Katara awoke from her nightmare to the sound of rushed footsteps in the hallway, approaching her cell. She didn't, however, wake up screaming or trembling with fear like she'd used to. Now, in her second month of imprisonment—where she'd had nothing to do all day but lament on her friends and family, and try to piece together the events of that dreadful night back in Ba Sing Se—her nightmares, no matter how terrifying, just didn't compare to the horrors that went on within her mind on a daily basis anymore. Instead, she just calmly opened her eyes, and if it weren't for her tensed body and the tight grip she had on her sleeping mat, it would've seemed she'd had a peaceful dream to an outsider.

The first thing sleep-addled her brain registered was the absence of the noise from the ship's engines that she'd been hearing constantly for the past week, incessantly humming in the background. Rather, there was a noise coming from far away, like the engines were puffing air out. The ship's course ahead had changed as well. More specifically, there was no forward movement anymore. And the second was the horrid stench of a week's worth of her vomit at the far corner of the room. There was no getting used to that.

The sound of boots clinking on metal outside got closer and closer before stopping right before her cell. The door unlocked and swung open, and Katara, lying down right across from it, whipped her head away and shielded her face from the brisk light of the torches in the hallway.

Two sets of footsteps filled the silence inside the tiny room, echoing like thunder off of the walls.

"Get up!" one of them—a man—barked.

Katara withdrew her hand and squinted to see two large silhouettes walking toward her. Although their faces were cast in shadows with the light shining behind them, she could make out that they were not dressed in a regular Fire Nation soldier's uniform, instead wearing a crimson, well-groomed suit with golden rings on their upper arms—and both wore wide bands around their necks made of leather. One of them was holding a black cloth in his hand, while the other carried a long, metal… thing that looked like someone had cut a circle in half and linked the two halves together on one end.

But as her eyes slowly readjusted to the light and she began noticing more details, her eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat. These men, with their toned, bronze skins the same shade as her own and eyes as blue as hers, were no Fire Nation soldiers—they were Water Tribe. They were her brethren.

Spirits, Katara must have truly been losing her mind, seeing hallucinations of her father's warriors coming to rescue her and all…

As if to prove her suspicions wrong, the man with the cloth bent down and latched onto her arms. He pulled her up to her feet and then slammed her back against the wall with enough force that her vision blacked out for a beat and stars appeared before her eyes. Her head spun at the abruptness of the motion, and Katara gritted her teeth against the throbbing developing at the back of her head as well as the aching all over her weakened body—just one consequence of her continued malnutrition over the past two months.

"Wha—" she started, wanting to ask them what they were doing, working with the enemy, but her voice, hoarse from disuse, broke. And before she could clear her throat, the man on her arms shoved her toward the middle of the room and she toppled onto her knees, landing right in front of the other man with a grunt.

Looking up, she saw, through the fog before her eyes, the man with the metal object closing the distance between him and her with a step, lifting the object horizontally so it was level with her neck.

And it was only then that what it was dawned on Katara.

It was a collar.

They were putting a collar on her, like her people would a polar bear-dog.

Panic swelled in her heart. She began struggling with all of her depleted strength against the man holding her hands behind her back, whipping her head this way and that, trying to slip out from his bruising grip to no avail. Regardless of her efforts or how much she pleaded with them, the man with the metal wordlessly set one side of the collar against her throat and closed the other half around it, and the collar locked around her neck with a click.

'No!' Katara wanted to scream, but the rigid pressure on her throat stifled her and all she managed to let out was a guttural growl.

The same man then pulled something out of the sash around his waist—a small iron rod with a curved end that he inserted into a hidden lock on the inside of the collar at Katara's nape. He started twisting the rod, and with each twist, the collar closed tighter around her throat. She felt each individual bump around the inside of the collar digging into her skin, constricting her windpipe.

Breathing itself became too difficult, and she was left gasping for air. But the man didn't stop. He kept on twisting and twisting until the other man let her go, and she fell to the floor, clawing at the collar, heaving.

Then, even more horrifyingly, she began to feel the chi paths all over her body clog up—felt the power of the ocean all around her slowly retract from her limbs, like the tide receding from the shore.

Hot tears ran down her cheeks. She tried desperately to hang on to the last brink of her chi, of her old life—hold it back from fizzling out completely. But she could do nothing but lay there on the chilly floor, eyes wide, unable to breathe, as the last bit of her power dwindled away into nothingness.

All of a sudden, she felt naked, exposed, without her element coursing in her veins, like a vulnerable child caught all alone in a snowstorm with no way of knowing which way was home—so very weak and lost.

She felt powerless, utterly and absolutely powerless. Just as she'd had when her mother had died. When her father had left to fight in the war. When Aang had been shot.

In her weeping, Katara didn't notice the men pick her up from the floor and tell her to shut up. Didn't notice them pull a wool bag over her head and shackle her wrists. Didn't notice being walked out of the cell and going up endless flights of stairs—her limbs functioned of their own accord now.

She did notice, however, the screeching of a metal door opening ahead of her. A rush of fresh air filled her senses. Brisk rays of sunlight penetrated through the tight weaving of the cloth over her head.

In contrast to the musty smell of both of her previous prison cells, this briny air tasted of salt mingling with soot from a myriad of nearby coal-fuelled ships. There was also a port with a busy marketplace buzzing hectically not too far away, with shopkeepers trying to lure folk into checking out their products and the noisy hustle and bustle of a crowd going about their day.

Katara stepped over the sill of the door, and a gentle, warm breeze swished through her ragged dress and unbound hair. She halted in her place, stopping the men with her.

The familiarity of the moment stabbed into her heart like a dagger. Oh, what she wouldn't give to go back in time and relive even the most mundane of the moments with her brother and Aang, to travel from one village to another with them again and have the time of her life…

She should be feeling the ocean all around her. Feel the water in the air. The blood of the hundreds of people shopping at the port. She should cherish the sunlight shining upon her, breathe in her first breaths of fresh air in months.

But she didn't.

She couldn't.

How could she feel anything but despair, when a part of her very being had just been crushed to dust?

The hand on her right arm tightened, bringing her back to the present, and it pushed her forward. "Keep walking."

The men walked her through what she assumed to be the deck of the ship and then down a ramp. And a couple steps later, her bare feet grazed the gravelly surface of near-burning hot cobblestones. Katara swayed as she walked, courtesy of spending an entire week on a ship. Then she was loaded onto a metal carriage-like luggage and sat her down on a bench inside. The man on her left knocked on the wall of the carriage—or it could've been the door for all she knew—and settled down beside her, squishing her between him and the other guard.

The carriage began moving with a jolt, rocking and rattling as it traversed a rocky road up a steep mountainside. As it carried on, the muffled noise of the port slowly faded away, until there were only the sounds of the wheels of the carriage trampling over pebbles, the galloping of the ostrich-horses pulling the vehicle, and Katara's stifled cries left.

-o-

Throughout the grievous, hour-long ride, neither of the men uttered a single word, and Katara quietly wept under her blindfold. She was bombarded with memories of her practicing her waterbending, both as a novice and a master, and she cursed at herself for taking her powers for granted.

Finally, the vehicle came to a gentle stop, and someone on the outside opened the door. The guards on her arms pulled her up with them, and jumped out of the carriage. Hesitantly, Katara extended one foot down, unsure how high up she was from the ground, but the men yanked her down from the vehicle and then into a standing position when she ended up almost stumbling to the ground.

They escorted her into a building. The air was hot and stifling as they walked down a long passageway, the ground beneath her feet cool and sleek, like the metal she'd become accustomed to. Except it wasn't metal. It was stone—a lot like marble, now that she thought about it. But why would a prison have marble floors?

Never minding its illogicality, Katara stayed silent as the guards led her through numerous hallways. And as they continued walking, she began to hear footsteps pass them by, and they were soon joined by audible gasps and hushed whispers.

Then she heard a door open ahead of her, a really heavy one by the sounds of it. And after the trio passed through it and it closed behind them, the smooth terrain beneath her feet became fluffy, like the surface of a carpet—though why there would be a carpet in a prison, she didn't know.

After taking several more steps forward, the men stopped and let go of her arms. They removed Katara's shackles and she brought her now-freed hands to her chest, rubbing her already bruised wrists. Then someone snatched the cloth on her head without warning, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut at the sudden glare of light all around her.

She blinked a few times and squinted to see past the blinding lights. And as her eyes readjusted to the brightness, her surroundings gradually gained detail, and the throbbing on her wrists quickly lost its significance.

This room—no, this hall—was no prison. It was lavishly decorated, with porcelain vases at the corners and a gold dragon statue sitting atop an elegant wooden pedestal in front of her, right beneath a tapestry of the Fire Nation insignia hung on the wall.

To her left stood a number of girls, clearly of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation origins, lined up in an orderly fashion with their own Water Tribe guard standing behind them at the ready. Some were a little older than her, and some younger than Toph. They were all clad in tattered rags similar to Katara's, but they lacked the collar she wore.

They all stood there for a few minutes without saying a thing, just looking around the room and at each other with fearful, wide eyes—though, in Katara's case, it was confusion more than fear that ate away at her.

Then a double door on her right opened and a handful of young women poured into the hall, lining up against the wall opposite the girls. They were dressed in refined, scarlet robes, varying in quality and amount of layers according to rank, much like the maids Katara had seen at the Earth King's palace.

Next, from that same door entered a cranky old lady, walking with an elegantly carved, wooden staff, gilded with embers and thumping on the carpet with her every other step, and all the women in the room curtsied to her while the men bowed. She was tall and pale like most Fire Nation folk, and carried herself with an air of royalty.

She stopped at the end of the line of girls, a couple of steps in front of Katara, and gestured with her head for the men to leave. Without a word, all the men bowed once more before leaving the hall in a single file from the door Katara had come from.

As the last of them marched out and closed the door behind him, the elderly woman placed both hands on the jeweled knob of her staff and lifted her chin.

"I am Matriarch Lin, but you will address me simply as 'Madam'," she introduced herself with a croaky voice. "I know you are scared and confused, so let me clarify the situation for you. You have been bestowed with the honor to serve in the Royal Harem of His Gracious Majesty, Fire Lord Ozai, and His Royal Highness, Prince Zuko. It matters not who you used to be before you came here. You are, from this moment forth, Fire Nation property, and you will act accordingly."

She continued speaking, but her speech was inaudible to Katara's ears. Her mind reeled with questions and her breathing hitched as the woman's words slowly set in.

Serve in a harem? It was bad enough that she'd been brought to the rhino-lion's den instead of a regular prison where security would surely be far looser, but a life of servitude? Of... Of slavery?! To her greatest enemies, no less?!

What had she gotten herself into...

"In a moment," came the faint voice of the Matriarch from miles away, "you will be sorted into Lord Ozai and Prince Zuko's harems. Know that your purpose here, first and foremost, is to serve them in any way they might desire. Aside from them, you will also serve Her Royal Highness, Princess Azula, me, the maids, the eunuchs, and the concubines. However, I should mention that if you are smart and play your Pai Sho tiles wisely, you can use this incredible opportunity to your advantage. Obey the rules and satisfy your masters, and you just might become the future Lady to our glorious nation. Is that all clear?"

Murmurs of understanding sounded from the girls while Katara gulped, looking down at her feet, her throat constricting and heart pounding in her chest. She might still be fairly young, but she was no naive child—she knew what a harem was. What 'serving a man in any way he desired' meant.

Her stomach lurched and her hands began trembling. She closed her eyes, inhaled shaky breaths to calm herself, but neither did her any good.

She opened her eyes to the sound of the Matriarch's staff thumping as she walked up and down the line of girls, scrutinizing each one. The lines and wrinkles on her face creased further as she turned up her nose at them, before her gaze settled on Katara.

"This is the one the Princess wrote about?" she asked the maids standing by the walls, her cold eyes piercing through the waterbender's skull.

"Yes, Madam," one of them answered, head bowed low, hands clasped respectfully above her lap.

Lin raised her staff and tucked its dirty end under Katara's chin, tilting her head from side to side, eyeing her cautiously.

"What Her Highness ever saw in you, I'll never know…" she mumbled to herself. "I wouldn't have let you near the palace if it were up to me…"

Putting her staff down, she turned her head to shout at one of the maids over her shoulder, "Ayuki. You're responsible for this pest. Make sure it gets civilized properly." She speared Katara with her eyes, disgust and disdain gleaming in them. "I've named it Mikai."

The addressed woman bent her knees in a curtsy. "Of course, Madam."

The Matriarch then whirled around, quite swiftly for her old age, toward another maid by the wall. "Tell the kitchens to hurry up. Their Highnesses will be back from their welcoming ceremony any minute. I will not have them dine without their dessert."

"At once, Madam."

With that, the old woman began her way out of the doors she'd entered from, her staff stomping on the carpet beside her feet. The younger maids curtsied one last time as she exited, leaving the younger people in the room all alone.

Without missing a beat, the maid she'd assigned to watch over Katara—Ayuki was her name apparently—straightened from her curtsy and sighed. "Alright, let's get this over with… Those of you below the age of sixteen, take a step forward."

Most of the girls, along with Katara, did as was told while the rest stayed in the back, still silently gazing around and at each other.

"You in the front row are Lord Ozai's harem," Ayuki told the room, "and you in the back are Prince Zuko's. As Madam Lin said, you will all serve your masters however they want, and if Lord Ozai wishes, he can have all of you. Each day, a different group will work while the rest are attending their harem etiquette lessons. You're all expected to perform to the highest standards. If Madam Lin is displeased, expect to be punished. Now," she clasped her hands behind her, "take off your clothes and get back into line."

If this were any other time, Katara would have objected. But the Fire Nation had already stripped her of everything she'd held dear—what difference did a piece of fabric make anymore? Besides, she'd long since let go of her pride during the days of her confinement, where the maids in the Earth King's palace and female guards on the ship had taken her to the restroom and held her hands bound behind her as she relieved herself, their watchful gazes never straying away from her.

Hooking a finger into the wide neckline of her dress, Katara gave it a little tug, and her dress, once fitting the curves of her body, cascaded down her slimmed-down frame with ease and bunched around her feet on the carpet. She didn't even attempt to cover her exposed parts. Similarly, the other girls quietly let their own clothes fall to the floor without protest, leaving them completely naked. Meanwhile, one of the maids standing closest to the double door on Katara's left, opposite the one the matriarch had used, pulled the doors open.

"Alright, ladies," Ayuki said once everyone had gotten done disrobing and stepped into line like she'd ordered, "the healers will see you in groups of five. Make any fuss or complaints, and you'll regret it."

When no one moved a muscle, she clapped her hands to chivvy them along. "Let's go, people! Let's go!"

The girls were corralled out of the hall, the maids serving as the barrier to keep them contained. Ayuki strung along at the end of the line behind Katara, murmuring "I don't get paid enough for this," under her breath.

Led by a maid at the front, the girls were walked down several narrow corridors with low ceilings, dotted along the walls on both sides a series of small, identical wooden doors, before the maid at the front finally stopped before one of them. She opened the door and ushered five girls into the room, some of the maids entering along with them, while the rest of the line was left to wait patiently until five more were called in.

The process went on quickly, and soon, the line had reached the four remaining girls, one of them Fire Nation, the other two Earth Kingdom, judging by their olive skin, and Katara herself waiting at the very end of the line. The remaining maids outside pushed them all in and closed the door after entering themselves. Five women wearing white robes were waiting in the packed room, all of them standing between the cots by the walls. They were much younger than the matriarch, but no less regal.

Each girl was assigned to a healer by the maids and Ayuki followed Katara as she went to hers, stopping at the foot of the cot and watching her carefully with folded arms as the healer checked her eyes and teeth before moving down to her nude body, searching for any scars that might dampen her natural beauty. The healer halted briefly when she got to her right hand—it probably wasn't everyday people came through here with three, partially regrown nails with vertical white lines passing through the middle—but didn't react and carried on with her examination.

Once she was done, she walked over to the small table by the cot and opened the thick book sitting on top of it. She took Katara's name—to which Ayuki responded with 'Mikai' before the waterbender could open her mouth—her age and place of birth, jotting down the answers into the book.

Finalizing her brush strokes, the healer commanded her to lie down on the cot and open her legs wide, then kneeled between her naked, bent legs. And if Katara had felt violated before while the maids and guards had watched her empty her bladder, it was nothing compared to how she felt now with the healer prying at and touching her in the most inappropriate places.

Luckily for her, though, the woman got back up almost immediately and turned to the maid still watching them. "This one's not intact."

Ayuki's face darkened. Her gaze snapped to the waterbender, sparks of fury kindling in the depths of her brown eyes.

"You little whore…" she spat out, uncrossing her arms and stepping closer. "You thought you could get away with it, didn't you?"

"I…" Katara stammered, shrinking in her place and fumbling to find the right words under the hateful gazes of both women, "I don't kno—"

Ayuki's palm collided with Katara's face before she could finish her sentence, the force of the slap whipping her head to the side and bringing tears to her eyes. "Don't you dare lie to me!"

Katara's cheek instantly went numb and twinged with the stinging of a million scorpion-bees under her skin. She felt rather than see the curious gazes of everyone else in the infirmary lock on her. Gritting her teeth, she cradled the tender area, looking at the maid while her eyes burned. Yet, despite the pain, she managed to hold back her tears—Katara might have been completely at these ashmakers' mercy now, but she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

"What're you gonna do with her?" she heard the healer ask.

Ayuki rubbed her temples irately. "Princess Azula personally ordered her to be here. I can't just throw her out." She stared at the waterbender and sighed. "Get up."

Katara bit her tongue to keep herself from talking back to the trot—she'd learned better than defying a superior. Instead, she obediently got to her feet, still holding her cheek, while Ayuki turned to the other maids and healers in the room staring at them. "Are you all done?"

After receiving affirmative responses, she ordered all the other girls to get up as well. They were walked out of the infirmary from the door opposite the one they had entered through and into more narrow hallways. They turned several corners before arriving at a room so hot, the moment its doors opened, the steam billowing from inside hit them in the face, and it was intense, almost suffocating even while they stood outside. A fresh, soapy scent filled the air, infused with a sweet-smelling spice.

The maids shooed the girls into the room. And as they stepped in, Ayuki grabbed Katara's arm and pulled her aside.

"Listen here, heathen," she hissed in her ear, "if you even think about waterbending in there or taking off that collar, I'll chop your hands off, you hear me?"

Exhaling a quiet breath to keep her calm, Katara forced a curtsy like the ones she'd seen the maids do, clasping her hands before her and politely bending her knees. Then she uttered a quiet, "Yes, ma'am."

"At least you're a fast learner," Ayuki snorted bitterly. She pushed the waterbender into the room while letting go of her arm. "Now go clean yourself."

Katara stumbled forward and nearly fell down to the slippery floor. She quickly regained her composure and looked around the room. Some of the girls from earlier were sitting quietly on marble bathing stools by the walls and washing themselves under the watchful eyes of the rest of the maids from before, while the ones in her group were searching for somewhere to sit. The underside of her feet burned on the marble floor as she cautiously walked over to an empty spot by a little Fire Nation girl, and the heat seared her bottom once she'd sat down.

As she poured near-boiling water down her hair, she couldn't help but muse how easy it would've been for her to escape right now had she been here a few months ago. She could've escaped here and bent herself a wave all the way to the Earth Kingdom without breaking a sweat.

In Ba Sing Se, she had not a drop of water at her disposal—now, she had all this water beneath her fingertips, yet she was still powerless to do anything. Her heart broke at the thought.

Sensing Ayuki's gaze on her, she immediately put an end to her thoughts and got to cleaning herself. She scrubbed herself with a block of soap, and had to press down hard to wash away all the sweat, grime, and dried blood built up over the months. Her hair, mussed into a frenzy, was even more of an ordeal to work with, and she didn't get to finish untangling it before all the girls were ordered to form a single line at the front of the room where the maids stood.

They were all handed a towel to dry themselves and were finally given some clothes. For Katara, it was a red, sleeveless linen robe reaching down to her ankles with nothing to wear underneath, far too tight for her curvy frame even after having lost weight, and a pair of ill-fitting sandals too small for her feet. And as with all the other girls, her matted hair was left unbound.

"You lot will be attending chores around the harem today, and tomorrow, your etiquette lessons will start," Ayuki told them, then assigned each girl with a duty and tasked Katara with cleaning chamber pots for the day.

The girls were escorted out of the bathing room and separated into smaller groups as they all went their own way with maids guiding them, while Ayuki took Katara to a room not too far away. When they entered, the maid lit up some candles with her firebending to provide light in the small room. Katara looked around at the filthy pots lying around, grimacing involuntary at the foul smell.

Ayuki leaned on the doorframe with her arms crossed and a cynical sneer on her face. "Well, go on, Mikai," she stressed Katara's new name, "those pots aren't gonna clean themselves."

Katara struggled to keep whatever was left in her shrunken stomach down and not snap back at the woman.

Look at her—Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, hero of the Siege of the North, waterbending master to the Avatar himself, stripped of her bending and dignity, and forced to clean the enemy's chamber pots…

It was humiliating. Utterly humiliating.

But this wouldn't last long. That she was sure of.

Physically, she might be powerless now, but there was one thing that gave her all the power she'd need—the knowledge that her friends and family would be invading here, this very palace, in just less than a month.

What Katara needed right now was not to incite the wrath of these ashmakers but to lay low, gather her strength, and look for a way out of this collar. Then, on the day of the eclipse, when everyone would be under the impression she was nothing more than a broken, fragile little girl, she would break out of here and reunite with her family.

She just had to grit her teeth and bear this for a month. She'd made it through a night of torture and months of solitary confinement. She could do this too.

So she pushed past her churning stomach, picked up a brush lying around, and got to work.

A/N

I couldn't have written this chapter without the help of the wonderful Highlord90, so I would like to thank them especially.

On an unrelated note, writing the harem scenes will be especially fun for me because I'm Turkish—and, as some of you may know, the Ottoman Empire used to have a harem. And all of this harem stuff is actually pretty historically accurate, believe it or not. For example, the harem guards being Water Tribe (thus, dark-skinned) is something I took directly from the Ottoman Imperial Harem. Harem officials would go to the slave markets, buy African slaves, then immediately castrate them. The reasoning behind this was, in the case of a concubine sleeping with a guard and getting pregnant, everyone would know if the baby is the emperor's or the guard's by its skin color.