A/N: And, we're back. Before we get too far in, a couple more notes:

I've done some heavy revisions to Shadows Part 1. Most of it was just streamlining and cutting wordiness and such, but the Epilogue was almost completely rewritten to retcon something I didn't think was working, so for anyone who read the story back before February 2022, I'd recommend going back and revisiting the new version of that chapter.

I also mentioned the T rating on this series last chapter. Fair warning, this story may well feel psychologically and thematically dark in some ways. One of the changes that ended up coming as a ripple effect of a key change in the epilogue of Part 1 is that someone dies, and while in that case the character was not someone we personally knew, I'll make clear again the rating for violence for this series means that characters can and may die, whether that be in this part or future parts that may come.

Now that we have all that out of the way—onto the story.

Chapter 1: Duty

"And it's your duty to use the gifts you've been given..."

Katara's fingers curled at her sides. She fidgeted with the fur hem of her sleeve. Her eyes slid closed, as she concentrated on not seeing the face that so often intruded on her thoughts for the past several months. Seeing instead, a field of untouched snow, or perhaps—

"Katara!"

Katara blinked and opened her eyes to find another lined face, rather more grumpy, staring back at her.

An impatient boot tapped on the ice floor, and for the first time she registered a small voice sniffling, and her eyes dropped down to where a couple small figures huddled. The smaller cupped a hand, red as though it had been scrapped in a fall, and she looked up at Katara with large, teary eyes.

Katara immediately dropped to her knees, placing a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder, as her sister hovered nearby.

"Oh, Sura," Katara said. "Let me heal that. It'll be all better in a second."

Katara dipped her hand in a nearby water basin, and when it emerged it glowed white. She placed her hand on the scrape. The water on her hand hummed for a moment, and when she drew back again, the girl's palm was as good as new.

The two girls both oohed as they stared at the hand.

"When are we gonna learn that?" Sura demanded. Siku, her older sister by a few years, also looked up at Katara with wide, hopeful eyes.

Katara had to fight not to laugh. The irony—no doubt these two would have been happier with their allotted training at the North Pole than she had been.

"Soon," Katara said, smiling. "Any time you like."

"Now?" Sura prompted.

Katara hesitated. She glanced at the twilight sky outside.

"Not now," said the gruff voice from behind her. "That will be all for lessons today, I think. You had both best be getting over to Auntie Kanna's house, she'll have some nice warm stew for you."

The girls both cheered, and before Katara could stop them, they took off out the doors and into the snow beyond.

Katara marveled at the change from when they had first arrived. Brought from their own village to learn waterbending, in the beginning the two girls had skulked about, avoiding Katara and everyone else, denying they were waterbenders at all. It had taken time to convince them that the world was now at peace, that the Fire Nation wouldn't come and take them away if their bending was known, but now they scampered about throwing snowballs at each other and making funny sculptures out of ice. Katara had always thought she was the very last waterbender in the entire South Pole—to discover she wasn't quite as special as she'd thought was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Although…

Katara shook herself. Still kneeling on the ice, she didn't immediately stand. Instead she thought she felt a pair of hard eyes boring a hole into the back of her head.

"Distracted, are we?" said Master Pakku, in his usual dry, imperious voice. "If I didn't know better, I would say you have been meditating into the spirit world. Which is all well and fine, except when you've agreed to be my assistant."

"Sorry," Katara said sheepishly. With a wave of her hand, she finally drew off the water coating her hand, letting it fall back into the water bowl with a splash.

Master Pakku watched the hand with a critical expression, his arms folded rigidly behind his back. "I think you've grown complacent," he said abruptly.

Katara blinked, and raised her eyes to stare at him. "Com—" she began in disbelief.

"Yes," he snapped, cutting her off before she could protest. He sighed. "Yes, there's nothing more for me to teach you. You are the finest student I've ever had—you can sweep away a dozen enemies in a single wave, lock them in pillars of ice, throw a barrage of finely crafted ice needles. Your raw power combined with your control is unrivaled even by benders twice or three times your age." He paused, scowling deeply at her to make sure she wasn't looking smug. "But there are other areas of study you have neglected."

Katara noticed he was looking at her hand, still hovering above the bowl, and she clenched it into a fist, rising to her feet. "I'm a good healer," she said defensively. "I could teach you, Master Pakku."

It was true—where women had been forbidden to learn combat forms of bending by virtue of the Northern Tribe's code, the men had been disallowed from healing. Now that the way had been paved for women to begin learning how to fight, from all she had heard a few of the men had opted to start picking up healing too, even if many still regarded it as women's work.

"You could," he said evenly. "But you could be far better if you were to apprentice under one of the healing masters of the North." He jabbed a finger at her for emphasis. "You're wasting your potential, riding on your laurels."

Katara wanted to argue. She had been happy to see her old master again when she had come back to the South, and glad he had been able to work things out with her grandmother. But his tendency to still want to give unasked advice and make little corrections on her waterbending forms ground her last nerve. It was one of the reasons why she had finally moved out from bunking with Gran-Gran and finally found a place of her own. Unlike Sokka, she preferred not to stay in the mansion the visiting Northerners had built for her father, now that he had been elected Head Chieftain of all the Southern Tribes, if she could avoid it.

However, unbidden an image from the dark catacombs of Ba Sing Se flickered at the back of her mind, a mangled form lying on the stone, pale face lit only by the eerie green glow of crystal. Reaching out to touch, and feeling immediately that the injuries were levels beyond what she could ever hope to fix. What if the same were to happen to Sokka, or Aang? What if she could have saved them, if only she knew more?

"I can't go to the North right now," she said at last, though her tone was less certain than before. "I want to stay here and help the rebuilding in the South. I want to help you bring back our benders."

Pakku grunted irritably, but uncharacteristically didn't try to argue further. He turned his back, facing the door. "I will see you tomorrow then. Bright and early. Your brain as well as your body—if it's not too much trouble."

Chastened, Katara bowed slightly. "Yes, Master."

Master Pakku was almost to the door when she heard herself blurt suddenly, "Master Pakku?"

He must have heard the strange tentative note in her tone, because when he paused and looked back, his ever-present scowl was less pronounced than usual.

Katara swallowed. A thought had been rolling over and over in her mind lately, growing like a ball of snow down an incline. She tried to think how to put it into words.

"I've been wondering," she began. "I mean, I'm grateful for what you're doing here, and for all you taught me—"

Master Pakku's full scowl came back, abruptly suspicious. "But?"

Katara folded her hands together, thumbs fidgeting. "But... I've been wondering if there would be a way to, you know, bring back the real Southern way of waterbending. If, I don't know, there were scrolls somewhere that explained the techniques our people used, and we could teach some of them to Siku and Sura, along with the Northern style."

Pakku stared back at her for a long moment. The lines of his face looked softer suddenly, his eyes almost gentle, an expression decidedly out of place on his grouchy features. A face almost pitying.

"As far as I know, the Southern practitioners never kept written records of their techniques," he answered. "They were simply passed from generation to generation, master to apprentice. You might discover new arts of your own that in generations to come will then be thought of as the Southern style—but as for the old techniques, you would need to find and train under an old master who knew them."

The images that so often played at the back of her mind these days, a rasping voice she tried to shut out, were suddenly there, present and overpowering. A chill erupted on her arms, and she turned sharply away to hide her expression.

"I see," she said, trying to make her voice light. She added, "Then I guess there's nothing we can do. There's… no one like that left."

What few were left of the captured Southern waterbenders had been released after the war, as per Zuko's orders. However, they had, every single one, been broken by decades of abuse and cruelty, most wanting nothing to do with waterbending, some having lost the ability to bend at all. Katara had visited each and every one of them, doing her best to provide what comfort she could, but hadn't had the heart to press them for more than that, and with the mental state most were in, doubted it would yield anything if she did.

Pakku lingered in the doorway for a long moment, perhaps trying to think of something comforting to say. However, comforting wasn't his strong suit, and at last he said gruffly, "Your grandmother will be disappointed if you don't stop by for stew this evening. It's gotten a little crowded, but I suppose that just makes the place warmer."

Katara finally turned back, forcing a half smile. "I'll be there."

Pakku grunted, before turning and clumping away through the snow.

Katara let out a long, slow breath, before her eyes dropped to stare at one of the practice basins, at the water's still surface. An ancient, cracked face seemed to smile back at her, surrounded on all sides by a field of withered flowers.

There is water all around us...

Katara did know some of the secrets of the lost Southern style. Knew enough to know that its way of thinking about water was in many ways completely different from the more rigid Northern style. There was one person, of course—one Southern master who had broken free early, who had continued her study of waterbending through the decades, keeping her knowledge of all the forms fresh and sharp.

A light breeze curled into the room through the doors Pakku had not fully closed, rippling the surface of the water, and sending a few errant flakes of snow brushing the back of Katara's exposed neck. A deep shudder shook her, and she stared down at her own face in the water, distorted by the moving air.

The power exists. And it's your duty...

Katara quickly turned away, picking up her bag of supplies from the floor and slinging it over her shoulder. With a twist of her fingers she made the face in the water disappear in a cascade of ripples. Then she made her way back out into the snow.

A/N: Shorter chapter this time. I've gotten so I try to keep these early ones from being quite so long. (So many rewrites on this one, I can't even say. And that doesn't even count the time it took to decide who was going to be Siku and who was going to be Sura, since canon refuses to say.)

North and South comics—this first chapter will probably be the biggest extent aspects of those comics come into play in this story, but basically several things will be assumed to be the same. Hakoda still became Head Chieftan, Pakku and Kanna have gotten married, and the North came to help with the rebuilding so the new South looks a lot more like the North. The main difference is Katara was in the South herself while much of this was happening, so even though she still doesn't like it, the change was less jarring. (We've jumped ahead a few months since the previous story, but we will go back to the immediate aftermath of the previous part before long, at least a little, in a few chapters.)

Last note: In the first part the full gaang didn't end up playing much of a role, so I'm hoping to remedy that this time around.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a moment, let me know what you thought so far, and hope to see you in the next one!

Posted 5/1/23