On Freedom
Katara pulled out one of the scrolls that night, but found that, although there were some archaic drawings, most of it was in an unfamiliar script ― a more advanced scroll meant for an older reader, thus: fewer pictures. "Aang," she whispered, and rushed through the ship until she reached the passenger dorms, then barged into his room, agitated. He sat up and rubbed his eyes confusedly.
"What is wrong?" he asked, and she blushed. She shouldn't have been so eager to get started, but Toph was curled up in the dorm next to Aang's and she was so sad, and Katara just couldn't bear a sad Toph. Toph was supposed to be brash and loud and cursing up a storm from the engine room; instead, the cargo bay was still in disarray from the job on Lilac and the ship was making a strange rattling sound and Katara hadn't had to tell Aang to ignore that shout from the engine room in over a week. It didn't feel right.
Nothing felt right. No one felt right. But Katara couldn't fix any of it from where she was standing.
"I ― I can't read the characters," she said sheepishly, turning on the light and sitting next to him on the bed. "They're ancient..."
"Oh," he replied, yawning, and looked at the scroll, skimming over it "This is talking about the, uh, five-arm form. I cannot translate," he added sheepishly, "but it references the other scroll, so maybe this one comes after it!" Now that he was fully awake, he was getting excited about the scrolls, and he followed her back to her shuttle, where they quietly took the bag of them and made their way down to the cargo bay to begin practicing.
Mai stood at the door to the infirmary, staring hard at the body laying there on the bed. Diana was sitting next to it, but she had fallen asleep, her head on her dead mother's chest, hand clasped in the still one. It was almost poetic in its tragedy.
Who would be there to ― she swallowed and shook the thought away. She had come here for a reason, and she had no intentions of letting her heart stop her mind. She'd always listened to her head first and her heart last, and although Katara and Ty Lee and Jet and Bee all seemed to think this was a terrible thing, there were times when she needed the control that her head gave her.
Quietly, she walked into the Infirmary, careful not to wake the grieving Diana, and picked through the drawers until she found the medicine she was here for ― it was no cure, but if she took it regularly, she should be able to buy herself more time. She picked out the little vial of clear liquid, then took the needle out of her pocket and drew out a dose; she would give herself the drug and sterilize the needle in her room like she had been doing every single night since Haru had brought his bag filled with medicines onto the ship.
She glanced back at the bed to make sure that Diana was still asleep, carefully replaced the vial in the exact same place it had been, then stood and swept out of the Infirmary ― and ran straight into Haru.
"I had wondered who was stealing that," he murmured, crossing his arms. She bit the inside of her lip and schooled her face into blankness.
"How long have you known?" she asked, and he sighed.
"I noticed a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying to catch you since. When did you get diagnosed?" He took the syringe from her, looking at it critically. "And please tell me this is sterile."
"Of course it is," she replied caustically. "Do you think I'm stupid?"
"Not at all," he said, slipping into the Infirmary and returning with a pair of gloves and an alcohol swab. He lifted her shirt to expose her side, and when she recoiled, he frowned at her. "This is supposed to be injected into a large muscle," he said quietly, "don't you know?"
She didn't reply. Haru pulled the gloves on, swabbed a spot on her side, and injected the medication, a more painful shot than she remembered, needle-sharp pain radiating through her lower back.
"How long ago were you diagnosed?" he asked again, and she looked away.
"Almost a year," she answered shortly.
"You wanted to see the 'Verse before..." he inferred, and she looked into the Infirmary, to the dead woman on the bed, and imagined herself there. Again, she wondered, who would be there to sit with her? "Well," Haru said, pulling her out of her reverie, "I'll start getting more of this every time I stock up. That could add ― maybe another ten or fifteen years, if we keep up the medication properly."
"That's good," she said, and turned to him, Companion training ― and, before the Training House, proper etiquette training back in the capital ― keeping her face completely blank. "Don't tell anyone."
Haru looked at her searchingly, and she wondered if he read between the lines, if he knew that anyone really meant the captain. If he did, he didn't show it. "Of course not," he replied, and smiled. "Doctor-patient confidentiality. Your secret is safe with me."
"Thank you," she whispered, and swept off to her shuttle.
The moment she closed the door behind her, Mai slid to the floor, hand clamped tightly over her mouth and eyes screwed shut.
Toph was awakened much earlier than she would have liked (although her half-numb back pressed against the wall told her that pretty much everyone else was awake) by a flying ball of Aang. He was repeating her name over and over and over again.
"What?" she shouted, pushing him off of her bed and sitting up as well as she could. Haru and Katara walked into her room and she felt Katara's heart pounding through the wall. Her mouth went dry. "Is it ― did you find ― " she started, hardly daring to hope that the scrolls they had taken from Hama's skyplex might have had something.
"There was a whole two scrolls on healing," Aang cried, jumping on the balls of his feet. "I and Katara have been practicing from it since we left the skyplex, and Haru says he thinks we might be ready to try healing you!"
"Here," Katara said, and Haru picked her up and turned her so that she was on her stomach. "I can't promise that I'm good enough at this to do it yet, but ― well," she said, and Toph nodded into her pillow.
"Just try," she whispered, and she felt the cold water on her back, going abruptly numb right around the halfway point. She closed her eyes as the water seeped into her skin and she felt it tug on the muscles and there was a horrible, sudden pain in the arch of her spine as Katara pulled on the water, followed by a single moment of cold, seeping into her spine, and then ― agonizing pins and needles, spreading slowly down across her whole body. She cried out involuntarily, but Katara didn't pull away.
"It's working," she murmured, "the pain means it's working ― if you can feel it, Toph, can you feel it?"
"Mm-hmm," she whimpered, but Aang started laughing.
"Toph, if you hurt, that means it worked!" he cried, and she heard ― and felt, each jolt sending new fire up and down her nerves ― him jumping up and down, and Katara's cold hands left her back. Haru took her arm and gingerly helped her into a sitting position.
"You're still in bad shape, and you need to recover," he said sternly. "You'll have to work back up to doing the things you did before, understand? I want you and Katara to have healing sessions every day until that injury is completely healed. The last thing we want is for you to reopen it and mess yourself up ag― " she cut him off by decking him in the shoulder so hard he fell to the floor.
"I can feel my legs, you idiot, stop lecturing me and celebrate!"
Suki played with the fans over and over, recalling the old katas, things she had learned as a child and never been able to forget. Sokka's gift was still new, and she hadn't even been able to figure out where he'd gotten a pair of war fans, let alone what the make was. They felt right, though, good and strong and wonderfully familiar.
She remembered the first time she'd ever picked up a pair of fans, her mother's pair, and she had used them to cool herself off. Mother had laughed at that and taken them from her to show her the very first trick ― how to open war fans properly. Tessenjutsu was an ancient art, and one of the deadliest ― if it was done properly. It required intensive training, which was one reason why, in the age of guns and lasers, it had fallen by the wayside, practiced more for show than for actual damage.
Still, Suki was properly trained, her mother had seen to that, and although she could shoot a man dead at a hundred and fifty paces, the iron fans were her preferred weapon in close combat. She had missed them, more than she'd realized.
"What are those?" someone asked, and she turned to see Ty Lee hanging from the walkway like a monkey. She peered at the acrobat, and then to the fans, a seed of thought beginning to germinate: Ty Lee feels useless among the crew; Suki feels alone among her ghosts.
"Fans," she explained. "Have you ever heard of tessenjutsu?"
"Can't say that I have," Ty Lee replied, and dropped to the floor. "Is that the art of dancing with fans?"
"No," Suki answered, and then attacked, locking her fans into a shield and pushing Ty Lee to the ground with it, immediately unlocking them and placing one at her throat and one at her stomach. Ty Lee went white, but Suki just laughed until the texture of metal in her hands spiraled her down into memory so sharp she tasted dust and iron.
Suki hadn't fought with fans since she and On Ji ― the last ― had sparred on the day of On Ji's death at the hands of the Alliance. It was bitter cold that morning, and she'd initiated the fight less for practice than to keep moving and work up body heat until the sun cleared the horizon. She had lost the spar and laughed brightly and optimistically and she had congratulated her student on her excellent learning and On Ji had turned to compliment back on Suki and she had said I really think this is it, it'll all turn around today.
"It's the art of fighting with fans," she said, shaking off the past (badly) and holding out a hand to Ty Lee. "It's the traditional martial art of the Kyoshi Warriors."
"Ohh," Ty Lee chirped. "I've heard of them. On Shadow, right, from the Earth Kingdom? Whatever happened to them?"
Suki took a deep breath. "I'm the only one left," she said, and then looked Ty Lee over critically, idle hopes, long-set-aside, blooming from the seed. "How would you like to be the second member of the reformed Kyoshi Warriors?"
There was a moment where several emotions crossed over Ty Lee's open face, from surprise to suspicion to a wide-eyed understanding that left Suki raw and exposed: Ty Lee might have been a ditz, but she knew people in a way that even Katara couldn't compare to, and it looked like she could see how much it was costing Suki to invite her to join her warriors, to try and start over on the skeletons of people she'd loved. But then Ty Lee smiled wide and unassuming, and Suki wondered if she'd been imagining things.
"Sure," she replied, like it was the easiest decision in the world. "Where do I start?"
"Right here," Suki replied, handing over one of her fans, half on the ship and half on Shadow. She tried to focus on the person in front of her and not on the ghost of On Ji floating over Ty Lee's face; but when the shift happened, it was abrupt and complete ― she made eye contact and saw the familiar look of the novice watching the teacher for a cue, and suddenly, she was in the present again, where she had the power to make a change in another person's life, instead of the past, where she was impotent and alone. "With the tessen, the traditional war fan. What do you know about Kyoshi?" she asked, and Ty Lee blinked.
"Um, she was an Avatar, wasn't she? A really long time ago?"
Suki nodded. "Almost four thousand years ago, Avatar Kyoshi separated an island from the mainland of the Earth Kingdom, way back on Earth That Was."
"Why?" Ty Lee asked, accidentally cutting herself with Suki's fan. "Ouch!"
"Watch it," she said, grinning. "The edges are sharp. Don't forget, this is a weapon."
Katara helped Toph limp into the engine room (she had touched the floor and immediately cried out at the state of the cargo bay), and left Haru with her, taking Aang into the cargo bay to start practicing some of the more offensive moves on the waterbending scrolls. The cargo bay was already occupied, though ― Suki and Ty Lee were in there.
"Are we interrupting?" she asked, and Suki turned to her, her face alight in a way that Katara had never seen before. She looked utterly alive.
"Not at all," Suki replied, "I was teaching Ty Lee tessenjustu."
"I'm the first member of the reformed Kyoshi Warriors!" Ty Lee cheered, and Katara went over to heal the bloody cuts on her hands from playing with the fans. "Me and Suki are starting 'em back up, beginning today."
"The Kyoshi Warriors?" Aang asked, walking in, arms full of scrolls. "I know who they are! I didn't know they still existed."
"Technically, they don't," Suki said, her face darkening slightly. "I'm the only one left."
Aang blinked. "So... they do," he told her, like it was obvious. She turned to him, tilting her head slightly, so he went on, "As long as one person still remembers, the art is not lost. That is... how the saying goes," he said sheepishly, and Suki smiled again in that same brilliant light.
"I guess you're right, then," she said confidently. "The Kyoshi Warriors are still going strong."
"That's four thousand years," Ty Lee chirped. "There's an awesome history," she added, eyes wide and slightly manic. "You should hear the story about Yoshitsune fighting off a spear with just a pair of fans! I never knew you could do all of this stuff."
"I can see you've made a few mistakes," Katara said, healing the last of the wounds. Suki shrugged.
"No more than I did when I was learning. She's picking it up fast," she said fondly. "So, what brings you two to the cargo bay?"
"Waterbending," she said, pointing to the scrolls in Aang's arms. "From the scrolls we got out of Hama's office. Would you like to watch?"
"I'll do you one better," Suki replied quickly, and took her fan from Ty Lee. "How about a spar? Fans versus waterbending? I bet I can beat you," she challenged, and Katara grinned back at her.
"Ha!" she scoffed dramatically, and turned to Ty Lee. "Get me a bucket and fill it with water. I have to show Miss Rei just how mistaken she is!"
Ty Lee rushed off and returned moments later with a bucket, which Katara pulled on the moment it was close enough for her to do so, and wreathed the water in a ribbon around her. Suki snapped her fans open and faced her, looking more vibrant than Katara had ever seen her on Sihnon. Ty Lee and Aang both stood in between them, looking back and forth, and then Ty Lee shouted, "Aaaaaand, go!" and they both ran to either side of the cargo bay, giving Suki and Katara plenty of room to fight.
Suki made the first move, running forward and slashing out with her fans; Katara swirled her water in the air between them to knock her off-balance, but Suki switched gears mid-move and rolled against the water, coming at her from another angle. She paused to think about what the scrolls had said to do next, and Suki took the opening to cut her across the arm.
"Go Suki!" Ty Lee cried, while Aang booed overdramatically. Katara smirked.
Thinking wasn't going to win her this fight ― she'd have to feel it. She twisted and pulled the water low, turning it to ice as Suki ran forward again, tripping her up, and then jerking upwards and freezing Suki in place. It only held for a second ― she hit the ground with her fans to break the ice and once it had started to splinter, she shifted her legs to break it the rest of the way. Katara pulled the ice into a ribbon of water again and roped one end of it around Suki's arm. It worked for a moment, but then Suki flipped herself into the air and broke the ribbon, coming down on her feet easily and locking her fans together into a single circle, which she used as a shield, running forward before Katara could regain control of the water and knocking her off her feet.
"Yield," Suki said, but she pulled on the water and looped it around Suki's ankle, pulling her feet out from under her. Vaguely, she was aware that the cheering sections for both of them had grown ― Mai was standing with Aang, smirking, while Jet loudly cheered Suki on, and Sokka didn't seem to know who to cheer for.
She pulled the water up again and threw it against Suki, hitting her full in the chest, and then she froze it and walked up to Suki. "Yield," she said, raising an eyebrow, but Suki had one arm free, which she used to break the ice and give her enough room to shift out of the thin, brittle ice. Katara pulled the water back into a ribbon and began dancing with it, feeling steps she had learned in Companion training, going from offensive to defensive as Suki dodged and attacked with ease.
Without even fully thinking about it, she twisted the whips of water into extensions of each arm, which only worked for a moment because Suki was too quick be overwhelmed by only two of any weapon ― Katara remembered the pentapus form and slid straight into it from a dance step, raising the water around her in tendrils and lashing out with each of them.
Suki gave as good as she got, though, and slashed each tendril before it could hit her, coming closer and closer in an ever-tightening spiral with each cut of her fans, and she got right up to Katara at the same moment that Katara froze a sickle of ice and held it to Suki's throat. They looked at each other and each raised an eyebrow.
"I think that's a draw," Sokka said, and they both laughed, moving away from each other. She held out a hand, which Suki shook.
"When I'm not so rusty," Suki told her, grinning, "and you've learned a few more of those moves, let's do this again and see who wins then."
"Sounds like a plan," she agreed.
"You did the five-arm!" Aang squealed, cheering for her, and she smiled at him ― she had! "You said that was the scariest form and you just did it!"
"It's like you said," Zuko said, and she started ― she hadn't even realized he was watching. He was, she noted, sitting next to Mai, where her fans had been cheering her on. "Waterbending is empathetic. You felt it, didn't you?" he asked, smiling genuinely.
"I did," she replied, grinning. "I danced."