a/n: I wish I had a good excuse, I really do. Also, it gets a little rough in the middle, and not for the faint of heart.
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On Freedom
Bee held onto Longshot's shoulder as they flew into the skyplex, dodging Hama's men shooting at them as they came in. The shuttle had gone through with little trouble, but the skyplex wasn't known for accepting visitors too kindly, and they had a standing order to attack any ship that came with less-than-diplomatic reasons. Hama's pilots were some of the best, but they couldn't beat her Longshot.
Sokka stood on the other side of him, and was making a genuinely touching effort to avoid back-spaceship driving, but every now and then, an exclamation of oh dear God no! would come from his direction.
Longshot pulled up the ship and came to a rough, loud landing against the docking station of the skyplex, a heavy-metal-on-metal shriek reverberating through the ship and making her teeth itch. She patted him on the shoulder. "All right," she barked, "let's get a move on. Sokka, you're in charge of the home team, make sure no one gets into the cargo bay, dong ma?"
"Right," he replied, and trotted behind him while she fixed her vest and resisted the urge to fix Longshot's, even though it was on right. They joined up with Pipsqueak, the Duke, Suki, Ty Lee, and Zuko in the cargo bay, all standing around the ruined mule. She nodded to Zuko, who lit the fuse on the charges they'd set up on the mule, and then to the Duke, who opened the cargo bay, as everyone who wasn't the prince bolted for cargo to hide behind.
Zuko performed a strange martial arts move and fired a concussive blast from his fist that hit the mule and sent it careening into the chaos of Hama's defenses. It exploded in the middle of the guards — perfect, she thought.
"Zuko, Suki, Ty Lee," she barked, already shouldering her weapons and walking forward, "you answer to Sokka. Hold the cargo bay."
They marched into the fray, Bee at the lead, followed closely by her comrades, but were surprised when they found Jet and Diana rushing toward them, the half-dead woman Hama had been torturing when they'd taken on the train job held limp between them — and no Katara. Bee took over from Jet as he snatched the bag of his weapons from Pipsqueak.
"Come on," she snapped to Diana, helping her carry the woman back into the ship. Sokka started when they limped into the cargo bay. "Katara's still back there, someone take my place!" she called, and she caught sight of Zuko flying past her. Together, she and Diana carried the woman to the Infirmary — Toph was laying on the couch and didn't speak to them as they passed — and Haru and Aang both helped them pull the woman up onto the bed.
"Katara tried to heal her, I think it helped," Diana gasped. "She said she was still alive."
Haru checked the woman's pulse. "She is, but in bad shape — get me the morphine and sutures, I'll do what I can. What's your blood type?" he asked, and Diana gaped at him. "Hurry," he snapped, "her pulse is falling. She needs a transfusion."
"I — uh," Diana started, and Bee almost dropped the vials of morphine in shock — there was something real on Diana's face, genuine fear and horror. "It's B positive, my blood type, I'm — I'm B positive, but I don't know what — "
"I'm O-neg," Bee offered, and Haru pointed at the cabinets while he prepared the tray of surgical tools.
"Top shelf, get all of that, we'll need it," he barked.
"What can I do?" Aang asked, and Haru motioned to Diana.
"Get her out of here. She doesn't need to be here for this."
When Katara opened her eyes, she was staring into Hama's, and there were metal cuffs binding her wrists together. They were in the same torture room as before — the window was still shattered from Yue's bursting through it — and she guessed that it had only been a minute or so. She didn't see Yue, but the gunfire in the distance said it was just a matter of time before the others reached her.
"How did you learn waterbending?" she gasped, and Hama hauled her to her feet, grinning like a cat. She looked around surreptitiously; there was blood on the floor, but there weren't any bodies. Good, Yue had gotten her mother out.
"Scrolls," she replied shortly, holding her shoulder in a vice-like grip that made her knees weak. "Lots and lots of scrolls. Water Tribe used to have them, but now they're mine. You'd like them, wouldn't you? That's why you came," she said, dragging her into another room. She was still too addled to fight back, but her head was clearing fast, the icy question settled hard in her gut — how could she get out of this?
"How did you — " she started, fighting against the restraints on her wrists as Hama hooked them up to the ceiling like Yue's mother had been. Hadn't the old woman said she wanted to teach her?
"Get them?" Hama finished for her, and smiled. "Yue is my granddaughter, don't you know?" she asked, and laughed. "Malina is my daughter. They pretend that I'm dead, that I died forty years ago when the Fire Nation captured me for being a bender, same Fire Nation that planned to do the same thing to you they did to me, so you thank your lucky stars that you had a mother to die for you." There was something her tone, an utmost loathing that startled Katara.
"What...?" she tried to ask, although she really thought she'd rather not know. Her ribs ached and scraped against her lungs in a way that worried her, and her arms ached already. She tried to get a foothold, but she was strung up too high. Hama laughed.
"Oh, I have all sorts of access to the library on St. Albans. I went... well, above and beyond, let's say," she she said, waving a hand. "Once I realized there's water in everything — if you know where to look for it. It started with leaves and then vines and then flies and then... the guards never saw me coming. I broke out of prison same way you killed all those people — " She flinched, but if Hama noticed, she gave no indication, too caught up in her own tale " — and I went back home, but they didn't want me there. I was tainted. Like you," she explained cheerfully. "That scroll that your mother had? One of her ancestors stole it from the set I took right out of the library. I'm surprised they hadn't dumped it all into the ocean, superstitious fools," she said coldly. "I took 'em all and learned all they could teach me, and since then, I've been gettin' what's mine. You understand, don't you?" she asked, eyes wide and mad and haunted. "Malina was gonna give me to the Alliance — to the Fire Nation — I had to stop her. And then you waltz in here with my own little granddaughter and think to stop me? Oh, the hilarity never ceases."
Katara felt like she was about to be sick. She knew Jet wouldn't leave her in Hama's clutches — but that didn't mean they could save her: Hama's brand of teaching, she was seeing now, was to do to Katara what the Fire Nation had done to her. First her father, and now Hama, her own people turned mad with bloodlust, so desperate for vengeance that they sacrificed their souls to the gods of revenge.
She thought of Aang, and she prayed that he stayed safe, that he get out without being seen by any of Hama's security cameras or guards. The 'Verse needed him, more than even she had thought.
"You're mad," she whispered, and Hama laughed again, a high sort of cackle.
"I am who the Alliance made me, little bloodbender, and so are you."
Jet snarled as he ran into Pipsqueak, wrenching his weapons from the bag that the mercenary was carrying. Diana passed him, and Bee rushed forward to help her; together, they carried the unconscious woman back to the ship. Pipsqueak looked around. "Where's Katara?" he asked, and Jet gave him one of his glares.
"We're going back for her," he said unnecessarily. "Duke, go get the firebender, we'll need — well, never mind then," he said, as Zuko ran in, apparently having been told the news by Bee. Jet ducked behind the wall as shots came in his direction, and nodded at Pipsqueak, who threw a grenade into the hallway before he and the Duke ducked behind the wall on the other side of the door as it exploded. "Pipsqueak, I want you and the Duke holding this hallway. Hotman, you're with me and Longshot, let's move!"
Longshot and Zuko followed him into the rubble, and they jumped through the rubble that had fallen in the last grenade.
"Longshot," he said quietly, ducking into a hallway while Zuko sent a blast of fire into the people coming at them. Their screams punctuated the sirens' wailing. "I want you to get your sniper rifle ready."
His pilot nodded — it was the reason behind the nickname that he had taken on before joining up with the Freedom, in some distant past that even Bee probably didn't know: he could shoot the wings off a fly's back at a hundred paces. But he was a slow shot — trained sniper, not the sort to get into a melee — and Jet didn't often have the need for that sort of accuracy, so he spent most of his time manning the ship. But on the rare occasion that he needed a difficult shot to be pulled off perfect — he was glad that he had the pilot he did.
"You want me to take out the old lady?" Longshot asked, and Jet nodded. "Get me a clear look at her, and I'll do it."
"How do we do that?" Zuko asked, as they moved to the next intersection.
Jet unloaded his clip into the hallway, and smiled. "Thanks for volunteering," he said, and thought, ah, screw it before pulling out a cigarette and indicating pointedly to Zuko, who stared at him blankly for a moment before narrowing his eyes.
"I am not lighting that for you," he said coldly, and Jet rolled his eyes, but pulled out his matchbook all the same. Bee would kill him for it — she had already given him an earful for even taking the cigarettes with him — but he didn't especially care. Tense situations required something to ease the tension, and he rather thought that they all preferred he smoke than kill them all in a nicotine-deprived rage.
"What's the good in bein' able to make fire in your hand if you won't even give me a light?" he growled, and took off at a run down the hallway, chased by Pipsqueak, Zuko, and the Duke, all grumbling a series of curses as to his character. He barreled straight into the big guy with the tattoos, and managed to get off a couple of wildly inaccurate shots before the man's tree trunk of an arm sent him flying into the wall. Luckily, Longshot was right behind him, a single shot to the head, right between the eyes. "Thanks," he moaned weakly, glaring at the just-lit cigarette that was laying on the ground, mocking him. "Gorammit," he growled, and pulled out another.
"Should you really be doing that right now?" Zuko hissed through clenched teeth, as Longshot shouldered his sniper rifle and hitting another guard about fifty feet down the hall.
"You weren't in the war, so I'll forgive you for not knowing that, son," he drawled, feeling much, much better as the nicotine hit his system. "Now is the only proper time for smoking. You know why? Two reasons," he said, answering his own question and kicking in the door to Hama's room. "One, it calms the nerves," he started, looking around. "Where are they?" he asked, prodding at the broken two-way mirror with his rifle.
"What's the second one?" the Duke asked, following him into the room, confused.
"Huh?" he said absently, and then remembered. "Oh, the second reason is 'cause it looks damn awesome. Where the hell are they?"
Longshot walked cautiously into the torture room, and then immediately froze, the gun falling from his hands — there she was. He shouldered his weapon hastily, but then his body seized up again — along with Pipsqueak, Zuko, and the Duke — as Hama walked in, her hands held out in that spindly form.
"I'm impressed," Hama whispered. "Your loyalty is just inspiring."
The moment Hama left, Katara went to work on her bonds, quickly realizing that she was more or less helpless, unless she could break the lock, and she couldn't break the lock with empty hands and good intentions. But if she had water... if she could freeze the lock...
There's water in everything if you know where to look for it.
She'd done it before, broken through the skin. It had been an accident then, but now... desperate times, she thought. Desperate measures.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, acutely aware of every tiny sound and shift in the air around her, every tiny high-strung warning, and moved her hands together like she had the last time she was in a prison, feeling the blood in her veins. She moved with it through her arm and into her wrist and into her hand, feeling for something under her palm, and then jerked with her fingers. Wincing, she drained some of the blood — as much as she could; although it was little blood, she still felt drained — and split it between each hand, carefully holding it in place and tilting her hand palm-up.
With her other hand, she swirled the blood around in her palm and let it fall into the lock, where she froze it solid and jerked it sharply, the brittle metal cracking with the ice, and she shook herself free, falling to the ground, gasping.
She stood up on shaky legs, vaguely nauseous, but didn't have time to recover — she'd heard Jet talking right before Hama had left, which meant her friends were out there probably being tortured right now and she had to save them. She staggered into the next room and saw Longshot first, on his knees as Hama held him down, but it was clearly taking a toll on her to keep all of them in one place.
Katara didn't even need to bend: all she had to do was disrupt Hama's bending, distract her and let the pressure up off the others, so she took a leaf out of Sokka's book and tackled her. Almost immediately, Longshot rolled over, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jet, and beyond him, some others were sprawled on the floor.
She fell against the wall as Hama lashed out with water she'd pulled from her own sweat — Katara felt it slash her across the stomach, intended to kill, but she'd moved fast enough so that it didn't cut so deep. It still stung, and she held a hand over her stomach, gasping, and healed the slash as quickly as she could.
Hama kept moving, keeping the wall between herself and Jet, so that she was only having to face Longshot and Katara — and Longshot was still reeling, along with everyone in the other room, which meant that, realistically, it was just Katara. For a long moment, they circled each other uncertainly, waiting for someone else to make the first move, and then Hama lunged for her, twisting her hands cruelly — Katara's entire body seized up as Hama strove to control her, to kill her with her own body, and for a horrible moment she couldn't fight back and her vision went black and the ground came up to hit her knees.
The jolting shock of the cold metal snapped her back into the world and control, her pounding heartbeat drowning any outside sound into the white noise of sudden re-control; for a half of a second, all she could hear was her own pulse and her own breath, and then everything cleared and focused onto Longshot's sniper rifle, dropped on the floor a foot from his shaking hands.
Before she was even fully aware of herself or her surroundings, before Hama could react or probably even realize that Katara had broken free, before she could hesitate, the rifle was in her hands and she was standing, turning, using momentum and desperation to drive the barrel point-first and angled upwards into Hama's gut and pull the trigger.
They both froze immediately; for a breath and a half (a shaky inhale, an aborted exhale, silence) Katara stayed still, blinking away the overwhelming white haze left over from the moment of blackness. In the sudden vaccuum of action, the realization of what she had just done struck her like a knife to the back, and she staggered backwards, the rifle slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor with a loud, inorganic rattle, followed immediately by the wet, dense thud of body hitting metal.
A hand caught her by the arm, and she turned suddenly to see Longshot trying to stand, his rifle back in one hand. She helped him the rest of the way up, close enough to hear him say, "You did what you had to do."
Close enough for her to whisper, "What's that worth?" and be sure that no one would hear. He looked at her with something strange knotted up in his face, but didn't say anything else.
"Come on," Jet said thickly, firmly, and she shook the taste of iron and salt out of her mouth, controlling her features once more.
"Hama said she had waterbending scrolls," Katara said, walking confidently into the other room and helping Zuko stand. "We need to find those. For Aang — and Toph."
"Bee said they were on the bookshelf, right?" Pipsqueak replied, helping the Duke to his feet; his size had allowed him to recover somewhat faster than the others, while the Duke's wiry build had been hit the hardest by Hama's bloodbending. "They should — there," he said bluntly, and she turned to see what he was looking at: on the top shelf, neatly organized, were the series of ancient scrolls Bee had spoken of.
"Bag 'em," Jet barked, glaring at an unsmoked cigarette that was laying on the ground where he'd fallen. "And do it double-time, we've gotta get back to the ship 'fore they take off without us."
"Somehow, I doubt they'll do that," Longshot drawled sardonically, taking a bag from Pipsqueak and stuffing the scrolls into it.
"Be careful with those!" she cried, and winced as Longshot shot something behind her — a guard had come in. The man dropped, clutching his knee in agony. "I can — I'll heal you," she told the guard, twisting at the carnage, but four voices replied to her.
"No!" Jet, Zuko, the Duke, and Pipsqueak all shouted. "We've gotta get moving," Jet continued. "Hurry!"
"These are old," Pipsqueak snapped back at him. "They're delicate."
"Do you really need all of 'em?" Jet growled, and she shot him a glare. She was feeling better now, or at least less drained, and she knew Zuko was too, but his arm stayed tight around her, like he was scared of losing her. "Fine, whatever," he muttered, leaning out the doorway and looking both ways. "We're clear, let's go."
Pipsqueak grabbed the last few scrolls off the shelf and Longshot shouldered the bag, and together, they all raced from the skyplex.
On Freedom
"I'm sorry," Haru said quietly, and Diana turned away. "She had lost too much blood, for too long..."
Suki had never expected to feel sorry for the smug, white-haired woman who had tried to kill Sokka and Jet, but the way she stared into the Infirmary with cold eyes reminded her horribly of all the times during the war she'd had to break bad news — she recognized that look, she'd seen it on the families of each of her warriors, one by one. It was that I am not going to cry in front of you look that screamed in pain but refused to make a sound.
Suki was altogether too well acquainted with death, but she thought it was one of those things that always cut deeper than expected.
"Where d'you want us to go?" Jet asked, arms crossed. He'd carried Toph into the spare room that Suki had been in earlier — she'd elected to trade rooms with Toph until such a time as Toph could get back into her own bunk. With that one exception, and Longshot at the helm getting them away from Ezra, the whole crew was gathered outside the Infirmary. "We have to go back to Beaumonde to pick up Mai and your things, but beyond that, we can go wherever you need us to."
"St. Albans," Diana replied, voice distant. "She had — she wanted to go back there."
"You're from the Water Tribe?" Sokka asked, and Katara nudged him, but Diana turned.
"Originally," she said, with weak defiance. "My mother was married to Chief Arnook."
Sokka looked surprised, and he mouthed something, but Suki couldn't tell what. She stared at Diana curiously — now that she knew, she could see that the woman looked vaguely similar to Sokka and Katara in coloration and shape.
"It's winter there," Katara said, "we just left — the permafrost..."
"Then we'll do a sea burial," Sokka interjected, looking to Diana for confirmation. "The tribe will perform it properly," he added, and Diana nodded.
"Fine. You killed her?" Diana asked, and for the first time, Suki saw tears in her eyes.
"Yes," Katara replied hollowly, and Diana nodded once, then walked away. Katara followed her, but no one else made a move.
"I don't want to hear it," Diana said, staring sight-unseeing at the engine. It was the only place she could think of that would be empty, where she could be alone with her past and her present and her lack of a future.
"You don't even know what I'm going to say," the Companion, the waterbender, the healer who wasn't good enough the one time it really mattered, said from the doorway, stepping lightly into the room, quiet as a whisper and loud as a jet engine. Her world, already barely large enough to breathe in, shrank a little further with each step Katara took towards her.
"I don't care," she replied tensely. "I don't want to hear anything you have to say."
For a while, the silence hung in the air around her, heavy and suffocating, until Katara spoke again. "I lost my mother too," she started, and Diana laughed harshly.
"You were a child," she snapped. "It isn't the same. Do you even remember her?" It was supposed to be ice, but it came out water.
"Yes," Katara answered warmly, stepping forward and touching her shoulder. She stiffened convulsively and stalked over to the other side of the engine to shut the other woman out. "I know you're hurting, I know how you feel. You're not alone."
"You know nothing," she hissed, countering Katara's warmth with venom. "You've never been alone in your life, you don't even know enough to know you're wrong. You've always had people on your side, people who care about you. I only had one person and she's — " she broke off her words before they broke on their own. "Your enemies are everyone's enemies," she spat with what remained of her pride and anger. "No one hates you for who you are."
Katara hesitated for a half-step too long, before saying, almost too quiet to hear, "No one knows who you are."
When Diana refused to say anything else, she sighed heavily like she was releasing more than breath. The silence ground an emotion Diana couldn't name into and under her skin.
(Yue could name it, if she would let her, but she was not Yue to anyone but her mother.)
After a moment, Katara sighed again, the retreating click of heels against metal; there was something masochistically triumphant in that sound, the music her life moved to: the sound of successfully keeping people locked outside her walls. It was the only song she knew.
It was getting old.