A/N: HELLO! I am sorry that this is late, I have been writing and revising and editing it for the past couple days and finaly got it done, YAY! So here you guys go, the next instalment of this fic! It might seem like kind of a filler chapter, but I tried to move the plot along with it, which I hope I did-Let me know!

DISCLAIMER: NOT MINE I PROMISE

Chapter 18: Becoming Who You Are

The moon was full and bright as the teens flew quickly towards their destination.

"We need to find a Fire Navy communications tower, all the Navy's movments are corrdinated by messanger hawk, and every tower has to be up-to-date on where everyone is deployed." Zuko explained as a tower came to view in the distance.

"So once we find one," Katara stated, pointing to the speck on the dark horizon, "we bust in and get the information we need."

Zuko almost chuckled, she was so eager to do this, but it could cost them if she got to bend-happy.

He shook his head before he realized that she couldn't see him, "Not exactly, we need to be stealthy and make sure no one spots us," Thank goodness he had thought of the black clothes, "Otherwise, they'll warn the Southern Raiders, long before we get there."

Once they got close enough to the tower, Zuko and Katara hopped off Appa. The waterbender commanded the Bison to stay hidden, as best she could anyway. After that, they were running to the water's edge, they had landed on a small rock formation a few yards from the small island the tower was on. Zuko was contemplating how to get across when Katara jumped, twirled around herself, and landed with the grace only a waterbender has on a thick block of ice.

Zuko followed quickly, landing beside her in a steady position. She bent them on a small wave up to the land and they dashed off, into one of the many enterances of the metal building.

Getting in was surprisingly easy. Zuko peered around a corner, watching as two men walked out of an illuminated room. He felt Katara come to a stop beside him as they watched the men leave. Without saying anything, they both launched into a run as soon as the men were out of sight, bolting towards the door with light footsteps.

They got inside to find a boiler room of sorts, one that also had many large, dark tunnles in the walls. Air shafts.

Zuko motioned to the girl behind him to follow. Together, they climed through the large tunnel, Zuko helping Katara up off the ground and into the dark before them.

They walked for a little ways before coming to a grate in the side of the tunnel, light streamed in through the small metal opening, casting criss-crossed shadows on the bender's faces.

Inside was a woman writing on a piece of parchment. Zuko glanced around, noticing all the file cabnites that stood around the room. He leaned in close to Katara, whispering, "This is the place."

Katara shivered slightly and hoped he didn't feel it. Why she had that reaction, she had no clue. To brush it off, she nodded and waited for an opportunity to get in.

She watched the woman intently, noticing that she was using a brush and some ink that was held in a small container. It would be easy to knock over if the woman was clumsy with her brush. Katara lifted her hand, feeling the liquid in the ink jump at her call. She waited, watching as the woman dipped her brush back into the container. As soon as the woman pulled back, Katara pulled her hand, and therefore the ink, back with it.

The woman stilled for a moment, looking down at her stained hand and paper. She shook her head and stood, walking away to go clean off.

Zuko easily tugged the flimsy grate off the wall and dropped through the hole. He glanced back as Katara followed, landing with a thud beside him.

He wasted no time in rushing over to one of the file cabniets.

"Southern Raiders, Southern Raiders," He muttered to himself as he thumbed through the different files. Finding the right one, he grabbed it and pulled it out, moving to a table behind them. He rolled th scroll out and skimmed over it briefly, "Bam! On patrol near Whale Tail island."

He looked to Katara, "Whale Tail island, here we come."

/\

Katara was at the reins, staring stonily ahead as small dots of land passed on ethier side of her line of vision. She tried to keep her mind on the task at hand- figuring out what to do once she faced this monster in person- but it was made difficult everytime the extra weight on Appa's saddle made a noise in the background.

Zuko moving. Zuko breathing. Zuko sighing and muttering to himself in his sleep. Didn't he know how to sleep quietly?!

Maybe she was just over-reacting, and maybe he wasn't making all that much noise, but Katara's nerves were fried. She could hardly take any sensation right now, but knew she had to put up with it.

More silence passed until Zuko woke up. He looked out over the sky. The sun was rising, its sweet light having roused him from sleep, the glow guiding Appa.

"You should get some rest, you'll need all your strength for when you face this man." Zuko stated, watching as Katara rolled her shoulders and flicked the reins in annoyance. But she stilled when she actually listened to what he had to say.

"Oh don't you worry about my strength," She started, "I've got pleanty. I'm not that helpless little girl I was when they came."

Memories of that day, possibly the worst day of her entire life, flashed through her mind. She didn't realize that as she was recounting the events of it, that she was saying it out loud as well, until she heard Zuko moving closer to hear her better.

"I remember playing with Sokka. We were having a snowball fight. I was about to win, we were only kids." She let out a short, bitter huff that was supposed to resemble a laugh. Zuko found himself drawn in as she spoke, wanting to hear how she remembered that day. "I stopped when I saw it. The black snow. I had never seen anything like it before, but from stories I heard, I knew what it meant. A Fire Nation raid."

Zuko shut his eyes, this was going to be hard for her to tell him, and it was going to be just as hard for him to hear. His people, his Nation had caused this one family, this one girl so much pain. It was tearing him apart.

"I had never been in one before. But my parents had told me what to do in case something like that ever happened. Run to them. So, I did. I ran. I ran all the way to my home. But when I got there, I froze."

Here it comes Zuko thought to himself. He knew that by now, Katara was aware she was actually telling him this-he had gotten the impression that she was talking mostly to herself at first- and he knew this was the part that was going to be hard for both of them to take.

"A man, a Fire Nation man, was standing there, over my mother. I understand now that she must have been scared. But she stayed strong, for me. I remember his eyes. The way the gleamed, a cold golden color. I would never forget it. I had nightmeres about those eyes for years after." Katara shuddered and Zuko resisted the urge he got to lay a hand on her shoulder. He did, however, move even closer to her, pressed against the front of the saddle.

"She looked right at me and told the man to let me go. That if he did, she would give him information he wanted. He looked over his shoulder at me. He told me to leave. I remember telling my mom I was scared. She just said to go find my dad, that...that she would take care of the situation."

"I ran as fast as I could. I found my dad like she said too. We ran back, but we were to late. When we got there, the man was gone…and so was she."

Katara drew her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. She took deep breaths as she remembered that her mother had died protecting her.

"Your mother was a brave woman." Zuko said, watching as Katara brought a hand to her neck, where her pendant lay aginst her skin.

"I know." Katara answered. And she really did. Not everyone could do what her mother had, even if it was to protect their children.

/\

Night washed over the pair again. Zuko had convinced Katara to sleep, taking over the reins himself.

She was drowsy and didn't really register how she had nearly fallen into Zuko trying to get into the saddle. He caught her, and helped her lay down where he had been, the spot on the saddle still warm from his firebending.

She was asleep within seconds.

But now the moon was shining brightly, gently urging her to wake up.

Katara took a deep breath, actually glad for once that she had listend to Zuko. She felt stronger, weather that be from the moon or the sleeping, she wasn't sure, but both helped.

Zuko had remained alert for his shift, his eyes sweeping back and forth as he sought out the fleet that would hold the man they were looking for.

Finally, he spotted it.

"There!" He shouted to Katara over the wind. She sat up just in time to catch the telescope he had tossed her way "See that Sea Raven flag?"

Looking through the lens she saw it, that all too framiliar flag, rigged upto the mast of the lead ship.

The Southern Raiders.

"Let's do this."

Getting on board was easy, Katara just bent an air-bubble around Appa's head, allowing the beast to swim up to the deck.

They rose out of the water, out of sight. Voices washed over the railing, allowing Katara to easily find her target.

A long stream of water wrapped around one of the men on board, clutched him and hualed him over the side of the ship.

Before the others had a chance to run for help, they too were knocked into the water by a large wave that came out of no where.

One was left standing when the duo landed.

Katara hopped off Appa and charged at him. Tears were building up in her eyes as she flung another large wave at him, mercilessly throwing him over board with the rest of them.

Wasting no time, the duo ran directly into the ships inner rooms. As they ran down the hall, a guard was coming out of one of the side doors. Katara paid him no mind as she fled past. She heard as Zuko took on the guard. She turned and saw just as he rammed himself into the larger man, knocking him back into the room from which he had emerged. Zuko slammed the door shut and lodged a sword through the handles, trapping the man inside. He looked back to her.

She nodded and they moved on, coming to the last door at the end of the hall. The control room.

"This is it, Katara. Are you ready to face this man?" Zuko asked the waterbender beside him.

She gave no verbal answer. Rather, she gathered the water that was coating her arms, and with a loud shout, she flung it at the metal door before them.

An attack of fire balls met them, ones which Zuko easily deflected before sending out some of his own.

"Who are you?" The captian demanded.

Zuko glared, "You don't remember her? Well you will soon-trust me!"

The captian glared at the young benders, preparing to send out another attack-

But something stopped him. His arm-which had been rushing forward with a flame in his palm, was extinguished, and bent back in the opposite direction.

Soon, his body followed in this strange dance, twisting and contorting in un-natural ways.

"Wh-Ah! What's H-Happining to me?!" The captian yelled as his face was forced to the ground.

Zuko dropped his stance, confused. Until he turned to look at Katara.

She was glaring icily at the man, her hands held close to her in some bending form he had never seen before.

He glanced between her and the man who was writhing on the ground, then back to her. His eyes widened in shock as he made the connection.

This usually sweet, caring girl was bending the water in this man to her will. And she was doing it with no remorse from the looks of it. Zuko never even knew such a thing was possible, sure blood had water, the body had water… But bending it?

But he had no time to wonder where she had learned this, or why she would use it on someone willingly, so he scowled and turned it to the man still on the ground.

"Think back," He said, looking down at the man, "Think back to your last raid on the Southern Water Tribe."

The man sounded strangled as he said, "I don't know what you're talking about, please! I don't know!"

Zuko flung himself to the ground as well, getting in the man's face, "Don't lie! You look her in the eye and you tell me you don't remember what you did!" He growled, pointing back to his travling companion. Zuko himself pushed down the thought in the back of his mind that was screaming the same thing back at him, not to lie, to remember what he had done to her.

He willed it to go away, and it did. For now.

Katara bent the man's body again, working him up into a sitting position. She looked at him hard, glaring into his eyes, his-

…his brown eyes.

"…It's not him." She said quietly.

"What?!" Zuko demanded, whipping around to face her, "What do you mean it's not him? He's the leader of the Southern Raiders, he's gotta be the guy!" Zuko was aggravated, they didn't come all this way just to fail! And now they had the wrong man? How was this possible?!

Katara let him go, bowing her head and walking away solemly. Zuko watched her go, looking defeated. Well, if there was one thing Zuko never did, it was give up.

He turned on the man, grabbing him by his arm. He hefted him up and rammed him into the helm of the ship.

"If you're not the man we're looking for," Zuko started, twisting the man's arm further behind his back, "Who is?!"

"Ah! You must be looking for Yon Ra, But he retired 4 years ago!"

Katara-who had heard the entire thing-looked up as Zuko released the man, a new determination in her eyes.

/\

They were back on Appa once again, the rising sun greeting the both of them, as they were now both awake.

Zuko was sitting with his side pressed up against the saddle, as he had been when listening to Katara tell her story. She was at the reins, Staring out intently at the water ahead of them.

Before they had left the ship, Zuko had pressed the captian for more information about where Yon Ra was residing. They were now headed to a small island on the out-skirts of the Fire Nation.

Zuko looked around for anthing that sparked his interest-anythng to help him start a conversation with the-as he recently found out-deadly waterbender in front of him.

Wait.

"I wanted to ask," Zuko started, shuffling even closer as he saw Katara tilt her head slightly to better hear him over the whistling wind. "What you did back there…controlling that man. What exactly was that?"

He noticed Katara visibly stiffened and was about to start back-tracking before she relaxed again.

"It's a technique called Bloodbending. Only one other waterbender knows it."

"Bloodbending. As in…bending blood?" Katara shot a poorly aimed glare over her shoulder, then turned back again as she explained.

"Look, I didn't like it either. Not at first, anyway."

"…where did you learn to do that?"

Katara rolled her eyes, reminding herself that he was probably just trying to find a way to fill the infuriating silence that had fallen upon them multiple times already. May as well explain if they were going to be up here a while. And it wasn't like there was any harm in telling him.

Trust. There was that stupid voice in the back of her head again. The one that had helped her accept Azula.

The one that had gotten her to trust him in Ba Sing Se.

Katara shook her head. Zuko took that as a sign that she wasn't going to tell him, so he was surprised when she started speaking.

"We were hiding out in the Fire Nation. After you and Azula travled back. In one of the towns, we met an old woman who claimed she was a war prisoner who had escaped. She was living in the Fire Nation under cover ever since. I was so glad to meet another master waterbender, that I didn't think about the consequences of learnig from her.

"She taught me all kinds of new things, how to draw water from the things around me-even the air. I thought it was incredible! Sokka had been suspicious from the start, and I brushed it off as him being his paranoid self. But things started coming together the night she taught me how she escaped the Fire Nation prison. People had been going missing at night. Sokka, Toph and Aang wanted to check it out, but I just wanted to learn from her. So they investigated without me.

"She took me into the woods on the night of the full moon. It was there that I figured it out. She had been the one cuasing people to go missing. She told me I would learn the technique and pass on the knowledge. I refused when I heard her describe Bloodbending, The story of how she escaped…"

Katara trailed off as she remembered, shivering slightly. Zuko was hooked. He wanted to know how it ended. He was sure Katara had learned how to tell stories well from years of sitting around fires in igloos, listning to the elders of her tribe talk about their lives-surly as Uncle spoke of his.

"What happened?" He asked qiuetly, pulling her from her thoughts. She had almost forgotten he was there. She realized with a start that he was actually helping her distract herself from what lay ahead for the day. Well, she gladly welcomed a distraction, If it was Zuko, so be it.

"She was one of the last waterbenders in my tribe to be captured by the Fire Nation. During that time she spent in her cell, they would never give her or any of the other benders water without extreme restraints and supervision. So instead of using the water they had on the outside…she taught herself how to manipulate the water on the inside. Practicing on rodents in her cell at first, then when the guards open her cell, she attacked. Forced the guards to turn their wepons on one another. She walked out free.

"I didn't want to learn something so vile, taking away another person's free will-even Fire Nation citizans. Everyone has a right to be in control of their own bodies. No matter what the circumstances are. She warned me that I should have learned the technique from her before turning on her. Then she turned the technique on me. It was horrible. I had no control of my body, my mucles. I felt helpless as she manipulated me.

"But I was stronger then her. I broke free, harnessing the power of the full moon. We fought until Sokka and Aang showed up. She just used them against me by Bloodbending them. I finally got them restrained and thought I had a winning chance. But then she tried to make them attack one another."

"Tried?" Zuko asked, knowing whatever happened, Aang and Sokka obviously hadn't hurt one another.

Katara took a breath, "Something came over me and…I just did it. Just before Sokka and Aang reached one another, the stopped moving. I had taken control of Hamma,"

"The old woman?" Katara nodded at the firebender's inquiry.

"I bent her blood. At that point, those who had been captured by her showed up, led by Toph. As they dragged her away, she congraulated me, saying that I was now a Bloodbender. I was mortified."

"You were protecting your family. Sometimes we do crazy things for those we love." Zuko thought of how he had tried to face Azula in Ba Sing Se after his uncle had made it away safely, how his own mother had no doubt killed Azulon to protect him. How Azula, for one reason or another, decided to join him.

Katara shook her head, "I vowed never to do it again."

"…So why did you do it back there?" It was more then a question of curiosity. Zuko wanted to know if she was really willing to give up her morals for this mission. And if so, did she know who she would be once she came out?

Katara took a deep breath, considering her answer. "I'm changing. I know now that things aren't so simple as having a 'dark side' and a 'light side'. There's more too it then that. I'm finding that nothing is inherently evil, just like nothing is inherently good."

"You think there's a good side to Bloodbending?" Zuko asked.

Katara smirked to herself, knowing Zuko couldn't see it, but could probably hear it in her voice as she said, "It got us answers, didn't it?"

Zuko chuckled lightly, surprising Katara. She had never heard him laugh before, it was actually kind of…nice.

That thought startled Katara. She would have pondered on it, save for the fact that Zuko leaned over her shoulder, his face directly next to hers at a dangerous proximity. Her heart did a funny flutter thing that felt kind of framiliar, but she couldn't place where from. That all left, though, when the next words came out of his mouth.

"Look, We're here."

Looking out, her eyes landed upon the small island that most likely held the man who killed her mother.

All the lightness of the atmosphere left when she realized that they were close.

It was time.

A/N: There we have it! I hope you enjoyed this one, please let me know what you thought, as always I really appreciate when you leave a reveiew-I get so happy reading them, I keep refreshing the page to see if any more pop up! So please leave one on your way out, and I will catch ya on the next one! (Which will hopefully be done quicker then this one was)

Writer out! ~0-0~