On the day things change beyond recognition the sky is grey and filled with rain, grizzly drops that do not fall but float and smother the world in water. Nothing in this place ever stays the same. The Fire Lord and I walk through the royal gardens where I had once before, in an innocent time that seems so far gone now, washed away the tears of another Caldera royal. Obedient as always I listen to my orders; they are of great importance to Lord Ozai, so likewise they are to me.
My goodbyes are as short as they are few.
Mak's hawk perches on his shoulder with its narrow, beady eyes and the man himself is awkward in a way he has become recently that he never had been in the past; it is the coldness within me that does it. Before, it had been softened slightly by my youthful naivety, but now it cuts men like him to the core.
I had been more secluded since Aliza had left the little house with the red porch and it was only Yori and I left to fend for ourselves. We took turns to cook on the old stove, flavourless meals that were sustenance and nothing more. He continued to teach me, though I had surpassed the knowledge he had learned from those waterbending scrolls; instead we spent long hours immersed in books, studying military history and battle tactics. The physical aspects of my training were kept confined to the darkness. When the sun had fallen in the West I would jump between the rooftops of Caldera city, prowl the filthy streets in the poor districts beyond the mountain, amongst the dockyards. Some nights I would brawl just for the sake of it – for something to do.
The Fire Lord's plans for me were perturbing, on the surface, but I had nothing left to hold me here other than loyalty to my Lord Ozai.
I am to travel to the Earth Kingdom; where there are rumours abound of the Avatar's presence. The tactical failure in the North from our nation's finest warships was a blow to the Fire Lord, though he masked his disappointment well, and lathered propaganda thicker and thicker onto the citizens. We would prevail.
Once he said to me, with the disdain ripping holes into his tongue: 'it should be my son in your place,' and he meant the banished prince – the child he punished with all the brutality befitting a man such as he, and sent him out into the world chasing legends. Though in the end they had turned out to be real – much more real than any of us had ever expected.
The princess does not appreciate me being sent in her place. She is sure that this would have been her crowning glory. She brings the subject up with her father (I know, because he tells me about it later, laughing cruelly) and he shoots her down so fast that she could barely even begin her persuading argument. I do not care who goes; I just know that one of us must.
Sometimes, the prince sends me letters sealed with innocuous red, as if his affections for me are a secret. Shortly after the terrorist incident in the city, that doltish prince dishonoured his father during a war meeting (an offence for which I cannot forgive him, despite how I pity his foolishness) and before his warship disembarked he sent me word by hawk, a hastily scrawled note in black ink on yellowed rice paper. A note that Yori had found leafed between the pages of the only book I had ever taken an interest in – the old stories of the spirits – and clipped me so hard around the ear for it that I saw stars for an hour afterwards.
To this day, two long years later, I still remember what it said. That is what I was trained for, after all. Observe, overcome and adapt. It was not addressed to me, nor was it signed, but it was obvious, even to Aliza and Yori – who read it before it was burned – whom it was from.
The steel walls of this ship reminds her of something unpleasant, something from long, long ago. She spends most of her time above deck hanging over the stern watching the waves carrying this great metal hulk with such grace, such gentleness. Three days into their journey and she sees that water is not just elegance – it is massive, and destructive. White foam batters down onto the deck and seeps in through the battened hatches, but Katara cannot be afraid.
In the dark she sits and feels her fingertips burn. Her toes curl into the cotton sheets on her bunk in the cabin she shares with three other crewmembers, and she finally understands from where the force within her hails. She is not some graceful water dancer with water like liquid silver between her hands, but the waves that pound the ship so furiously, the rain that drives and blinds and overcomes. The water is patient, but it always wins in the end, and the water is just as furious as fire. Her resolve strengthens like the steel that surrounds her; for the task that awaits her she must be the sea.
They dock at an obscure fire nation colony, and Katara disembarks with a green travelling pack thrown across her shoulder. Gone are her midnight blue robes – replaced with modest Earth Kingdom garb, brown leggings and a tunic of green and modest yellows. From here she will go on to Ba Sing Se alone, relying on her own resourcefulness; a true test of her ability to fend for herself. Despite her exotic looks, she blends into the background of the dock almost immediately. Years of training can outdo almost any other outside factor, after all.
What she did not expect was the tiredness; the aching muscles and creaking bones from the never ending days on the road. Filthy and covered head-to-toe in dust, she continues onwards because she must. This is alien territory, though, and even she must be allowed some room for trepidation—she thinks so, at least. And so, instead of pressing ever closer towards her destination, she stops. After two days of walking through fields and then dusty farmer's tracks, after two days of rationed food, she wanders off the road a little into the woods, and sets down her pack (which is almost the same size as her) and rests her head back against the hard bark of a tree.
This all seems vaguely familiar, though she cannot remember why. She puts it down to a strange dream she must have had once in the little red house that she finds herself longing for now. Who would have thought: she, the indomitable fire nation assassin, yearning for her creature comforts?
She falls asleep then—and she must be tired, for when she wakes it is to a sliver of steel pressed against her neck. She makes no sound, like her attacker might have expected, and she can feel the muscles in his forearms loosen.
"Now then, what a pretty little thing we have here," he coos into her ear, and she supresses the shiver that threatens to run down her spine. Instead, she twists her lips in disgust and watches the scene unfold around her. There is a group of them, chattering low in their throats between herself so that over the sound of the forest, and the river (how had she not noticed that before?) she cannot hear them. Quickly, she tries to calculate their exact number, but her eyes are swimming and it's dark where it had not been before—she had only meant to rest awhile—and all she can think is pirates, for if their bizarre, tattered clothes and the nearby squawking of a parrot meant anything that it was that, and no mistake.
"What ever shall we do with you?" the man holding the knife continues, his mouth hot and wet and so close to her ear that she could break his jaw without even trying. The longer he holds her, the more this proposition seems to sweeten. Still, though, she bides her time. If she acts while she is sleepy like this, mistakes will be made, and she might not get out of this predicament as easily as she might hope. She looks over to where she had propped her pack up, and a weedy little man with a thin black moustache is rifling through it. She cannot help the snarl she makes then, and she slight struggle of her shoulders and the man holding her needs no excuse; he presses closer and the blade nicks her skin.
"Let me go," she warns once, low.
It is unlike her to provide such warning—but she irritated with her own blunders. This should not have happened.
He grins, so wide that she is sure his face will crack (soon it will, she thinks, and quells a small smile of her own) and chuckles.
"That time'll come soon enough, little turtleduck. Sit quietly now, like a good girl."
The drop of blood rolls down her neck, and she can see it in peripherals now. She counts: one, two, three, four, five, and when it rolls out of sight, six, down below her collar, she springs to action. She grabs the hilt of the knife in her hand and twists it out of the man's grasp, wrenching his wrist back until it snaps.
He screams and falls back onto his knees. The other men seem to be dazed, standing wide-eyed and confused and she takes the opportunity to flick the knife towards the pirate who'd been looking through her back. It hits its intended target, though it is not as accurately as it would've been if Mai had thrown it (Katara had never enjoyed knife throwing, it was overly finicky). It sinks into his left shoulder, and he winces away from her and back into the undergrowth with a wild abandon as she dashes towards her pack.
But there is too many of them—men she hadn't noticed in the dark of the trees drop like old fruit, and she hesitates a second too long before grabbing her belongings and scarpering, and something heavy barrels into her at a speed she can hardly comprehend. Her head cracks against the sun-baked earth, and his weight squashes her bony hips until they can barely hold up against his weight. She grunts where someone else might have whimpered, and stills. She is quite sure she won't be able to fight her way out of this corner with brute strength and her admittedly rather extraordinary skill set.
A komodo dog is loyal, it is vicious and it is dangerous—but it is not innovative. She is no bright-eyed genius.
The man on top of her moves until she is pressed quite cruelly to the ground beneath his weight, and she quickly tries to take hold of his bloodstream. For a minute it seems like it would work: his face contorts, and she can feel the life of him flowing into her fingers, but then he lifts her shoulders and cracks her head back down and there are bright white spots distorting her vision. Her head feels heavy. It feels wet, and there is something catching in her eyelashes, and finally the pirate elicits a whimpered exclamation of pain from the war-torn girl.
His weight disappears so quickly that she is sure she must have passed out, she must be dreaming. She blinks the yellowed stars from her eyes and begins to sit up; passing the back of one of her hands across whatever it was that had collected in her eyelashes. It comes away streaked red, and with the faintest trace of panic in her gut, she feels about for some head injury. Her quick examination of her forehead provides no immediate answer, but she knows in that moment that she must have severely knocked her head, because standing before her is the Blue Spirit, shoulders hunched and breathing heavy. Slowly, he offers her his hand and she reaches up, overawed, to take it.
He says nothing once he has ensured that she is fully standing, the heel of her palm pressed into her forehead.
"Am I dreaming?" she asks.
The Blue Spirit says nothing; merely goes to turn away from her.
"Don't leave!" she says immediately, reaching out to grab his arm. She stops the progress of her wayward hand at the same time that she recoils. "Sorry."
It is not often that Katara apologises. She looks around and it appears as if she is not dreaming—the pirate with the broken wrist is writhing still where she had left him, and the man with the knife in his shoulder is terribly still, face down in the bracken. There is nothing else left to suggest what had become of the rest of the men who had accosted her, so maybe she is dreaming. Even men as dishonourable as pirates would not leave behind their wounded comrades, would they?
She realises that it is a mask a little too late—the 'spirit' is already bolting away into the darkness, and if it wasn't for the strange familiarity of his steps, she might have let him leave without question. So, dizzy and disorientated with blood spilling down her forehead and into her eyes, she follows him.
A/N: short short short, and far too late - i am so sorry! i'm going to marathon avatar ferociously over the easter holidays to get me back into the mood for this story, and the next chapter most definitely focuses on the relationship between katara and zuko :) xox