(A/N)- Hello again readers! Life still sucks but fanfic is helping me cope (both reading and writing it) so I hope this brings a little bit of enjoyment for all of you who are ready for this sucky year to be over.
Continuing to wander alongside our Season One episodes, here's "The Blue Spirit".
Disclaimer: Nada zip and zilch, man can't even own my comfort shows what's the world coming to?
Worry
Katar scrunched down tighter into his sleeping bag, shivering uncomfortably. The skin under his fur coat felt sweaty and sensitive, sore aches growing underneath the surface and working their way back and forth.
He was both too hot and too cold and his throat scratched irritably, painful coughing breaking from him every so often.
Sokki coughed next to him, wrapped up in her own sleeping bag.
"Water..." she rasped, weakly entreating him again.
Katar wanted to get up and comfort her, but he couldn't even roll himself over, too bogged down by fatigue. "Momo should be here soon," he muttered instead, in reassurance.
Sure enough, the little lemur scittered into their shelter moments later, chirruping and hopping up on Katar's stomach.
Unfortunately he had not brought back Katar's water canteen, plopping a dead mouse onto the boy's front instead.
Katar grimaced, making a face at the present, before chiding the lemur. "No Momo, water. Wa-ter!"
Momo's ears perked straight up and he hopped down again. Katar hoped he actually understood this time.
He watched the lemur go through bleary eyes, his heart crawling with a prickly feeling that had nothing to do with his fever.
"Angka... what in the world is taking you so long?" he wondered.
-ATLA-
He slept fitfully, drifting in and out. Momo roused him often with more useless retrievals—pottery and scrolls and even a couple pieces of furniture—Katar growing more and more frustrated until he finally stopped sending the lemur out. He pulled his sleeping back around himself, unable to stop shivering now that the sun was down.
That thought stuck in his fever-muddied head.
The sun was down and there was still no sign of Angka.
It's okay, he told himself. She's coming right back.
But what if she wasn't? What if something had happened to her out there? What if she was hurt or in trouble?
I can't... protect her like this... he thought glumly.
"Angka, where are you?" he whispered thinly.
"Who's this Angka you keep talking about?"
He ignored Sokki's nonsensical rambling behind him. He just had to focus on keeping his thoughts from traveling in circles down dark paths.
She's okay, he reassured himself. Stop worrying so much.
Gran-Gran always said he was too much of a chronic worrier for his own good.
She was probably right.
Before he realized it, he was replying to Sokki's delirious question.
"She's the Avatar, silly," he grunted, his throat horribly dry and strangling his words. "Remember? She popped out of an iceberg."
"That's dumb," Sokki countered. "Why was she in an iceberg? How could she breathe in there? How did she poop?"
Katar wrinkled his nose. "You're disgusting."
"What? It's an honest question!" Sokki protested, before breaking off into a long string of painful-sounding coughs.
"Just rest, Sokki," he told her, hunching further into his shoulders. "She'll be back soon."
I hope.
Sokki did not continue to protest, rasping only a quiet, "Okay." before falling silent behind him.
He didn't let himself relax until he could hear her soft breaths, falling and rising.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
-ATLA-
He burned. His fever roiled over him in unbearable waves, sweat drenching his face. Delirium took him. He faded into half-formed thoughts and confusing images, drifting on a stream of consciousness that wandered, aimless, through black mist and memories.
"Mom... I'm scared!"
"Go find your dad, sweetie."
No... he couldn't leave her alone with that... that...
The Fire Nation soldier looked back at him, eyes burning with a cruel malice, but the face that peeked out through the helmet was Zuka's, and she had hold of Angka in the Fire Sages' temple and he couldn't do anything except watch, all he was good for was watching helplessly, Angka where are you? Why was everything so dark, why wasn't the sun coming up yet?
How long had this night already lasted?
He turned over restlessly, fitfully, calling out names in thin whispers and weak cries. A soft wet nose nuzzled against his face and he wanted to bat it away but it felt nice and he was so tired.
When was Angka coming back?
Hot... too hot, he thought, pulling his arms out of the sleeping bag. His face pinched. No... too cold, he corrected, pulling them back in.
Angka was probably cold out there wherever she was. He should bring her a blanket.
The weak effort he made to get up barely budged him.
Maybe in a few minutes... or an hour.
...Was that sunlight?
Drifting and drifting on vague thoughts, Katar passed the night in severe discomfort, worry raking over his heart and crawling through his head in-between the clunky nonsensical thought fragments and the echoes of the past.
Finally, soft footsteps sounded on the stones, and Katar unconsciously relaxed.
It was her. She was back. He'd know the sound of her feet anywhere.
A sense of her presence drifted in front of him, and Katar heard her speaking through muddled hearing.
"Suck on these," she instructed. "They'll make you feel better."
Something sweet and cold pushed into his mouth and Katar let it melt against his tongue, sighing with relief as he felt the aches in his body slowly beginning to subside and the pressure around his head ease.
"Angka," Sokki said around whatever was in her own mouth, "How was your trip? Did you make any friends?"
A long sigh.
"No. I don't think I did."
She sounded downcast. He would have to ask her about that... later, he decided, as his mind slowly went numb and cleared.
-ATLA-
He still couldn't get the taste of that stupid frog out of his mouth.
Katar swished water around through his teeth, rinsing his tongue for the fiftieth time before spitting it out onto the ground.
"Bluh," he muttered.
He was grateful to Angka for finding a treatment to his fever, he really was, it had worked so quickly and he barely even felt sore anymore.
He just really wished the method hadn't been so disgusting.
Sokki came up to him as he was wiping his mouth, furiously rubbing a cloth over his lips. She seemed unusually guarded, her hands holding her elbows, withdrawn into her shoulders.
"Hey," she called. "Are you okay?"
Katar rubbed one last time with the cloth, confused by the serious note in her voice. "Of course," he said. He tossed the cloth back into the pile of junk that Momo had brought them, and reached down to shuffle through it for his travel pack. "Why do you ask?" he asked absently.
"It's just..." Sokki grimaced uncomfortably. She glanced over towards the corner where Angka was still sitting, perched on the broken wall and rubble that used to be a window, making sure the other girl was out of earshot before she lowered her voice. "You were calling mom's name a lot last night," she told him.
Katar's hands stopped in midair.
"Oh," he said.
There was a long awkward silence between them for a moment.
Words refused to come to him. He didn't know what to say. Katar wrung the straps of his pack in his hands, feeling the weight of Sokki's words pressing down on him.
"And Angka's a lot too, weirdly," Sokki decided to add.
Katar's face flushed hotly, making him wonder for a moment if his fever was returning.
"You uh... you heard that, huh?" he asked, slightly mortified.
"Yep," Sokki confirmed.
Another long silence passed.
"Promise not to mention it if you promise to forget how I tried to fight off imaginary leopard-bears?" Sokki offered.
Katar jumped on that at once. "Deal," he agreed.
Mutual secrets assured, the two Water Tribe siblings set about breaking their camp.
Katar wandered over to Angka eventually, smiling at how she looked with the sun from outside framing her face. She was nursing her wrist, and as Katar got closer he frowned, spying something on the skin just peeking out from under her sleeve.
It looked red. Irritated. Almost like a...
...A bruise?
Katar stopped in his tracks, staring.
"What's that?" he asked, horrified.
Angka darted her head over to look at him, then followed his eyes down to her wrist.
She quickly pulled up her sleeve, dropping her hand.
"Nothing!" she said, a little too quickly, tone over-cheerful.
Katar's brows were furiously furrowing now; he stomped the last few steps and grabbed her sleeve, yanking it down.
His horror returned when he spied the marks on her skin, curling straight-line around her wrist, like she'd had a too-tight bracelet on.
"Oh my..." he breathed. "What happened?" he cried, unable to keep the shrill worry out of his voice.
Sokki glanced over with raised eyebrows as Angka grimaced and slid her legs down off the broken windowsill, standing up to face Katar with chagrin.
"So... I might have gotten myself a little captured last night while I was out getting the frogs," she confessed, rubbing a hand behind her head.
"What?!" Katar blurted. I knew it, I knew it! I knew she was taking way too long! His teeth ground inside his jaw. "By who?!" he demanded. "Was it Zuka?"
"No, actually, she..." Angka coughed uncomfortably and left that thought unfinished, shaking her head. "No, it was someone new. Some Fire Nation admiral named... Zheng? Zhou? Something like that." Angka waved both her hands placatingly, nervous smile wide on her face. "Anyway, he didn't have me very long. Couple of hours tops. No big deal," she dismissed.
"No big—Angka, that's completely a big deal!" Katar burst, sputtering.
"Ugh, here we go again," complained Sokki.
He shot a glare at her. "What does that mean?"
Sokki punctuated her words with wide sarcastic gestures. "You're gonna freak out, and you're gonna get all over-protective, even though there was literally nothing you could have done to help her, and you're gonna be all 'I'm never letting you leave my sight!' and it's gonna be so annoying!"
"Sokki, she was captured by the Fire Nation!" he all but screeched. "They could have taken her away. We would still be sick and she would be gone."
"Well she's here now. Clearly, she had it handled," Sokki argued back. "Come on, Katar, give the Avatar a little credit. She's not a helpless baby you know," she added, rolling her eyes.
Angka, meanwhile pressed the pads of her index fingers together shyly. "I did kind of need help getting out though," she admitted.
Katar gestured emphatically at her with a flat-palmed 'See?!' gesture as he made a face at Sokki.
Sokki sighed in defeat. "Guess we better get going then, in case Admiral Zhong or whoever decides to sweep the area," she grumbled.
"Thank you for understanding," Katar quipped back.
His sister just broke the camp down without comment.
Katar turned back to Angka in concern, putting hands on her shoulders and checking down her for any other injuries he could see.
"Are you hurt anywhere?" he asked anxiously.
She shook her head.
"I really am okay, Katar," she assured him. Her lips curled with a faint smile. "But I appreciate that you worry."
Something inside his chest stuttered at that. He found himself at a sudden loss for words.
"Well..." he trailed, rubbing a hand behind his neck. "I..."
Nope, the words weren't coming.
But then, how did you explain to someone that the thought of them ever coming to harm was unbearable to the point of physical pain?
Katar forcibly kickstarted his brain again.
"I just... want you to be safe," he mumbled quietly.
She beamed.
"With you around, how could I not be?" she said brightly.
And Katar's chest gave another half-giddy, half-agonized turn.
(A/N)- Angka has a perilous side adventure that Katar and Sokki are not privilege to and Katar worries like heck the whole time she's gone, Katar has fever dreams about his tragic back story, and both kids really need to get their chests looked at, that constant flipping and stuttering can't be healthy.
It occurred to me that there was no way Aang could have possibly heard Admiral Zhao's name and quite probably had no idea who the man was when he got captured. Katara and Sokka met him, and heard Zuko snarling his name (I checked), but Aang was already in the vision meeting with Roku. Obviously the kids compared notes afterwards but I thought it would be a funny joke anyway. Just imagine Aang describing Zhao and something in Sokka's brain clicks all, "Oh THAT asshole! Yeah, we don't like him." Lol.
Some interesting canon-divergences coming up for the next chapter. Hoping to keep to an every-other-week posting schedule. We'll see.