AN: At last! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing and just being a great community. I get the feeling this sequel's gotta be pretty disappointing - it's been a lot of angst and static drama so far, which is not what I wanted to write. It really is just a slow part in the story, though. Things are going to change!
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Zuko stood on the observation deck, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. All of the necessary orders had been made, all of the preparations seen to. Soon, he would need to return to his sitting room. The full moon would rise as the sun set, and Katara wasn't likely to waste any time.
Still, there were long minutes remaining in the day, and Zuko did not want to spend them bickering pointlessly, or growing distracted by the heated promise in Katara's looks, or by the chilling possibilities of what lay ahead. Now was not a time to be confused or conflicted. Now was a time for certainty, for decisive action.
Zuko grimaced and stared hatefully into the setting sun. At his sides, his hands quavered until he balled them into fists.
In a puff of smoke, he spun to look at the sky beyond the control room, where the moon would soon crest in the dusky east. In his mind, he could already see it, its edge a white blade slicing up the sky. He could almost feel it on his throat.
His boots clanked rapidly down the stairs and corridors and he burst into his sitting room to find his captives still idly playing stones. The room was ringed with a dozen soldiers, and yet when Sokka took in his arrival, he couldn't seem to contain his smile.
"What," he said with a shrug. "No Azula?"
"She's busy," Zuko said, though in fact he really didn't know where she was or what she was doing. He had assumed he would be dealing with this situation on his own, and nothing she had said had led him to believe otherwise. Only now, when it was too late to hunt her down and ask, did it occur to him to worry.
But Zuko didn't waste much thought on it. Azula wasn't here, and that would have to be good enough for the time being. No doubt she would complicate things later. But for now, all the complication Zuko could handle was sitting at the table, placing a stone with poorly feigned focus before turning her dry stare on him.
"Aw," Katara pouted, "and I was hoping we could have another girl talk."
Zuko held her look for a tense moment, then darted a glance past her to the window. Beyond, the sky was deepening from green to blackish blue. The lamplight in the room cast a rich gold across Katara's skin and gleamed off the beads in her short hair. They sparked as blue as her unblinking eyes.
"What?" She shook her head minutely. "No more threats? What's the matter, Zuko? Afraid to say whatever awful thing is on your mind?"
Zuko resisted the urge to glance at the guards surrounding the room. Instead, he scowled more furiously than ever. "The only thing on my mind is restoring my honor."
Katara's face tightened. Her frown turned ugly. "Your honor. That's right. It's all you've ever thought of, isn't it?"
She let the question hang between them, and Zuko found answers fighting their way up his throat. No. Yes. No. He swallowed them back fiercely, disguising his uncertainty behind a hard expression.
Katara waited a long moment, then slowly climbed to her feet. Lieutenant Roshu, already gripping her control chain, applied pressure just before she could straighten fully.
Zuko watched the collar around her neck drag her head into a partial bow and a horrible sickness roiled in his stomach. He willed himself to stand still and hold his fists low at his sides. Tight as he held himself in check, though, Azula's voice drifted through his mind.
What will you do? Just stand there and watch it happen?
Zuko knew what he had to do. He knew he had to stand back, allow Roshu to do his job, and watch Katara struggle. He knew he had to do it - but the sound of that chain tightening pulled at him like a hook through his belly. It took every ounce of will in him to keep from stepping forward.
Katara, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned. She didn't so much as glance at the chain or the lieutenant. She went on glaring at Zuko, and though her head was bowed, he felt her stare like a point of heat between his eyes.
"It's funny," Sokka said with no trace of humor, "I used to believe in your honor. We both did."
Katara shot him a sideways glare as if his stating what they all already knew was some small betrayal. Sokka shrugged pointedly and went on.
"We both told our Dad about how honorable and well-intentioned you were. He sat there and listened and respected our opinions…" Sokka shook his head and laughed unhappily, "…and the whole time, he saw right through you."
Zuko remembered Hakoda's penetrating stare, the way he had always seemed to be waiting for some other foot to fall. He remembered the rage and betrayal he had felt inside that trunk. "He didn't know everything," he spat.
"He knew exactly how naive we were being, and he knew exactly what was going to happen, from the Avatar to Katara, he knew-"
"Sokka!" Katara, red-cheeked and wide-eyed, scowled down at him. "Not a good time!"
"If he doesn't hear it now, he never will."
"I don't care! I don't want to hear about how right Dad was all along!"
In her anger, she took a step closer to Roshu, widening her stance for a dangerous heartbeat before the lieutenant reigned her in again. Still sitting, Sokka tensed but said nothing. Katara turned her glare on the man holding her control chain, and Zuko could see the tension in her as she braced for motion.
"Stop," he said, and whether he was talking to the soldier or the waterbender, even he wasn't sure. For a second, both paused, watching him as they watched each other. Then, Katara shut her eyes and drew a deep breath as if smelling something sweet and nearly forgotten.
"Time's up," she said through her teeth.
Behind her, white light gleamed on the steel lattice crisscrossing the window. For an instant, everything moved very slowly. Lieutenant Roshu heaved on the control line, hauling Katara off her feet. On the other side of the room, guards closed in on Sokka, who scooped up a handful of game stones and started hurling them at exposed faces. Katara was falling. Zuko's heart shot into his throat and he lurched forward. There was a sound in his ears, distant turtle-ducks. Katara was falling, and he wasn't going to be able to catch her.
Then she hit the floor and writhed like an eel. Zuko didn't even see how she did it, it happened so fast. Out of nowhere, a jet of water was lashing down her body, severing the bolts in all six locks before slithering viper-fast up the control chain and blasting Lieutenant Roshu in the face. He sputtered and tumbled backward into the guards standing behind him and they all went down in a heap.
Katara spun to her feet in a whirl of water and a shower of falling chains. One of her loops of hair had come free and trailed after her as she shifted her weight, as she gathered the scant stream of water around her. Zuko couldn't look away from the chafed marks around her wrists and throat where the chains had never come off until now.
He should have been looking at her eyes.
Katara's next move was a lightning fast whip of water that struck Zuko's forehead with a shuddering crack.
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Many decks of steel below, past the anxious shuffling boots of the hundreds of soldiers aboard and the clangs of activity in various parts of the hold and the scurrying vermin in the galley walls, Toph withdrew her hand from the steel floor and let out a deep breath.
"Nice moves, Splatto," she said, because she was pretty sure they were. It was hard to tell through so much activity and from such a long distance away, but Toph felt like Katara was a pretty safe bet these days.
"I guess that's my song," she said, climbing to her feet. She had already kicked off the pinchy shoes her maid had brought for her and now wriggled her bare toes against the steel floor. "And now," she announced quietly as she rolled her shoulders in preparation, "four-year victor of the Earth-Rumble Tournament and undefeated champion of the bare-knuckle pit, here for the first time thanks to that no-good double-crossing firebender-" She held up her hands around her mouth and booed for good measure. "Here she is, one night only, the Bliiiind Bandiiiiit!"
Toph threw up her arms and posed for her mimicked applause for a completely reasonable amount of time, then settled into a casual bending stance.
"Her opponent," she said grimly, whipping out one hand to point. "Twelve feet tall and two point three tons of solid steel, The Wall."
"Ooooh," said the imaginary crowd. "He's so big and tough!" "What's the Blind Bandit gonna do?"
"Alright The Wall," Toph said, shifting her feet into position, "I'll bet you think you're pretty bad, huh?"
The Wall didn't even blink.
"Well I'm here to take you down!"
Toph launched one hand like a knife, but her fingers hardly made a dent and came back sore. She cursed through her teeth and flexed her hand before dropping it to her side.
Toph wasn't the sort of person to despair. She threw herself at problems head-on and bulled her way through until they were solved. Or at least, when she was bending, that's what she did. With her parents, it was different. Even her own indomitable stubbornness hadn't been enough to get her way with them - because they were just as stubbornly set on their own way.
Now, after being trapped in this cell for all this time and playing nice for all the guards and servants while also struggling with her guilt over almost killing Katara and definitely being the reason they lost the fight on the beach, Toph felt pretty much right at home. Not helpless - but definitely stuck.
She laid one hand flat on the steel wall and hung her head. "I can feel everything that's going on on this ship. I can feel Katara whipping firebender butt. I can feel Sokka going to town with that sword. I can feel the Avatar, not twenty feet away from me right now, sleeping or something…"
She pressed her other hand to the wall, slid her blunt fingers along its cool surface. "I can feel every buzzing piece of you in there, just like I could feel you in that stupid sand. And I'm not going away until you do what I want."
Toph set her feet, hunched her shoulders, and plunged her fingers into the steel wall. It bent and screamed and finally yielded, just a bit, just enough for her to reach a hand through into the Avatar's cell. Toph grinned, triumphant.
"And that's why I'm the champ."
She paused for a second, feeling for the guards. There were more of them than usual, tonight. Zuko must have acted on his hunch and doubled the guard just to be sure. Still, they were mostly gathered around the station at the end of the hall. No one came running to investigate the noise - probably because they couldn't quite hear it.
Toph reached into the hole and widened it, peeled the steel down until the opening was big enough to fit through. Then she tottered into the Avatar's cell.
"Rise and shine, Twinkle Toes! We've got places to be and bad guys to pound!"
She nearly ground a fist into her palm, but then hesitated. Aang was just sitting there in the middle of the room with that little monkey thing clinging to his shoulder. Now that Toph was really paying attention, he wasn't actually breathing the way he did when he slept. He was just sitting there in that meditative posture.
"Aang?" Bouncing off the high steel walls, her voice didn't sound like an announcer's, or like a roaring crowd. It sounded small and afraid.
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Katara slashed her tea at the closest soldier and, when he blocked with a puff of flame, she redirected into his face hard enough to send him flying. He flipped back in a clatter of armor, but she was no longer watching. She had already moved on to the next man, another firebender, anonymous behind his white face plate.
A few weeks ago, she would have thought of Tyno and his comrades the Freedom Fighters had cut down. She would have thought of the human faces behind the masks, and perhaps she would not have attacked as viciously as she did.
She would have even checked to be sure that Zuko was still alive after the blow she had dealt him to the head. But now, she mashed worry and sympathy down next to thoughts of how right Hakoda had been, and locked it all away.
Now, she dodged a blast of fire and used the momentum to punch her next opponent's knee with a fist of ice. The joint bent in a way it should not have. The firebender howled and crumpled to the floor. Katara had already spun to take on the next enemy.
Those calm masks didn't fool her anymore. She saw right through them. The men underneath had pale skins and tawny eyes, filled with hatred and cruelty like Roshu's. Firebender eyes. The eyes of the man who had murdered her mother. These weren't people, she reminded herself. They were monsters. And one by one, Katara took them down.
She did not see it, but on the other side of the room, Sokka had run out of stones and was dodging spear thrusts. He threw one of the sitting cushions, but the spear he had aimed for punched through the silk and burst out the other side in a puff of feathers. Sokka looked at that cushion and held up the stones board like a shield.
"Katara! Little help here?"
Seamlessly, Katara redirected her water to slice between Sokka and the spearmen closing in on him. Three spear heads hit the floor and the soldiers peered in shock at the staves they now wielded. They swiftly drew swords and advanced on Sokka again, but he had already dodged around them and snatched the sword off an unconscious guard.
Katara, only vaguely aware that her brother had not quite escaped the danger, was facing down the next enemy, the next firebender. Behind this private, she could see Roshu regaining his feet along with those he had bowled over in her initial strike. He was still gripping the chain in one hand as if he did not yet understand what had happened.
I know what you are, he'd said in the brig, his face tight with hatred and disdain. His eyes burning with it. From the very start, he had made it clear that she was no more than a dangerous animal. An animal he believed he could control.
"You want to see a wolf?" Katara growled now. "I'll show you a wolf!"
She lunged at her opponent, baring her teeth and completely unaware that, behind his mask, the private's face registered terror.
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Aang stood on the side of a red mountain watching soft pink wisps of cloud peel away and vanish into a misty landscape. "I don't understand. If I didn't open my seventh chakra, how can I be in contact with my past lives? Can I even enter the Avatar State?"
"You cannot - not yet." Roku stood on the peak above him, hands folded together in his sleeves. "The Avatar State is immensely powerful, but even without it, the wisdom of each Avatar who came before you is available to you. When you look inside yourself, you will find us here, waiting."
A second Avatar appeared behind Roku, then a third behind her, and a fourth and so on until the line of Avatars spiraled down the whole height of the mountain and vanished into the pink clouds below.
"Woah," Aang said, watching the countless white eyes flare up at him. "That's a lot of wisdom."
Abruptly, all of the Avatars began fading away until only Roku remained. "You can always reach us, but today I reached out to you to deliver a very important warning."
The mountain around them went dark and, when Aang turned around, he saw a trail of fire scorching its way across the sky. He could hear the flames roar, even from here, but just the sight of it chilled him.
He tried to shake off the feeling and looked back to Roku. "A comet? That's what you want to warn me about?"
The flames' red light danced across the old man's staring face. His eyes, still white and glowing, seemed dimmer against that blaze. "This comet is unlike others - with it comes a surge in the power of firebenders. For the hours during which the comet passes through the sky, it multiplies their strength a hundred fold."
Aang looked back at the blaze in the sky. It had grown brighter, closer. He could feel the heat carrying on the wind, pressing his face like the air spilling out of a furnace.
"It is called Sozin's Comet," Roku said, "because the last time it lit our sky, Fire Lord Sozin harnessed the power of the comet to launch a crushing attack against the other nations."
Flames filled up the sky, red and raging. Where once pink clouds had drifted, black smoke roiled around the mountain. Aang's eyes fell ever wider. He tried to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go. Roku went on, unrelenting.
"He annihilated the Air Nomads in a single day."
"No," Aang wheezed. He couldn't breathe. He had known his people had been defeated, but not like that. Not scorched out of existence in a matter of hours. He whirled on Roku, and the heat fluttered the back of his robes, burned the backs of his ears. "Why are you telling me this?"
Roku's gaze was pitiless, as hard as the mountain under their feet. "A hundred years have passed, and when summer draws to an end, Sozin's Comet will light our sky once more. Bolstered by its power, the current Fire Lord will be able to finish what his ancestor began and crush all those who remain to resist him."
A new sound rose up through the roar of flames, and even as Aang turned to look, his face was already twisting up in horror. Fire had flooded the landscape and chewed its way up the mountain. Below, Aang could see people beating ineffectually at the burning rocks. Their shapes were shadowy and indistinct, but one wore her hair short, with beaded loops.
"Katara!" he shouted, reaching out - but the heat scorched his fingertips. As he watched, the distant figures broke apart and vanished into the blaze. Roku was still speaking behind him, but Aang could barely hear over his own shouts.
"Aang, you must stop Fire Lord Ozai before summer's end, or the world will burn."
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Zuko opened his eyes and snapped up into a sitting position. He nearly went down again, his vision crawling with widening black spots. Instead he blinked hard and struggled to hear something other than the ringing in his head.
The sitting room was a whirlwind of chaos around him. Bodies lay strewn about the floor, many groaning and struggling to rise, but some lying still. As he watched, Katara trounced one of her guards with that same trickle of water she had whipped Zuko with, then whirled that meager weapon to bear against the two firebenders who rushed in when their comrade fell. In the same moment, Sokka leapt up on the low tea table to evade a sword thrust that would have taken him in the leg. He landed with one boot on the guard's blade, pinning it to the table, and slashed with his own weapon. The guard surrendered his sword and fell back, but another dodged in to take his place, and Sokka was quickly on the defensive again.
Ignoring the pounding in his head, Zuko staggered to his feet. He couldn't just let this happen. He had to fight. He took one furious step forward - and dropped hard to his knees.
When his vision cleared again, it was to the sight of a firebender flying across the room to slam into one of Sokka's guards. Now entirely focused, Katara was making short work of the last man before her.
No, not the last. Zuko could see the way her furious eyes flicked past her target to the lieutenant bracing himself against the wall. As Zuko watched, Roshu forced his white knuckled fist to open. The chain rattled as it hit the floor. The officer's back straightened to the sound as if he was being hoisted up, a bitter offering left to a savage spirit.
It was the look of a man expecting to die.
Zuko shoved himself from his knees to an off-balance sprint. Katara dodged a fiery blast and sent her water into a geyser under the tea table, launching the sturdy wooden piece into the air at an angle. It hit the firebender squarely and sandwiched him against the wall with enormous force. When the table dropped away, the soldier slid down the wall with a groan.
The table fell down between Katara and Roshu. She didn't even blink, didn't even hesitate. She brought her water around her body and froze it into a spray of icy daggers aimed for the lieutenant's heart. They whistled through the air toward their target, then stopped.
Before she could change her mind, Zuko leapt into the daggers' path and swept his leg up in a fiery roundhouse kick. The ice melted and Katara had to dodge clear of a wave of fire. She recovered glowering, her shoulders hunched and her hair come loose from its wolftail.
"Give it up," Zuko rasped. His head was hammering in time with his pulse, but he managed to stand steady. "You're out of water, and too high up to reach the ocean. And even if you weren't, I won't let you ki-"
Something collided with the side of his head and Zuko reeled back down to one knee. Through another spray of dark spots, he caught a glimpse of Sokka shouting and gesturing toward the doorway. A red shape ran past. Zuko's eyes slid down to the object that had hit him. A guard's helmet, still rocking on the floor. Lieutenant Roshu, he realized, was bowing on his hands and knees before him, speaking without looking up from the floor.
"-deepest shame, my Prince. Please, enact a just punishment for my failure-"
"Raise an alarm," Zuko choked out, clambering again to his feet and making for the door. He had to step over a groaning private to reach it, but he did not slow. "Raise the alarm and then get the healer up here."
Roshu said something else, but Zuko was no longer listening. The corridor stretched out before him and his head jarred with every step he ran but he did not slow. He had to fight. He couldn't just let this happen.
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"Come on, Twinkle Toes! Wake up!" Toph rapped the top of the monk's head where a prickly layer of hair was coming in and tried to keep the rising panic out of her voice. The little monkey thing screeched at her and then hid down the back of Aang's tunic. Toph heaved a sigh and stalked a few steps away.
"Look, I totally get that you're probably up to your armpits in Spirit World mumbo-jumbo but you've gotta prioritize real world problems first, get it? I can't be responsible for hauling your unconscious body around on top of ground-breakingly metalbending our way out of here." She threw up her arms. "And what if I move you and then you can't find your way back to your body from whatever weird plane of existence you decided to visit at the absolute worst time ever? I'm not gonna be the one who broke not one but two members of our group before we even really started hanging out. So just - wake up!"
Toph waited, and listened for a long moment. Her shoulders slumped. "Please?"
Through the floor, she could feel the cacophony of action going on above. She couldn't pick out Katara anymore. Soldiers clanked up the stairs into the tower and across the deck and through the miles of corridors, so many that searching for Katara was like trying to find a single ant marching through an entire colony.
Toph knew the moment a group of soldiers got knocked down the stairs, though. She could hear each piece of armor clatter and weigh down the men inside while two lithe figures leapt over the tangle and carried on down the stairwell. Soon, they would reach the main level. She had to be on the deck to meet them.
"Alright, no more playing around." Toph stomped back to Aang and grabbed hold of his tunic, preparing to hoist his slight weight onto her shoulder. "We've gotta go, Twinkle-"
Aang's eyes blinked open at the last second, flicked to where her fingers were twisted up in his tunic, and settled a little wildly on her face, but Toph didn't see that. She only felt his heart rate suddenly bang through the floor, and his voice crack on the words, "I can't- I can't do it!"
And then Toph felt the floor zip out from under her as a gust of wind hurled her across the room and against the far wall.
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Katara jumped from the top stair to one felled man's breastplate like he was a stepping stone, and then hit the landing at a run. She could hear Sokka right behind her - and the accompanying groans of each soldier he stepped on - and knew there was no space to pause or hesitate.
It had been luck that she happened to run bodily into the leader just as he was stepping for the top stair, and luck that the rest of his squad was gathered so close behind him that his fall took them all out, and luck that Sokka was so close behind her that he could catch the back of her sash to keep her from falling with them. Katara just hoped their luck would hold a little bit longer. She wasn't helpless without water, by any means, but it would be reassuring to get outside where she could reach the ocean.
Feet thundered up the stairs below, though, and Katara didn't need to count the boots to know there were too many this time. On another landing, she hesitated.
"This has gotta be it," Sokka shouted behind her. "The deck should be on this level!"
Katara didn't question him, she just darted through the nearest door and helped him block the locking wheel with an ornate candlestick he snatched off a nearby side table. They shared a brief grin, but that faded when they turned to look around the room.
It was a sitting room, not unlike the one Zuko had kept them in, but much larger, with more cushions and tables around the walls. It had the look of a common room, perhaps where lesser nobles would gather on a more sociable voyage. Presently, though, the room had only two occupants.
Two wrinkled old women sat at exact opposite ends of the low tea table in the center of the room, watching them with matching startled expressions - which morphed at the same time into calculation.
"A royal brother and sister," one said in a reedy voice.
"-so much the same," said the other, and Katara would have thought it was the same old woman speaking if she had not seen the other's mouth move.
"-and yet totally opposite in every regard."
"Such a waste," they said together.
Katara and Sokka stared in bewildered silence until someone began pounding at the door behind them.
"Excuse us, Elders," Katara said with her sweetest smile, then turned a tense look on Sokka.
"Alright, so it's not the right level," Sokka grumbled, holding his sword behind his leg as if to conceal it. "At least we aren't fighting a hundred guards on the stairs. I don't know what the deal is with these two, but-" He darted a glance at them. "-I think we can take them."
Katara rolled her eyes and huffed, "We're not fighting old ladies. Even… weirdly creepy old ladies."
The old ladies in question were watching them with pale, unblinking eyes.
Ignoring the prickles on the back of her neck, Katara stepped farther into the room, smiling again. "We're sorry to have interrupted you, but we'll be gone in just a minute."
She snatched Sokka's hand and dragged him around the edge of the room to the two wide windows. Outside, not so far below, the deck of the ship sprawled out. Moonlight gleamed along the railings and edges of storage crates, but the control tower itself cast a massive black shadow across much of the deck. In the room, lit with lamps and candles, Katara could not pick out any of the details within the shadow.
"I don't see Toph, yet. I hope she got out okay…"
"Can we forget about Toph for the moment?" Sokka griped beside her, watching the old ladies and, beyond them, the shuddering door. "It sounds like those guys are about to take that door off its hinges. We need an escape route."
His eyes went to the doors that lined two sides of the sitting room, but Katara didn't look away from the window. "We already have one."
She dropped into a bending stance and hardly noticed Sokka groan as she focused on the sea below, reaching out with her body. The wave came up in a massive surge and spewed onto the deck, rocking the ship hard to port with its weight. Katara didn't hear the old ladies cluck as their table began to inch across the room, too focused on banking the water and bringing it up in a towering tentacle to punch through the glass of the second window. Then she grabbed Sokka and pulled him through the open hole into the salty night air.
"Sorry, Elders!" he shouted, though the last word was lost in his growing scream as they half-skidded, half-plummeted toward the steel deck below.
Katara took them down in a rough curve that left them staggering to a stop in the deep shadow - staggering, because she was finally able to see what the darkness there had hidden. Soldiers, dozens of them, waiting in ranks that swiftly closed around Sokka and her. And amongst them, sitting calmly on a storage crate as she watched, was Azula.
"Why, it seems the royal prisoners have escaped," she said with a flat lack of surprise. "Take them."
The guards moved in, but Katara was already in motion, dragging water around her in a gushing whirlwind that sent men sprawling back into their comrades. She raised up a field of tentacles, tossing enemies left and right and swallowing up their fire as swiftly as it came. Sokka darted in wherever there was an opening, parrying away weapons and lashing out with his stolen sword.
When the nearest soldiers were cleared, Katara dragged more water off the deck where it had puddled and widened her reach, launching men overboard with sudden waves and tripping them up with darting streams. Moonlight glinted along the edge of a wide double door set into the deck. The loading bay. With a blast of ice, she broke the locking mechanism and blew the doors wide open, revealing the lamplit hold below. In the middle, breathing deeply and secured with chains, was Appa.
"Uh, Katara…"
"Got them!" She leaned past Sokka to send the five men behind him overboard with a single wave. Sokka seemed not to notice, pointing toward the control tower.
"Katara, look out!"
It wasn't the warning that made her turn and look, it was Zuko's shout as he barreled into her defenses and cut through two of her tentacles with a fiery kick. With hardly a thought for Sokka or the other soldiers, Katara froze the water at her back into a massive curved wall and zeroed in on him.
Before she could attack, though, Zuko had already launched his own assault, kicking and punching blasts at her as he advanced across the deck. Katara blocked and deflected with short waves, then quickly turned her defense to offense, arcing the water through the air and bringing it down like a hammer.
Zuko dodged out of the way, kicking flame as he went, but he couldn't avoid the backsplash. It flooded under him, then turned to ice, locking up around his ankles. He blasted free, but not before Katara was able to launch her true attack, a wave she slung around her body and sent with enormous speed for Zuko. His feet slid across the icy rubble beneath him, but he still managed to punch a blast into the center of her wave, breaking it apart.
Only, Katara had anticipated that. She sent the remaining streams as a dozen icy spears to pin her enemy to the wall of the tower. Metal screamed as it was pierced and Katara froze, still holding her final bending position.
Zuko hung there, breathing hard and staring at her. As if uncertain, he finally looked down at the damage. Spears of ice as thick as his wrists protruded under his arms and on either side of his torso. Even between his legs, three spears had lanced through the fine silk of his clothing and held him in place like a mounted insect. One protruded by his neck as well, where a thin line of blood was welling up against the stark white of his skin.
Zuko stared at Katara, and she stared back.
"Either finish it," he said, "or go now."
For a confused instant, she shook her head. Then she scowled. "I'll leave when I have my friends."
His brow furrowed and steam began to rise from the ice where it touched him, but before he could free himself, Katara was in motion again. With a shout, she gathered another heavy wave and struck him with brutal force until he sagged there, unconscious.
"You hesitated."
Katara whirled to face Azula, but when she saw what the princess was doing, the wall of ice behind her shuddered.
"A real princess never hesitates." Azula held Sokka on his knees with one arm twisted tight behind him and his head held stiffly up. Under his jaw, she tapped her knife-sharp fingernails. Even from a distance in the moonlight, Katara could see that dots of blood had already formed there.
"Let him go," she said between clenched teeth.
"Surrender," Azula countered breezily. "Go back to your cage in the brig and I will release your brother in the next cell. You have my word."
Her smile made Katara's hands curl into fists at her sides, but she drew a breath and forced them to relax. The brig. Toph had to be coming any second. They would get Appa out together and she would wash them to land on an ice floe. All she had to do was stall a little longer. All she had to do was get Sokka out of Azula's reach.
"Why should I trust you?" Katara kept her movements subtle, tensing in preparation to raise a fast attack. "You might decide to hurt him anyway, just to teach me a lesson."
"True. But you can trust that I will kill him if you strike at me now."
Katara stopped, and the knowing look in those sharp eyes did as much to stop her as the threat had.
"Leave me," Sokka said, then yelped as Azula twisted his arm a degree more. "Just go, Katara! You can rescue us later if you're free!"
"Can she?" Azula asked with passing interest. "Because I doubt one waterbender alone could manage to break into each of the prisons I've picked out for you and your friends. And that on top of navigating a war zone on land and crossing an ocean with no ship… No, Katto of the Water Tribe is going to be busy for quite some time before she can even attempt a rescue." She dragged her index fingernail lightly across Sokka's skin. "Which means that you and I will have ample time together to work on your manners."
"Stop," Katara bit out. Azula's estimation cut far too close to her own fears. She couldn't leave this ship without Sokka or the others. But time was running out, and Toph had yet to appear. There was only one option before her, only one chance.
Between one breath and the next, Katara shot a lance of ice off the deck at Azula's feet. It should have passed through the weak place in her armor beneath the arm and come out through her collarbone. It would not have killed her, just taken her out of the fight.
Instead, Azula darted back a step at the last possible second and the ice missed her completely.
But she dragged Sokka with her. It happened so quickly that Katara didn't believe at first that what she was seeing was real. The spear took him through the chest. The bloody tip burst out of the silk of his shirt and Sokka stared at it in surprise before he choked out a scream.
"It seems I broke my word after all," Azula said, releasing her hold and stepping back easily. Sokka quivered in place, not quite on his feet, impaled. "But only because you killed your brother before I could."
"No!"
Katara lunged forward in a surge of water. Sokka slid down the ice spear. His fingers closed around the shaft but the bloody grip couldn't stop his descent. Katara skidded to her knees beside him and only then thought to release the ice. The spear, liquid again, fell apart on them both. Sokka sagged and groaned.
"Don't you listen to her, Katara," he grunted, his face lined in agony. "She did this, not you. You remember that if I die-"
"Be quiet, Sokka!"
"If these are my last words, you're gonna be so sorry you were mean to me."
"Shut up and let me focus!" Her hands already glowing with healing water, she pressed one to his chest and the other to his side where the spear had entered. She felt for the torn pathway, the pierced muscle and cracked bone, and desperately, with forced gentleness, coaxed it all back together.
As she worked, she listened to his breathing the way Gran-gran had taught her to do with chest wounds. Sokka's breaths came shallow and broken with pained noises, but there was no gurgle, no bubbling in the wound, no coughing. His every cry and complaint was a reassurance to her - because it meant the spear had missed his lung.
When it was done, Katara watched the relief spread over Sokka's face as his pain diminished. His eyes half-opened and he grinned wearily. "See? Nothing to worry about."
He reached up and dabbed a tear off her cheek. Katara, unaware that she'd been crying and not inclined to care, bent down to hug him.
Or she would have, had two sets of hands not come down on her, hauling her to her feet and away. Sokka tried to sit up and could only wince and lay back as Azula loomed over him. Katara wrenched against the soldiers gripping her but, when she spotted the princess, she stopped struggling.
"I suppose we could do this all night," Azula said, examining her nails. "I did make you a promise, after all."
"No! Don't touch him!" Katara sent one of her guards sprawling with a haphazard stream, but another man took his place at once.
"You aren't doing much to convince me." Azula crouched over Sokka and daintily tugged his shirt aside to reveal the closed wound. Sokka flinched away from her, then winced. "Not the best work I've seen. But then, you weren't trained in healing, were you, Katto of the Water Tribe?" Her eyes flashed as she smirked up at Katara, "I know. We could stage an experiment. How many times do you think you can heal him before you grow too weary and he dies in your arms?"
"Don't! Please! I-" Katara clenched her fists and scowled at the deck before straightening under the restraining hands on her shoulders and arms. "I give up. Take me to the brig if that's what you want, but don't hurt him."
Azula's smile was sharper than her nails. "We're past that stage. I require something more from you, now."
She snapped her fingers and, from the control tower, two slim medics hustled, straining under the weight of the cloth-and-beam stretcher they held between them. They crouched to settle it on the deck and Katara made out Zuko's still form, terribly bruised but breathing. Azula's eyes did not so much as flick toward him, fixed on Katara. A spear of ice would have held her in place more gently.
"You attempted to escape and gravely injured a member of the royal family in the process. Now you plead for your brother's life. It seems only fair that you offer something of equal value in its place."
Katara unthinkingly pulled against the guards holding her, but their hands did not yield. She could move no farther away from Zuko's unconscious body.
"In exchange for your brother's life, you will swear a solemn oath on your honor, your nation, your spirits - whatever it is that matters to you and your savage people. You'll swear it before these witnesses, and know that if you ever break your word, everyone in the Fire Nation will know that the Water Tribe has no honor."
"Wait-" Katara pulled harder against her guards, but it wasn't Zuko she was trying to escape, now. It was the trap she felt closing around her. Azula didn't even pause.
"Swear to devote yourself to Prince Zuko's service in whatever way he sees fit, for the rest of your life."
"No way," Sokka grunted, propping himself up on his elbow. "Don't do it, Katara. I'd rather die than let you do this."
"Either way," Azula shrugged. In a flash she yanked Sokka upright by a grip on his hair and pressed her nails against his throat.
"No! I'll do it! Stop!"
"Katara, don't!"
"On your knees," Azula said patiently.
Katara sank to her knees. The guards still stood with their hands weighing on her shoulders, but she hardly noticed. The moon had risen high while the fight commenced and now it shone down, casting everything in a soft, dreamy light. Everything, except for Azula's nails where they rested on Sokka's straining throat. Everything but the dark stains covering his torn shirt.
Distantly, Katara marveled that this was really happening, that Toph wasn't arriving now, at the last possible second, to smirkingly save the day. The words came out stiffly, through her strangely constricted throat.
"Let Sokka live and I swear, on my family and my people, to serve Zuko for all the days of my life."
Azula dropped Sokka back to the deck and brushed her hands together before strolling toward the control tower. She didn't even spare Katara a backward glance. "Take the prisoners to the brig and see my brother to the healer. Prince Zuko has just reduced the Water Tribe's most famous warrior to a slave. Father will be delighted."
Katara only heard it as if from a great distance. She hardly felt the guards haul her to her feet. Sokka held her stare with wide, disbelieving eyes until she was half-dragged away and, as they took her through the dark doorway into the hot lantern light of the ship, the same words rattled over and over through her head.
Where's Toph? What happened to Toph?
