Had the mountains continued and curved east, Katara and the others would've had to wait longer to see the moon, but the mountains ended sharply, as if hewn, and so the full moon came early, bright and fresh. Strong shadows cast by the surrounding trees made stripes on the ground as the moonlight fought to reach the forest floor, only highlighting the darkness they stood in.

The warm, humid air felt heavier, more malleable and within grasp; Katara's own sweat felt more solid—no, more awake. Maybe it was Hama's training, but Katara felt more aware of the water sources around her, the swirling energies that were as undisturbed as water could be. "Well? It's time." she asked but glanced at Aang for the reassurance of his presence, suddenly nervous about how Hama might be affected by the moon. Besides, Sokka and Toph should have been back by now.

"Now I take you to the enemy you're so eager to save." Hama stood, not taking a step in any direction. "But first: a lesson."

"You said—" Katara bunched her fists together, uncertainty forgotten, "You said you'd take us to see him. Stop stalling."

"My dear, when are we going to see each other again? I hardly think you'll be so inclined to return and learn from me once you get your…friend. So one lesson. Our last. The skill no one, no other master, living or dead, knows to teach you. You learn this, and I will show you your friend—and do more than that, if you so wish. I promise this on the future of the waterbenders of the Southern Water Tribe." In the half-light, her face glowed and her eyes shone as she looked back at Katara.

"We can't trust her," Aang argued. "Toph isn't here. Let's wait."

"I know," she said softly, pondering the matter. She should be back with Sokka now. She glanced at Hama. Did they get stuck in one of her traps? Between them and Zuko, time was not on her side. "Aang, see if you can find Sokka and—"

Raising a hand, Hama stopped her. "Ah, ah," said she, her voice cracking with age. "We need him. To demonstrate." Answering Katara's look, she said, "He won't be harmed."

"I'd rather stay here anyway," said Aang, glancing at Hama.

The fear growing the back of her mind alerted her, but what else could she do? Her friends might be in trouble. "Okay. Quickly, though."

"What I'm about to show you, I discovered in that wretched Fire Nation prison…"

-o-0-

Zuko spotted the first set of white rocks by the cave entrance; he vaguely remembered seeing them on his way inside the night before. It was all still a haze, a fog of memories that hid a lurking monster.

The steep slope and sharp rocks kept him from descending the mountainside quickly until he entered the foothills. But in the grass and dirt there was no pile of rocks, white or otherwise, to guide him. Still, it felt familiar, and he headed toward the forest, now jogging and looking out for any sign of Sokka, Aang, Katara, and—spirits help them—Hama.

Once again, he had to slow his speed. The uneven forest floor, a camouflage of moonlit leaves and their shadows, flickered and tricked the eyes, all the while betraying his position as they crunched underfoot. He stopped and listened.

Silence. Not quiet; silent. No birds or insects, not even a breath of wind shifting the trees. Maybe he should have brought Toph along; she'd be able to sense what was amiss and where they were. But there's no time, he told himself and started moving again, choosing to go deeper into the forest, pleading to the spirits that he'd get to his friends in time.

Something made him stop short—a snapped twig in the distance or an echo of his own movements—he wasn't sure. He closed his eyes.

A voice, indistinct but high like a cry for help. Or perhaps it was a bird's call. He tried moving slowly towards the sound, but his footsteps overpowered it. He paused again. The sound had gone.

A flicker of light through the trees, then the sound of crashing water like ten bucketsful being thrown at once swept through the once-still air.

Zuko took off at a sprint, dodging trees and fallen logs, silence forgotten. Katara had to be putting up a fight, but this was one fight she couldn't win—not alone.

-o-0-

"…the next full moon, I walked free for the first time in decades, my cell unlocked by the very guards assigned to keep me in. Once you perfect this technique, you can control anything…or anyone."

"But…to reach inside someone and control them?" Katara tried imagining what that felt like. "I don't know if I want that kind of power." It was personal, invasive.

Hama shook her head. "The choice is not yours. The power exists, and it's your duty to use the gifts you've been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture, your mother!"

"I know! I just…"

"If she doesn't want to, she doesn't have to," said Aang, stepping next to Katara.

"Like you understand what I'm talking about," Hama shot back at him. "We're the last two waterbenders of the Southern Tribe," she said to Katara. "We have to fight these people whenever we can, wherever they are, with any means necessary!"

"Zuko isn't—" She remembered the stories of the nearby villages. "You're the one making people disappear, not just Zuko." Katara took a half step back. Of course it was. How was I so blind?

Hama drew closer. "I told you: they threw me in prison to rot along with my brothers and sisters! They deserve it! You must feel the same; you must carry on my work."

"We need to go," Aang said, taking Katara's hand and pulling her back.

Tearing away from his grasp, Katara jerked a pointed finger at the old woman. "I won't use bloodbending, and I won't allow you to keep terrorizing this town!" But, as if turning the blame back on her, Katara's finger retracted into her fist of its own accord.

Then she saw the stance Hama had taken. It was faintly similar to the usual waterbending stance, but it was wrong: her feet were turned inward and Hama's hands, wrinkled and long, seemed bent oddly, on the verge of unnatural. "I can't say I'm not disappointed in you, Katara."

Her own body felt unnatural, cold, like she and everything within her power to move had been reduced from her limbs to her core. Hama twisted her hand over, and Katara's hands twisted around and behind her back, causing her to yelp in surprise.

"Katara!" She could still turn her head so she did, but Aang was too far behind her to see. "I'm stuck!" he called.

"It's okay," Katara assured him automatically, but her mind worked to put together what it meant. This is what happened to Zuko, to everyone else.

"You should've learned the technique before you turned against me. It's impossible to fight your way out of my grip now. I control every muscle, every vein in your body! I can make it hurt, and I can make the pain last forever." To demonstrate, Hama mimicked clutching something, and Katara heard Aang gasp in pain.

"Stop! Please," she pleaded.

"Keep me; let her go!" said Aang.

What?! "No!" There had to be another way.

Hama narrowed her eyes at Aang. "What makes you think I care about you? You're not from the Water Tribe, that much is clear. Which means you're either Fire Nation or from the Earth Kingdom—one of the colonies, most likely. That's just as bad."

"I'm not—"

"Don't lie to me. Nothing you say will change what will happen."

"But I'm—!" Aang let out shriek of pain, one Katara tried to turn towards before she was not so gently reminded of her restraints.

"Say another word, and I'll break your jaw." Anger was noticeably absent from the old woman's voice. It was calm. Cold. Dead.

Aang's breathing quivered, but he was silent.

It was odd, a removed part of Katara observed: rather than feeling like her body was gripped in a vise, it was if her body—and all the water in it—was locked together. Not frozen, definitely not frozen, but the swirling energy that existed in all water, even calm water, was locked in place and fighting to be freed.

Maybe if she helped it free itself…but how? She had never tried doing anything like that before.

"Katara," she tried shutting out the voice that was beginning to make her sick to her stomach, but it persisted, "water erodes all things, given enough time, and I'm a patient woman. You will become my pupil."

"You're an old woman. You'll be dead before I ask you to teach me anything!"

Hama's wide, sinister grin was loosed, and she replied, "And sometimes water can destroy in an instant—!"

Katara's breath caught. She's going to kill Aang.

A voice on her right rang out: " 'Tara!" Zuko! Katara turned to see him running at a full sprint at her. His eyes were wide and fearful, and he swept his arm in Hama's direction, sending out flames. The bright but weak spread of fire stopped short of the old woman, though it acted as an opaque screen between them.

"Run—!" he started, but the rest was cut off. Zuko's progress towards Katara was cut short, and he fell into the dirt.

Katara tried to run, but Hama commanded, "Stop!" as Zuko jerkily arose. "Stop fighting!"

Teeth bared, Zuko's face and entire body jerked and twitched. The pendant hanging from his neck shone bright blue. Steam rose from his skin. "R—Run! S—S—Save—" He closed his eyes, trying to continue.

A pop rang out, loud and clear, followed by a grunt by Zuko. He fell to one knee, breathing fast, and then rose up again, smoother this time.

Suddenly, Katara felt the influence over her body lessen. Maybe it was inattention, maybe it was that the strength needed to bloodbend three people was too much for Hama, but either way, Katara felt a weakness in whatever it was that froze her body in place. There was no question whether her she was capable of breaking Hama's hold on her; she had to. There was nothing, nothing more important, and there was no time to think.

There was an instant, but it was enough. Like water finding and flowing through a crack, she gathered her remaining free energy, that which allowed her to move her mouth and head, and targeted her arms, working to free her fixed muscles. And as Katara did this, she was already ordering her arms to move, to bend the water from the pouch at her side into a waterwhip.

Not only did her arms release, but the rest of her body too. Consequently, the waterwhip, as sharp as any manmade weapon, struck Hama with more force than intended, and she fell to one knee. A line of blood oozed then rushed down her face from a long cut that went from her nose to halfway across her left cheek, and she looked up at Katara, smug superiority gone and replaced by the seething hate it had been masking.

Breathing hard from the effort, Katara said, "You're not the only one who draws power from the moon."

"Stupid girl!" Hama raised a hand, and Katara felt the bloodbending's influence.

However, now that she knew how it worked, Katara stopped it from ever landing a foothold on herself. "Your technique won't work on me."

"Katara!" Aang yelled behind her, and she whirled around. He hung in the air, arms pinned at his sides, completely still—not even an airbender could hover like that. But it didn't look like he was in pain, thank the spirits.

Not knowing when Hama would make good on her threat, Katara swung around and bended all the water from her pouch. This needed to end. Now.

Though the old woman's bloodbending had been fought off, she remained as strong as ever—and while keeping Aang and Zuko within her grasp. She rose and stepped forward, sliding one leg back followed by a movement with her free hand. Shimmering water appeared, beginning as droplets and then gathering together into a twisting rope she directed at Katara's head.

Katara dodged and redirected the water, keeping it flowing, and curling it around herself defensively. They could remain like this, waiting for the other to attack, but as long as she could keep Hama occupied, perhaps she wouldn't hurt Aang or Zuko. Trying another waterwhip, a larger one this time, she targeted Hama's hand in the hopes of interrupting her bending and free Aang and Zuko.

Once was enough for the woman to learn. She ripped water up from the ground, killing every living thing there in an instant, and when the waterwhip struck it was simply absorbed. The amount of water they were bending had tripled so that it was less of a rope and more of a twisting, turning beam of water, one that Hama was in control of. Katara glanced around for something to help her.

Hama fell into a more familiar stance and bended all the water into one wide and consuming blast at her.

It had seemed like a simple attack, but Katara had misjudged the force and speed of it. There was no dodging the water that was rushing toward her and very little could be redirected. Even if she could bend the water, there wasn't much to do but continue their cycle of bending more and more, pushing and pulling in the moonlight. There was only one thing to do to end the fight.

Holding up a hand, Katara closed her eyes and imagined the water stopping. Not splitting, not redirecting—stopping. In her action was a wish, a plea for the fight to stop. It needed to stop. Hama needed to stop.

The water hit her hand. It spread out against her palm like fingers of its own, except it didn't close around hers, and, in fact, it seemed to want to get away—not get away, disappear entirely. Where water strove to connect with water, this wanted to do the opposite: to divide. The thick stream stopped at her palm and turned back towards Hama, disappearing into rain and mist before it reached her. Then it was gone, the whole event taking a mere handful of seconds.

For the first time, Hama looked at Katara with fear in her eyes, there and gone in a flash, but there was no mistaking it. Her lip then curled up into a dark grimace.

"Come closer," Hama said to Zuko, calmer this time, and he obeyed. The way he moved was odd, both fast and slow: his limbs moved mechanically, repetitive and rickety, but the ground he covered was more than his strides accounted for. Rather than walking, he seemed to glide over the ground, drawn towards Hama under her dark power.

The moonlight lit up the tear that traveled down Zuko's cheek. "I can't—I can't stop her!" Unlike before, his voice was clear though his control over everything else had vanished. "Take Aang and go!"

"No!" Katara pleaded, and she watched on as Aang was lowered to the ground, and he picked up a rock by his feet.

"Hey, hey, hey! I'm not doing this!" he told Zuko.

Zuko called back, "It's okay. Don't—" he gasped, and his face contorted in pain "—don't try to fight it."

"One attacks; one defends," cooed Hama, flashing her wicked smile.

Zuko's eyes widened. His words came fast and tumbled over another as he urged Katara: "You need to save Aang. Save him. No matter what happens."

They faced each other—Aang armed; Zuko not—and Hama stood between them, gleefully holding her hands as if she was holding up two dolls about to clash together—

"No! Hama, you can't do this!" Katara yelled.

Hama's eyes flashed. "They shouldn't have done what they did!"

"They haven't done anything!" she cried. All Hama needed to do was have Aang bring down the rock on Zuko, and then it would be over for them both. Aang would have killed someone—involuntarily, but Katara knew it would devastate him forever.

Then there was Zuko. After everything he had gone through, all the sacrifices, all the pain and training and struggle, why did it have to be him that was punished? He only wanted to help them. He was so stupid, running in the middle of us. He could have surprised Hama! Why didn't he— But he had been running to Katara, calling her name.

Even now, his eyes were on her, silently begging her to save herself, to save Aang. He threw away his life so easily—didn't he know how much he mattered? How much his sacrifice would hurt?

Aang's arm came down, hitting Zuko's head despite his attempt to dodge. Zuko tilted his head back as far as he could, but it still cut his right temple and cheek. Bright blood dripped down like a red tear except it was more than a mere droplet; by comparison, it was a torrent, a scar growing before her eyes.

"NO!" Katara screamed.

Through tears, Aang cried out, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

His body still kept upright, Zuko's head lolled to one side. His breathing was more ragged than before. "It's…okay. It's okay, Aang."

Outrage, fear, anger, and every other nameless thought and feeling that cried out at such a tragedy rose up and enclosed Katara's heart and sharpened her mind. Closing her eyes, feeling the moon's push and pull and all the alive things around her beating to the same celestial drum, Katara sought out the one living thing that needed to die.

Hama might not have taught her to bloodbend, but she had laid the groundwork that allowed Katara to move her focus from the smallest moisture veins in rocks and fungus to the veins of humans. It felt easier than earlier, but the moon hadn't been there and, unlike rocks, humans were full of water. But how to control it—and quickly? The flow of blood came from somewhere, somewhere powerful.

Like plunging her hands into a stream, Katara reached out and gripped the thing like a wriggling fish. It twisted and fought, but it was old, much too old to fight for longer than a second or two. Then her world opened up. Not only could she feel the heartbeat of the thing but also the flexed muscles and panting breaths. In a blink of an eye, she understood it as well as herself, maybe better. It had its own wants it impressed upon Katara to move an arm or leg, but the swirling energies in the water that carried out those orders were held in check by a dam of Katara's own ability and will. The water level didn't increase, and so her stamina would determine how long she could control it.

Katara opened her eyes. Her hands were held out as she had imagined, invisibly gripping Hama's heart. Both boys were on the ground and out of Hama's control. Aang started towards Zuko who lied on his back. I need to help—no, first I need to take care of her.

Though she knew she shouldn't, not in these circumstances, Katara smiled in victory. Hama's bloodbending had seemed so strong, but now it was just so…so easy to control her, any part of her. She made Hama kneel, her hands behind her back. I could do whatever I want to you for hurting Zuko. I could make you hurt yourself, she thought and a part of her wanted to see how far it could go, if there was a limit.

The old woman had her head down, but Katara made a small twist of her hand and the woman's head shot up to face her victor. But instead of pain and defeat like Katara expected, Hama smiled and laughed. "Congratulations, Katara. You're a bloodbender."

Her breath caught, nearly causing her to lose her hold on the dam of water in the process. "No."

Hama's smile grew larger. "Yes," she said, drawing out the word, savoring it.

It felt like a light had gone out, and Katara was left with the realization of how cold and dark it was. She let out a gasp, aware how tenuous her control over Hama was but found what little capacity she had to care.

Hama's hand moved, hardly a twitch. Drawing water from the trees, Katara hit and knocked the woman over. I guess I do care. The wrestling pressure of keeping control of Hama's body all but disappeared, and the tension on Katara's shoulders lightened when she let go of the hold she had on her. Katara could breathe easy…well, easier.

"Katara!" She tensed again at Aang's cry for help. Kneeling next to Zuko, he held a piece of clothing to his temple. She rushed over to the two of them. "He's really bleeding," Aang reported.

"I'm fine—" Zuko hissed as he lifted his left arm to shoo away Aang. "My shoulder."

There wasn't any obvious blood around his arm, so Katara ignored it for the time being in favor of his face. She found the cut wasn't too deep, not nearly as deep as the bleeding seemed to indicate, and it took less than a minute to transform it into a pink line of new skin. Now, onto this shoulder.

A quick inspection and a yell resulted in the discovery of a dislocated shoulder. There was a way to return it to its proper joint; Katara remembered seeing fishermen dislocate then relocate their shoulders after hauling up particularly heavy netfuls of fish, but she had never relocated a shoulder herself. Maybe it would help to blood—NO! She would never use that again.

"I think he'll be okay," she said to Aang. "I'll take care of him. You find Sokka and Toph. Make sure they're okay."

Zuko lifted his head up. "They're safe. I saw them. They were freeing the others."

"The others?" Aang asked.

"There's probably ten or twenty people being held captive in the mountain. She took them like they took me. There's a passage when you work your way to the top," he told Aang. "It's marked with a pile of white stones."

She had heard of several people being taken, but ten or twenty? How many people died over the years? 'You must continue my work.' How many had died since Hama escaped from the soldiers?

Aang stood but didn't leave. "I'm so, so sorry, Zuko. I—I thought I had killed you. I'm sorry."

"I'm fine, Aang. Really. You were under her control. You couldn't have done anything."

He lowered his head. "I'm just really sorry."

Zuko paused then said gently, "I know. I forgive you. Can you go and find them? I'll be okay."

The boy nodded, walked to his staff that had fallen to the ground before the fight, and took off above the trees towards the mountain.

Now that he was gone, Katara confessed, "I don't know if I'll be able to fix it. I've seen others do it but—"

"If you don't, who will? You can't hurt me as much as it hurts now." His voice wasn't as clear as it had been a minute ago, and Katara noticed his forehead sweating even though Aang had wiped it not too long ago when they were cleaning up his wound.

"Spirits," she chided him, "do you always have to lie about this kind of thing?"

He cracked a smile. "I have to try; Toph's not here."

She hmm'd disapprovingly, but afterward she caught his eye and flashed a smile as a reward. Humor was a good sign, after all. "Okay, I'll try. It looked easy when I saw it done."

They got to work moving Zuko in the correct position: lying flat on his back with his left arm held away from his body. Katara grabbed his wrist with both hands and propped one leg against his side, right beneath the pit of the arm. All she needed to do was pull and it would return to its place. It would be painful, but it would only last a second or two and she told him as much.

Zuko nodded. He had a bundle of cloth in his mouth to bite down on. His eyes were on hers, waiting. Katara looked around one last time to check her work. All good. There was nothing left but to begin.

Remembering how the adults did it, Katara didn't jerk or tug the arm but pulled. There was immediate resistance, and Zuko tensed up, yelling into the cloth. She pulled harder and felt the bone and muscle and tendons rubbing where they should not. Katara readjusted her grip and pulled as hard as she could, but it wasn't enough.

I could bloodbend. Her grip loosened with the loss of concentration, and the shoulder slipped back down, still out of joint. No, she couldn't bloodbend, but she could waterbend. While continuing to hold Zuko's wrist with one hand, she bended the puddle of water that lied next to Hama a short stone's throw away and froze it to his arm. Katara pulled again.

Another pop, one that mirrored the one Katara had heard earlier, sounded and the shoulder returned to its proper place. She melted the ice and crawled to Zuko's side.

He took the cloth out of his mouth with his good hand and panted, staring at night sky.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded, still breathing heavily. "That was not a second."

"Sorry. Here, try to move it."

First, his fingers curled, and then he tentatively brought his arm to his chest. He sighed. "Better. Thank you."

He shouldn't thank her. Though she wasn't directly responsible, she was the one who encouraged him to go with Hama. "Rest. I'll make a sling then we'll wait for the others."

-o-0-

Zuko watched Katara stand a few paces away, her back mostly to him. Hama lied at her feet alive and breathing but otherwise motionless. Shadows fell across her body, but their edges faded and expanded as clouds obscured the moon high above the scene.

He got slowly to his feet and, walking up behind her, saw Katara's lowered hands tremble before she lifted them to her chest.

"It's over," he said.

With a start, Katara twisted around, surprise and fear gripping her expression. Then she let out a breath and smiled, her eyes brightly shining with…relief? Joy? No, it wasn't any of those—or maybe it was both but also something more? Different? Somehow, words were not enough. They never were. They always failed him when he needed them most.

The power of words. Though he hadn't heard them, he had seen the effect of Hama's final ones to Katara. There was no way to know what was said or what had gone on before he arrived, but she had to know that she had saved him—again—and Aang too. That's all that mattered. Who cared what Hama told her?

Katara looked down at her hands held close to her chest, then back at him, but she didn't say anything. It seemed like she started to speak, but her chin quivered and she stayed silent, shifting her eyes downward again to Hama's unconscious form.

Oh, how he wanted to wrap her in his arms, to comfort her with the protection of his body and make her feel safe when anything he tried to say could never do any of that. "Hey," he whispered, setting his good hand on her arm and feeling her cool skin grow warm under his touch. "It's okay."

Through tears and hardly above a whisper, she asked, "Are you?" But before he could form a reply, she threw her arms around him. "I was so scared for you." Tears dripped down to land on his arm, surprisingly warm.

The pressure of her body against his and her arms wrapped tightly around him, not wanting to let go was, in short, the closest thing to paradise after almost being lost to the darkness.

The tears on his skin quickly cooled in the night air. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner," Katara cried. "We didn't know where you were and—"

Disbelief jolted through Zuko, paired with a keen feeling of wrongness as palpable and abhorrent as a bad smell. He took Katara by the shoulders and held her at arm's length. "Katara."

Her surprise, while visible, remained secondary. "If only I had tried—"

"Katara," he said through gritted teeth and blurred vision. He squeezed her arms. Stop blaming yourself! "Katara!" he said, harsher this time. Then she quieted, her expression still obscured by unspent tears, but she had grown still. "Katara," he said again, more of a whisper—or perhaps a prayer, the lingering hope that had combatted the darkness when it threatened to consume him. He opened his mouth to say something more, but the words died in his throat—unspoken, unknown.

"I didn't know if you were going to be okay," she said, filling the silence with her tear-choked voice. "After everything…"

"I'm okay," he replied. "I will be, anyways." He mustered together a smile as proof.

"Oh, Zuko," she breathed, as if to herself. The sadness seemed to pour out of her in just those two words, but also pain, pain that shouldn't be there. "We should have known Hama—"

She needed to stop. He reached up and held his palm against her cheek so that his thumb brushed against the corner of her mouth. Her skin was smooth and cool compared to his own. "Stop," he commanded, speaking just above a whisper.

Katara stiffened at his touch and took a quick breath. The thought that had made Zuko place his hand against her cheek was gone, leaving behind a bone-chilling, heart-stopping awareness. His hand remained where it was, frozen in place by terror—it must have been that because it felt like his heart was going to pound itself out of his chest. He opened his mouth to say something—apologizing felt like the right thing to do—but new, unfamiliar thoughts and words rose up, eager to be set free. Words that had no real meaning beyond abstractions or fictions played out in theater.

He snatched it back as if suddenly burned. "I—I'm sorry. I don't know what—I…" Warmth spread to his cheeks, and he averted his eyes to avoid seeing his embarrassment be reflected in hers.

A hand, then two, took hold of his, squeezing them. He whipped his head up. It was Katara. Of course it was, but somehow it still felt like a surprise to see her staring up at him, looking so beautiful and melancholic yet joyous and nervous, and looking at him like that.

How much time had he spent staring unabashedly at her? She smiled faintly like she could read his mind.

Voices, faint and numerous, approached from behind him, but Katara held on, stopping him from turning. "Don't apologize," she whispered with one last squeeze before letting him go. Returning to a normal volume, she said, "I'll try to work on your shoulder when we get to Dad. I don't know how to heal complex injuries, but I'll see what I can do."

The people were getting closer, but Zuko didn't want them to come and he didn't want to talk about his injury. When could they return to the moment before when it was just them?

Toph's voice became identifiable first: "…and hear them."

Then Sokka: "Come on, people! Almost there!"

And Aang: "We were traveling, and she ran into us. She warned us about the scary thing in the woods and offered us to have us stay with her," he explained to someone.

Then another voice Zuko recognized but did not see its owner: Krikon. "I was running late getting home and took a shortcut through the woods. That's when my body started acting on its own."

"Weird," was Sokka's only reply.

"Hey!" Aang called, appearing on the edge of the clearing. His hood was up again and covering his arrow. He waved at the two of them, and Katara waved back.

Sokka and Toph followed him, and then a crowd of people. When they stepped into the moonlit clearing, Zuko saw there were close to twenty of them: men and women, old and young. No children, though; Hama seemed to have some kind of standard when it came to the people she took.

"Toph is purposefully being evasive," Sokka said, stepping closer and greeting Zuko with a frustrated air. He held out Zuko's dao. It had no doubt taken when he'd been captured, though the memories were still unclear. "She says, 'Everyone who matters is okay.' " Sokka gave Zuko's injured arm a pointed look.

"Got hurt, but Katara fixed it," Zuko replied.

Katara shrugged. "Some of it."

"Most of it," he firmly corrected, giving credit where it was due.

Sokka raised his eyebrows at their exchange. "O-kay. Is that…Hama over there?" He peered over his sister's shoulder.

"She's still knocked out," reported Toph. "Aang told us you beat her using her own powers. She can force you to move around against your will, right? When we rescued Zuko, he left without telling us anything. I could have helped, you know."

"We could have," Sokka said, more to Zuko than anyone else.

They didn't know how close they had been to death. Having Sokka or Toph there would have been devastating had Hama gotten ahold of them. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt," Zuko replied.

A touch on his arm. He glanced over. Katara. Her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but Zuko knew her thoughts. He shook his head to warn her off. "It's okay. No one else got hurt. That's what matters."

"Speaking of that, I'll check on everyone from the mountain to see if they're okay," Katara said.

"No waterbending!" Sokka hissed a reminder at her as she passed him.

A man, perhaps in his late twenties, walked up to the four of them. His hair was greasy, and dirt covered much of his body and clothing. "That's her?" He pointed at Hama's shadowed form on the ground and took a step closer. Though he was free from Hama's prison, his voice retained the same tired feeling as it had before but it wore more of an edge now.

"Krikon," Zuko said.

The man paused. He looked Zuko up and down, stopping to look at the Scar. There was a second of panic of being recognized, but he simply said, "You made it out mostly intact. Good on ya."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Go back home. See Sozin. Thank the spirits I'm able to return to him." He stepped away and proceeded to Hama.

"Um, what are you going to do?" Aang asked, following him. The same thought on his mind, Zuko, then Sokka, followed after them.

"What do you think?" Krikon said. "Bring her to justice. She's not going to hurt anyone again. Hey!" he called to the group of villagers Katara was talking to. "She's the one who did this! She's the witch!"

As if they remained under her power, the crowd seemed to turn as one and walk to Hama, then lifted her limp body up. At a glance, it looked like they were helping her, an old woman who had been injured, but rather than treating her weak body with care, they were twisting her arms and legs.

The commotion brought Hama into awareness. She lifted her head up only for it to be yanked down again when someone pulled her white hair. "No…" she moaned. "No!"

Aang moved forward, staff in hand. "Hey, what are you doing with her?" he said.

No one answered, but Krikon stepped out of the group carrying Hama into the woods, her yells and eventual screams continuing on and echoing through the trees. He stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked back at the remaining five. "We'll take care of her. You take care of your friends and yourself…" he said, adding coldly to Zuko, "my Lord." Then he turned and disappeared into the woods in the direction of the village.

Team Avatar remained dumbstruck for a second before breaking out into discussions and arguments about Hama, Zuko, and the villagers.

"We should have done something to stop them," said Aang to Sokka.

"And what? Fight them off and keep her hostage? She'd just control us."

Toph replied at the same time, "Why? She's evil."

"We still shouldn't hurt people," Aang retorted to the two of them, but they bombarded him with more questions.

None of this was new; Zuko had heard this before and no doubt Aang had as well. He is so stubborn. One voice was noticeably left out of the conversation, and Zuko saw Katara discretely wipe her eyes.

"Aang, Sokka, Toph: stop it," he ordered. The three of them looked up and saw what he had noticed. They all rushed to her side. Katara couldn't stop the tears from coming, and they stood around her, comforting her the best they could for a long while before Aang whistled for Appa.

It was quiet when the air bison arrived, like he knew what a somber moment it was. They had apparently already packed before leaving for the day, and Zuko was assured by Sokka that he had packed everything of his.

With a flap of his tail, Appa lifted the small group above the tree tops and flew south-southwest. As they were still climbing, a fire blazed not too far below them, bright against the dark backdrop of the forest and night sky. Judging by its position, it was on the outskirts of the village. It was a massive fire—one that couldn't be quenched easily.

"It's…the inn," Aang said. Flames grew along the building like creeping, all-consuming vines. Zuko didn't want to think of what—or who—lied at the center of the raging fire.

They flew on into the moonlit night, past the shoreline and leaving the dark mountains far behind them. Zuko hoped the memories would remain there too.