voice barely reached past the door.

Katara slowly pushed open the wooden door, peering inside.

The older lady was tending to an unconscious middle aged man who had severe burns up and down his arms.

"What happened?" She asked in surprise, still studying the burns.

"This is Pu, he is our medicine man, of sorts." She explained, rubbing a strange green salve over the burns.

"Who did this? Those are severe burns," Katara stepped further into Akira's home and shut the door behind her.

Akira finally looked at Katara, noticing her genuine concern. The lady hesitated for a moment. "The soldiers from the factory don't like when we don't cooperate."

The young water bender set the satchel down, her eyes glinting angrily.

"What did they take?"

Pu stirred suddenly, and a groan escaped his mouth.

"More like what didn't they take." The man said as he tried to turn to look at Katara.

Katara met Pu's brown eyes and she frowned sympathetically. Pu appeared to be maybe 40, with dark brown hair and a rather prominent straight nose.

They all just looked at each other for a few moments.

Katara thought back to Pepper's son and all the other dangerously thin people she had seen around.

Rage boiled up inside her.

The Fire Nation deprived -no, robbed- it's own citizens! How could anyone be so blind to think that ending the war was a bad idea?

Suddenly, the banished prince came to her mind. She thought of the last time she had seen Zuko, in the crystal catacombs.

This memory was different from the rest, however.

Most memories she had with him were usually of them battling, their elements sizzling as her water extinguished his fire.

Occasionally, like when they attempted to pin down Azula in the abandoned town, they fought together. But that seemed to have been a one-time thing.

That evening in the catacombs, she was close enough to the firebender to feel his fiery essence and she had touched his scar, wondering silently if she could heal it.

The strangest part was that she wanted to heal him.

She had mumbled that she was a healer, yet didn't even tell him that she could heal it.

Who really knew if anyone or anything could heal such a old wound.

She didn't know what to think of that moment - not that it even was a moment-

He just wasn't tying her to a tree or trying to best her in the Northern Water Tribe so he could get Aang.

That's what she told herself, at least.

Just moments after, his sister, Azula- if she remembered right- had started talking about him going home and about regaining his honor.

"June?" Akira's voice broke through Katara's thoughts and she wondered how long she'd been standing there, thinking about Zuko.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "Do you need me to go get anything for him?"

Akira stood up from beside the cot where Pu was situated.

"No, but unfortunately he's on the bed I was going to let you use for the night."

"That's...that's okay," Katara assured the lady.

She wouldn't dream of taking the bed from an injured man.

"You can sleep in my shop if you'd like. There should be candles under the counter if you need them." Akira fished a long metal key out of her robes. "There's a small back room that should work for the night."

Katara took the key from her, nodding in thanks. She scooped up her bedroll and small bag that Akira must have brought in from where she'd left it at the shop.

"Good night," she said quietly before she left, shutting the door behind her and stepping back onto the front porch.

The sun was setting, casting eerie shadows over the brown sludge-water beneath the planks leading to the shop.

Katara made her way into the shop, pushing aside the thick canvas that covered the entirety of the back wall. The shop, which was situated under the wooden pavilion, had the room Akira was referring to in the back corner. Squinting in the dim light, Katara made her way to the front counter and rooted around for the candles. After a bit of searching, she found them stashed at the bottom of a crate with a small box of matches.

A strange shuffling noise came from the back corner and Katara stiffed.

Lighting a match, Katara lit one of the large candles and took a few silent steps towards the noise. The candlelight suddenly reflected off of two yellow-red orbs and they sprung forward, causing her to stumble back in surprise.

The creature landed on a crate and...meowed.

It was just a cat.

Katara let out a long breath, laughing softly. "You scared me, kitty."

The cat simply meowed once more before sitting back and cleaning itself, uninterested.

She shook her head, going over to the back room's door. She pushed it open and peered inside.

It was around the size of her igloo back home, eight feet by eight feet, give or take. Boxes lined the back two wooden walls, while the two walls that were facing under the pavilion looked like they were wooden pallets filled with mud and covered with strips of canvas.

A few hours had passed, and Katara had managed to find some blankets stashed in the back room to put together a sleeping pad to put under her bedroll. She'd also eaten the last bit of her jerky, cautiously bent and separated some clean water out of the river, boiled it on the small wooden stove that was collecting dust, and had a cup of tea.

Just as she was beginning to grow tired, she heard a commotion coming from outside. It started as heavy footsteps, a loud banging noise, then someone was yelling.

She paced back and forth for a moment or two, but eventually got the courage to go investigate.

Peeking out between pieces of bamboo at the front of the shop, she watched on in horror as blasts of fire were shot in the air, clearly in warning. Fire Nation soldiers were standing near a shop two spots to the left, harassing a mother and her son, who probably was almost Aang's age.

The mother was struck and she fell back, crashing into the wall.

The boy stood and stared in shock as they bent down and scooped up two large bags and then a small coin pouch. They had just began to turn around when the boy shouted angrily after them, throwing a small tomato their way.

One of the soldiers turned around, sliding into a bending position when another soldier held his hand up. He said something to the other and his stance relaxed before glaring at the boy and continuing on.

After the soldiers had crossed the walkway and made it to the docks, Katara slipped out of the shop, heading over to the boy and his mother.

"Are you okay?" She came to a stop a good distance away.

The mother had managed to scoot away from the wall and sat up with help from her son.

"Those thugs," the boy spat. "They took our food and our money."

"Erin," she hissed. "There's nothing she can do and complaining doesn't fix anything."

Katara shifted awkwardly. "I'm sorry that happened to you. I saw what happened."

The mother got to her feet and sent Katara another glance before grabbing Erin and going back inside, shooting Katara a quiet, "Goodnight."

The same rage filled Katara.

Erin was right...those thugs. Someone had to stop them. Someone had to save the town, because they clearly couldn't do it themselves.

Katara made her way back into the shop and to her bedroll, plopping down unceremoniously.

Her anger simmered beneath the surface, yet Katara made herself lie down and try to sleep.

Two days passed by, Akira agreeing that 'June' could stay in the shop's room as long as she would sew up a few things to sell and do another round of deliveries for her. Those two days were filled with accidental needle pokes, stinky fish and failed ideas on how to protect the village from the soldiers.

It was the end of the second day, when Katara was making her final delivery to Xu, when inspiration struck.

Maybe she couldn't stop the soldiers, but she thought she had a pretty good idea on how to help the villagers.

She handed Xu a mended pair of shorts before heading back to the shop to see Akira. She didn't need her wondering where she disappeared off to. Besides, Katara needed to borrow a few things from her before she could see if her plan would work.

~0~

"Xu, I needed to make a trip back to the mainland. Have you seen your brother?"

When Katara had asked Akira about Dock and Xu, and she had simply offered her a shrug, muttering something about a cactus.

"Of course!" Xu flashed Katara that same grin. "Let me go get him!"

Xu took off in a fast walk, headed behind the partition of his shop. The man disappeared for a moment before reappearing on the other side with a new hat.

"Hello, June! My brother said you need a ride?" He gave her a curious look and she first opened her mouth to make a comment about the quick change and the impossibility of it all.

She instead sighed and made herself smile.

"Yes please, Dock."

"Righty-o!" He went around the table, looking to his 'brother's' shop.

"Hm," he scoffed, glancing back into the empty shop. "Oh well!"

They boarded his boat a few minutes later and Dock attempted to make idle conversation.

Katara wasn't feeling particularly chatty, her mind instead occupied by thoughts of the Painted Lady. She had come very far in her waterbending since she had left home.

Home...

Her mother, father, brother and grandmother's face swam in her mind, threatening to pull her train of thought away with feelings of loneliness.

No...she thought. I have to think this through.

A jolt of the boat shook her out of her thoughts as Dock bumped the into the dock.

"Thank you," she said, hopping off hurriedly. "I'll be back at dawn, I have to make a trip."

Dock waved and nodded before paddling off to shore. If he wondered why she had remained near silent the duration of the trip, he didn't mention it.

Katara offered the man a wave in return before she made her way into the woods.

~0~

The sun sunk below the horizon and by the time the moon was midway into the night sky, Katara felt rather confident that her plan would work. She stepped out of the shadows of the woods and into the moonlight, staring down the embankment to the murky water.

The full moon called her to the water, to her element.

Her heart called her to the people.

Long, dark crimson fabric wrapped around her body like a dress, hanging loosely off her shoulders and gathering at her clavicle.

As she picked her way down to the shoreline, she bent water vapor out of the murky water, creating a fog.

A large straw hat with a veil sat atop the matching crimson hood that connected to the dress at the clavicle. Ropes draped across and around her shoulders loosely, following the curves of the dress, and came together where the fabric all met in the front. The ropes wrapped around a brooch of sorts and the ends hung low. An equally dark red was painted on her shoulders in stripes, tapering as they grew closer to the front of her body.

More marks covered her face, mirroring the figurine she'd seen at Xu's to a T. The red contrasted beautifully against her blue eyes and the way she had painted them on elongated her face, allowing her to appear much older. To tie the look off, she had painted a yellow crescent moon upside down on her forehead.

Once Katara reached the edge of the water, she bent a platform of ice.

Taking a deep breath and opening her arms out and up at her sides, the fog intensified as she stepped out onto the ice.

She bent the ice into a disk and propelled herself forward with the water.

Willing the fog to follow her, she was quite the sight to behold, seeming to float across the water.

Wind billowed her dress and veil back as she picked up speed.

I wonder if this is how Appa feels…or Aang when he glides around on his glider.

Though the air that hit her face, paired with the dampness from the fog, wasn't particularly pleasant smelling, Katara felt absolutely exhilarated.

She reached the building situated close to Pu's home, where she had learned the day prior he kept all his seriously ill patients.

Staring up at the tall peak of the building, she bent water from the water skin she kept hidden beneath the dress and covered her hands in the water.

Katara quietly padded into the building, keeping her head low.

A cool blue light lit the building up as one by one, she began to heal the sick. After the sixth one, Katara was thankful she had had the practice healing Aang after Ba Sing Se. Aang had missed Azula's lighting strike by just a hair, thanks to Iroh.

The lighting had turned a good amount of his veins in his shoulder and back to near jelly, causing intensive internal damage, and it had badly charred the flesh where the lighting had entered. It had taken Katara three tries to figure out what she was feeling and doing before she was able to make any real progress.

These folks were no where near as ill, thankfully.

Most of them, she noted after a while, just had severe dehydration or malnutrition from the poor conditions in the village. A few had a parasitic illness from the river, she supposed, and the rest had a combination of the two with some other ailments involved.

Burns and broken bones she could heal, dehydration she could fix...malnutrition on the other hand...that was something she needed to find an alternative solution.

Otherwise, all the healing would be for nothing.

She stood up after the last patient and readjusted her veil and hood before creeping outside.

The fog had mostly subsided so she summoned more from the river to cover her journey back across to the shore.

She was grateful for the full moon, knowing it was the only thing that allowed her to heal all those people. Her bending was strong, but usually she would have been near exhausted after the first three...

As she bent the ice disk to surf back across to shore, strain began to creep into her muscles and mind.

Katara knew the easiest solution to fixing the malnourishment problem...but she wasn't sure if she had the guts to do it.

Thinking back again to the boy she had met her first day, then to Erin and the others in the village, she steeled her nervous.

She had to do it.

She had to steal the food back from the factory.

Her body dipped down, toes dragging in the muddy water. The sensation jerked her from her thoughts as she realized she must have gotten too distracted to keep the fog up and the ice disk.

Adjusting her positioning, she half hopped, half stepped onto the shore close to the dock.

Striding over to the edge of the dock, she plopped down, returning to her thoughts.

There were a few things she would need to guarantee her plan a success.

A full water skin, both of the raft-boats Dock used and most importantly, stealth.

She would have to keep the fog around her, 'float' when necessary, load up the food onto the rafts, and then move the rafts and herself back to the village.

The soldiers could not discover her inside the factory, or it would most likely be game over for her. The water skins would help, of course, but Katara did not have the amount of experience fighting or bending in close quarters that she would have liked.

It would be bad news for her if the firebenders were able to blast her water into nonexistence.

How are you going to know where they even keep the food?

Sokka's voice overtook the sound of her own worried, inner voice.

She frowned at the thought, knowing her lack of knowledge on the set up of the factory could- and most likely would- become a huge issue.

Glancing up at the moon that was now beginning to dip lower in the sky, Katara decided tonight was not the night.

She'd need to do more research and have more energy to make it work.

Three hours until dawn... Katara thought. Not enough time to do it tonight...but that should be enough to go take a closer look at the factory. It wouldn't be smart to walk in blind...

Her muscles ached once more as she stood up, and the thought of having to carry herself across the water made her cringe.

Instead, she glanced to one of the rafts, silently sending Dock a thank you for letting her "borrow" the raft for the time being.

The water bender seated herself on the raft, pulling the fog back up from the depths once more. She began to slowly bend the current to propel the raft in the direction of the factory.

She slowed to a stop just down stream of the factory, where the cliff sides facing the river's bank weren't as severe.

The factory seemed ten times as massive up close, and she wasn't even within a stone's throw of it yet.

The building sat high up on the cliff side, overlooking the river.

Four huge sewage pipes ran out of the bottom of the building, traveling down the length of the cliff before it opened, dumping the thick, murky sludge into the river.

A small red glow emitted under the building, and she wondered if it was some sort of hot molten by-product that they were pumping out.

The main building was framed with two long, smaller buildings adjacent on both sides. Those two buildings had three large smokestacks a piece, each pumping black smoke into the atmosphere.

Katara pulled the raft out of the river and set it down, hoping to keep it from floating away.

I better get a closer look, she thought as she began climbing up the steep embankment.

This area of land was clearly badly mangled by years of exposure, the trees virtually non-existent and the ground a soot-ish gray color.

Sokka would be so much better at this... she thought, trying to channel her brother's spirit. His plan might start out sounding outlandish, but they always managed to turn out, one way or another.

She missed him, she really did.

But as much as she wanted to find him...he needed to find Aang a fire bending trainer. She hoped that's what they had spent the last week doing, instead of looking for her.

Katara removed herself from her thoughts, instead focusing on her stealth as she pulled herself up over a chest-high ledge.

Now able to get a much closer look, Katara crouched down near a boulder, studying the left side of the factory.

She could see a walkway going from ground level, just inside the factory's perimeter, up to the roof on the west side of the building, closest to her. Four windows dotted the side of the main building, directly under the level the walkway led to.

Okay...she thought. So that's where they make the metal...I don't think they'd keep their food there...

Katara snuck around to the backside of the factory, creeping along the entire length, trying to see in through the chainlink fence.

This wall of the factory was more open, and Katara could see a sentry post situated in the middle, with a gate to let soldiers in and out. Just past that was the entrance to the main building and on either side, Katara could see the two alleyways that seemed to lead into darkness.

Her heartbeat increased with her nerves, as she was a bit more out in the open here.

The landscape on this side was not quite as destroyed, yet the shrubs that grew randomly were not much help to hide her.

Deciding to go around to the east side, she swiftly moved through the clearing.

A quick survey of the other side found it mirrored the west side almost perfectly, the only difference being the elevated walkway in the opposite corner.

Pausing to take a break, she decided she had seen as much as she was going to for the night.

There hadn't been any soldiers around from what she could tell and that alone made her feel a bit better.

~0~

Dawn came, and like Dock and Katara had agreed, he came and picked her up from the shore to take her back into town.

The girl had just enough time to remove her disguise and stash it inside a hollowed out log, a good distance into the forest.

"My, my! You look exhausted!" Dock had said after a few paddles. "Long trip?"

Katara hesitated, forgetting momentarily that she had told Dock she was making a trip into the next town to see if she could find any word of her family.

"Yeah," she finally said. "No word, unfortunately."

Dock hummed, continuing paddling.

"We had something very exciting happen last night!" He suddenly said, grinning. "The Painted Lady came to visit us! She healed some of our sick!"

Katara's eyes widened, partially surprised that people had noticed so early in the morning.

"The Painted Lady?"

Dock bobbed his head quickly. "Yep! We had six folks wake up this morning feeling brand new, except for the hunger!"

Warmth and happiness filled her chest, knowing her long night actually had done something.

"That's amazing!"

"It is!" Dock agreed, parking the raft at the village's dock.

As Katara stood up to disembark, her muscles trembled warily, and she hoped Dock hadn't noticed.

"Thank you," she said politely before heading back to her room to get some much needed sleep.