Letters from the Falling Sky

Author's Note: Oh, wow! Chapter 20 already…can you guys believe it? It feels like just yesterday I was compiling notes for this fiction and beginning to write it! It's amazing how quickly things pass.

We're almost done! Since I know it's been forever, I wanted to remind those who have forgotten:

1. After Hakoda and Suki are killed, Aang's engagement necklace for Katara disappears (this is why he gives her a necklace and a ring instead)

2. There was a servant in chapter 3 that welcomes Sokka to the Bei Fong estate and ridicules him for hurting Toph. He is nameless; just know that he was mentioned before.

3. Fa Ling was the girl that obsessed over Aang while he was with her father, the mayor. Shu Orabi was the man that nearly made love to Katara on his Earth Kingdom ship, when Lynnie was only 2 years old (Orabi only found out from the villagers afterward that Katara had a daughter from the Avatar—she had conveniently left that part out for him.) Koko is the second top healer in the South Pole besides Katara. She and Katara were really close at one point, but then grew distant. You'll find out why after reading this.

Finally, this chapter is really graphic and I apologize up front. A lot of the M rating is going to be showing throughout these last couple of chapters—be prepared!

As always, I thank those of you who have stayed with me this far. You have no idea how much your support means to me.

.20.

It wasn't Shu Orabi's sudden presence in the bathroom that had frightened her—it was the loss of her waterbending, combined with the fact that he was holding one of Lynnie's dolls. And she screamed. Her throat opened and she clasped her cheek with her right hand and grabbed her kimono from the shelf to her left.

The wilting blossom Lynnie had handed her earlier that day gently glided to the marbled floor.

Shu Orabi wasted no time. His massive arm reached out and cupped Katara's cheek. She covered herself with the draped kimono and recessed further into the tub.

"Did you think you would get away that easily?" he murmured, smiling with the corner of his mouth. "No one shakes off Shu Orabi. No one slaps me and drills a hole in my ship. And no one"—he jerked her face towards him—"lies about a daughter and another man, Katara."

He was moving too quickly for her to keep track of him; she was convinced that this was all still a bad dream. Mostly she was worried about Lynnie, and then also about Aang. He should have been here by now. But Orabi's presence, for some reason, did not bother Katara as much as it should have—maybe he wasn't there? She was still asleep in the tub, resting. And Orabi was just another broken figment from her past. Another piece that needed to be forgotten.

He grabbed her hair and shook her. Katara blinked and looked up. Again she recessed further into the tub, but he was tall and strong, and soon both of his hands were grabbing her hair, forcing her to look at him. "I'm going to kill you," he announced, a vicious ringing staining his tone. "I'm going to rid the world of a liar named Katara!"

"You wouldn't," she managed, all the while struggling to keep the kimono over her body. "You won't! What did you do to my daughter?"

He pulled her towards him; she fought to keep her distance. In a matter of minutes he had heaved her out of the tub and pinned her against the bolted door. The kimono was lost in the process. Katara noticed that Lynnie's doll had been tossed and forgotten, and was now resting in silence underneath Orabi's massive boot.

"What did you—"

"I'm going to cut you into pieces, Water Tribe girl. They're going to spend days reconstructing you."

"What did you do to my daughter?" she insisted, ignoring the wolfish gaze that Orabi was so graciously slathering across her naked body. "Tell me where you—"

"Then they'll put all your pieces together, Katara, and then they'll say, 'This was the lying whore from the Southern Water Tribe,' and I'll be there to confirm it! You bitch. You liar." His smile was wide and flat; it spread from ear to ear. Shu Orabi began grinding his teeth. "You lying bitch. I have been waiting for such a long time to do this to you. I should have done it before we killed your father and that other whore from Kyoshi. It would have been a better use of our time to kill you first. Maybe then…"

He looked under his boot at Lynnie's doll, and then stared hard at Katara's narrowed eyes. "Maybe then, you wouldn't have a little girl to worry about. Ha!"

Somewhere during his speech, she had felt the water behind her eyelids—it was too much for her to hear this from him—it was too much to not know what had happened to Lynnie. She screamed and tried to shake free, but his hands were strong and firmly secured around her wrists. He was standing too closely for her to kick him. He was too persistent to escape—heavy and solid like a boulder…Katara swallowed the wavering lump in her throat and screamed out again.

"Quiet," Shu Orabi ordered crossly. Then he released her long enough to slap the right side of her face. The force sent her to the marbled floor, where Orabi picked her up again and pinned her back to the wall.

It was amazing—not just amazing, but better yet, unbelievable—what a lack of bending could reduce her to. She remembered Lynnie's dusty Merry Mama Mai doll, and how the dust had been both sticky and brown, and suddenly it all made sense. Katara put the pieces together. The doll, the invitation, the special order that had been sent from the Fire Nation to the Southern Water Tribe. It was all a set up. The doll's fabric had been laced with some sort of bending inhibitor, possibly one of the herbs prevalent in the Fire Nation's black market. And the invitation…it was all a plan to separate her from Aang and Sokka and Toph. A plan to destroy them from the Resistance. Orabi had been part of the Resistance all along.

And what worse! Despite the horrific position Orabi had forced upon her, Katara couldn't stop herself from laughing. She laughed maniacally—laughed in large and gasping breaths, laughed without stopping, without considering the volume of her voice—at her luck. They had succeeded for the second time.

Only now, they were going to take her instead of her father and Suki.

Meanwhile, her attacker began to undo the fastenings around the waistband of his pants. In the rightmost pocket there was a small cloth pouch, which looked—very distinctly—to have a short dagger inside. To his left side he had brought a length of rope.

He stated simply, "Enjoy this. It's going to be the last laugh you see in this life, Water Tribe girl. Laugh the whole time I'm cutting you up. Laugh at it. Go on."

She clasped her cheeks despite his hold and laughed harder, her gasping breaths eventually turning into shallow, watery sobs.

Lynnie's eyes opened and settled on a form familiar to her mother's. She rubbed her eyes and blinked at the darkness in the room, focusing on the female figure sitting at the base of the bed, before exclaiming—half in question—"Mama?"

The woman didn't answer. Lynnie blinked again. In whatever little light was streaming through the deep red curtains, she recognized the woman as none other than Auntie Koko, the other top healer from the Southern Water Tribe. Lynnie drew her knees up to her chest, unsure of how to react.

There had been a brief period when Lynnie was very young when Katara and Koko had been close friends. Lynnie couldn't remember it, of course…she could hardly remember Koko at all. She knew that Koko was an adult that she needed to respect, but that Katara also hated Koko—and so there was a tension now, with Koko in the room and Katara missing, and Lynnie awakening drowsily from a nap.

"Where is my doll?" Lynnie inquired instead, searching underneath the comforter.

"You are a deep sleeper," replied the older woman. "Do you know where your mother is?"

"Not here, I guess," presumed the child, suddenly aware of Katara's disappearance. "Where is she?"

Koko said, "I brought something for you to wear," before removing a black blindfold from her coat pocket. Her eyes looked wrinkled and waxy, tired from years of sketching and drawing and spying for the Resistance. It was all about to be over now. When all of the Avatar's team was dead, Koko would go back to living her life—she would get paid in full, her reputation as top healer would be restored, and maybe…maybe she would forget this ever happened.

She would forget that she had aided in the murder of a small, intelligent child and the child's broken, intelligent mother.

But Koko had grown used to the morbidity of the situation. She had imagined this a thousand times. Quick and easy. Blindfold the child and slit her throat. It would only take a minute, if even that…the blood would be warm and it would give rise to ribbons of steam in the cold room. Maybe Lynnie would scream, like her mother in the bathroom had moments before. Maybe Lynnie would plead with her because she was smart enough to know what was going on.

But maybe Lynnie would die soundlessly. Koko swallowed. She didn't understand her hesitations. If it was this easy, it should have been over with by now. She instructed, her hands shaking, "Put this around your eyes, Kya Lynn."

Lynnie took the blindfold and held it in her small, pale hands. "What is it for, Auntie?"

"It's a game."

"Like what kind of game?"

Koko stammered, "The…well, the fun kind of game," before turning her face and standing up. "Put it around your eyes."

Lynnie put the blindfold around her eyes. Koko helped fasten it around the back of the child's head.

She has Katara's hair, the woman thought disgustedly. She had always admired the healer's hair—flawless mahogany locks that never frayed or grayed or loosened. Katara's hair was beautiful. Complete. When she had drawn sketches of Aang's team for the Resistance, Koko remembered drawing Katara's hair and never being able to get it quite right. It was then she had—as artists often do—wished that she could at least touch it before trying to recreate it in paint.

Now she touched its replica and shuddered. It was as soft as the silky blindfold that she was tying—softer. Softer than laughter in the winter. Than life in the snow. It reminded her of healing those who needed her. It reminded her of the energy that she could put inside of a wound—energy that could close it up and force the blood to flow. Hot, spirited energy.

"Now what do we do?" asked Lynnie, clapping at her inability to see. "Is this what Misses Toph Lady sees all the time? She told me she was blind and that she couldn't see nothing."

Koko ignored this. She removed the short dagger Shu Orabi had supplied her with hours before. It was so easy. One movement of her wrist. One flick. One second. One small and simple murder.

It was Shu Orabi and Fa Ling who had killed Suki and Hakoda. Back then, Koko was used primarily as a spy. Her job was to write detailed reports on Katara's advancements in the South Pole—her conditions, her hopes, her jobs, any friends she made during her time there. Then they had told her to poison Gran Gran's zebra seal meat with a certain herb, and she had done that too. It was no problem. A little sprinkle in the right place, at the right time during preparation, and Gran Gran's heart-rate slowed until it flickered out completely.

But Kana was old, Koko had reasoned. And anyway, the Resistance had paid Koko in full—much more than she made healing the sick. All she had to do was watch Katara's reaction: more distant, more shattered, more hurt.

But Gran Gran's death had set off a chain reaction. The Avatar, Katara's brother, and the metalbender had come to Katara and Lynnie's rescue. So Koko's next mission was to kill off Toph Bei Fong in the healing lodge, as another spy—a man who worked as a gate keeper and servant in the Bei Fong estate—had poisoned enough of Toph's water supply to give her a critical anemic condition. All Koko had to do was finish the job with a little waterbending in the lungs. Then they would be able to do more mental and physical damage to the team from there.

Koko remembered thinking that it was no problem. The girl was too sick to even want to live. And then Katara had barged in, because the other healers had insisted that she could do a better job. The end result was that everyone had remained alive, and Katara and Toph had grown even closer. There was no pay for Koko that time.

Orabi and Ling had stolen some of the Avatar's belongings after killing Suki and Hakoda. Koko remembered Orabi's grinning face as he offered Fa Ling the necklace he had stolen from the Avatar—an ornately crafted stone that was no doubt intended for Katara to wear. She had wondered if Aang had proposed yet. And then Katara had shown up, pregnant and friendless, on the icy shores of the marsh. Koko had been her closest confidant back then. Time passed, things changed—they began to speak less and less to each other. Eventually Koko had been the cause of Gran Gran's death, and now she would become the cause of Kya Lynn's.

At least Katara will be too dead to notice, she mused pathetically, finishing the knot on the child's blindfold.

In all honesty, it was too much to lie to Katara to her face. That was why she and Katara had grown distant. She knew where Aang's engagement necklace had gone, what had happened to split her and her brother and almost-fiancé apart. And she had done nothing about it—she was too afraid to, maybe.

But here she was, Koko realized. Jealous and afraid and stupid. The Avatar's story was nearly complete. Soon he would die as well, and the world would keep spinning, and Koko would keep lying, and somewhere along the line, things would end. Things would change. Time had a tendency to cover wounds up, make them look more appealing. But heal them? No. Koko was too deep of a wound to be healed. Too scarred and jagged—too ugly and vicious—too jealous…most of all, too passive to see this coming.

She was helpless; there was nothing she could do now but end it. So she breathed in and moved the matted mass of hair away from Lynnie's white, temperate neck.

He was a madman.

Katara was crying because she missed Lynnie and wanted to see her—wanted to know what had happened. Orabi had bound her hands together, as well as her feet. He had stuffed the cloth pouch of the dagger down the waterbender's throat, securing it with a rope tied at the back of her head, through her open mouth. The dagger was placed on the sink, behind Orabi, where Katara could see it.

She remembered how he had once tried to trick her to get her on the ship with him, only to find out that his motives were far from innocent. And yes, it was wrong to lie to him. And yes, it was wrong to lead him on. But it was also wrong for him to be a part of the Resistance. And Katara couldn't believe that she had fallen into his grasp again. She couldn't believe that death was dangerously close.

She wanted, more than anything, to be able to talk—to be able to reason with him about what he was doing. She was convinced that maybe—spirits willing—there would be a breakthrough. But the cloth was dry and scratchy, and the rope around her head was tight. The only thing she could manage were a series of undecipherable muffles.

"I'm having trouble deciding what I should do first," Orabi stated. Katara's eyes were wide—full discs of blue that watched his every move—his hurried hand gestures, his darting gaze, his anxious leg twitches. He smiled maniacally again and bent down to her side. "No waterbending!" he exclaimed contentedly. "Ha, ha! This is the greatest day of my life, Katara. I get to fuck a bastard's mother, and then I get to kill her. You know how I'm going to do it?"

Katara turned her face. She was busy thinking of an escape. Just because she was naked and tied down and without her bending didn't necessarily mean that she was out of the game completely. If they had captured Aang and Sokka and Toph, then she was the only one who could save Lynnie now. What would Gran Gran have done?

Anything, everything, all of it—she would have done the impossible to keep Lynnie out of danger. And so this was what Katara was thinking about as Orabi stated, in a bitter, unfeeling way, "I'm going to paralyze her but keep her conscious. And then I'm going to fill the tub with water—burning hot water, or maybe really cold water, or maybe I'll be nice after I do what I want to her and decide to make it lukewarm—and then I'm going to put her in there and watch as the tub fills. And then she drowns! The waterbender drowns, and she gets to see it all."

The dagger was placed at a convenient angle, thought Katara suddenly. And it certainly seemed heavy enough to fall on its own. If Orabi was intent on raping her before finishing the job, then his position on top of her would also be an opportunity for escape. The dagger could fall and hit his neck or back—it wouldn't kill him, but it would be enough of a distraction for her to figure out her next move.

"Then her dead body gets taken out, yes? And I cut it up with that dagger over there." Orabi removed the dagger and flashed it in Katara's face. He waved it teasingly. "It's sharp! Heavy!" He added, with a smirk that—under any other circumstances—would have been called harmless, "The same one used to kill her father." And then he placed the dagger above Katara's head, on the golden rug that covered part of the bathroom floor.

It was getting darker, because the candles in the lanterns were beginning to burn out, and the light from the window wasn't enough to keep everything lit and visible. Maybe she would be able to undo the rope around her wrists with the dagger while Orabi was busy? He wouldn't notice it—the horny bastard—no, he wouldn't notice it at all if she started moving up and down with him, with her hands above her head. Ingenious! Katara hoped he wouldn't touch the dagger anymore.

"Once I've cut her up," concluded the madman, removing his pants and undergarments and exposing his male anatomy, "then I put her in a bag and mail her to the Avatar. I write about how good she was to me. What do you think? Fair, right? You know, Katara"—he spread his legs to either side of her, speaking a mere three centimeters from her nose—"I didn't want to kill Suki or Hakoda, because I had a crush on you back then. I thought you were the most beautiful thing in the world. Then the weeks I spent with you after you left the Avatar were heaven." He jerked his weight around, opening her thighs forcibly with his hands when she refused to cooperate with him. "Then you betrayed me. So I'm enjoying this part of my mission now, because it's all about revenge. I get what I want, the Resistance gets what it wants, and you don't get anything."

She felt the cool contact of his body against her stomach. If her mouth wasn't clogged and tied, she would have vomited. He spread his tongue against her neck; she placed her hands above her head and fumbled quietly in search for the sharp edge of the dagger. "It seems perfectly fair to me," he said, pulling the rope around her mouth down to her neck. She coughed the cloth out and he pierced his large, awkward tongue between her teeth.

"If you talk," he warned against her quivering lips, "if you scream again—I'll do even worse things than I have described for you here. Understand?"

Katara nearly smiled. He had removed the rope from around her mouth! She could talk again; she could reason…she could use her powers as a seductive flirt to change the situation for the better. She still had a chance to save Lynnie. She just needed to be smart about whatever happened next.

But he was back in her mouth too quickly for her to say anything else.