A/N
Warning: This story contains topics of suicide, alcoholism, and child abuse, as well as references to sexual assault and pedophilia.
I should tell you beforehand that Part I of this fic is more of a character study, and most of the Zutara stuff will happen in Part II. So if you don't want to wait that long, I understand, but I'd really appreciate it if you gave it a chance anyway :) Also, sorry in advance if there are any diction/grammar mistakes. English is my second language.
Aight without further ado, I hope you enjoy the story!
PART I: IMMOLATION
The past few minutes are a blur in Katara's mind.
Aang entering the Avatar State — sounds of crackling filling the air — a raw, primal scream tearing from her throat as she watched Aang fall from the sky — desperately seeking shelter amidst a maze of unkempt houses while dragging her friend's limp body. None of them matter.
There is only now. There is only Aang.
And he's lying unconscious in her arms.
"Aang." Her voice is so quiet, so brittle she almost doesn't hear herself. She cradles his cheek with a trembling hand. "Aang. Wake up. Please."
Tears stream down her face as she watches him. His head is lolled back, eyes shut. His pale features are serene, contrasting the stench of burnt flesh wafting from him. The empty vial of Spirit Water lies on the cobblestones beside them.
Katara bites her quivering lip. There is a knife lodged in her heart, and it sinks deeper with every breath she takes. Her head is pounding and spinning at once.
Logic tells her Aang has been out for too long to wake up again. Her heart ignores it.
He's still alive. She knows it.
There's still hope. There has to be. She's healed him. He's alive.
But with every passing second that Aang remains unconscious, the knife in Katara's heart twists further. It rips her to shreds.
"Please, Tui and La," she prays quietly. "Please bring him back to me." Grasping the back of his neck with a shaky hand, she pulls him closer and envelops him in a tight embrace. "Please don't leave me. I need you."
It could be seconds, days, months, years that she waits for him to hug her back.
He doesn't.
There's no trace of life in him. His chest remains unmoving.
Katara sobs uncontrollably into the curve of his neck. Her tears soak his charred clothes.
His skin feels cool beneath her touch — a foreign sensation. Aang is always warm, even in the arctic temperatures of her home. But right now, he's cold.
Logic tells her he's gone. Her heart ignores it.
He can't die. Not under her watch.
Since the beginning, she's done everything she can to protect him. She's sworn her life to it. He's her best friend. Her family. Katara is the greatest waterbender of her generation — she won't fail him. She will not allow it.
Her breaths come in short and shallow.
She will not fail him. She will not stand by idly while another member of her family lies dying right in front of her. Not again.
"I'm sorry," she repeats again and again. She should've been stronger. More careful.
Katara should've fought harder, been a better friend and protector.
Her fingers claw at his tattered clothes as she rocks back and forth with him in her embrace. "I'm so sorry."
Eventually, she lays Aang down on the ground and pulls her knees to her chest, digging the balls of her palms in her eyes. The cool surface of the grain bin she's hiding behind presses against her back. In the dim, secluded alley she's found refuge in, the only sounds that break the heavy silence are the raw, guttural sobs ripping from the depths of her chest.
Aang is dead.
He's dead — and it's her fault. She couldn't protect him. She couldn't protect him when he needed her the most.
Fresh tears warm her cheeks.
She failed him.
Trapped in enemy territory with no one but herself, Katara hasn't felt so alone since her mother's death. She's suddenly a child again, frightened and lost in a world that's too big and so, so cruel. She's a powerless child who let down a loved one — who couldn't keep them safe for the life of her.
She knots her fingers in her hair. When she opens her eyes, the sight of Aang lying by her feet, eerily still and lifeless, strikes her like a boulder to the chest. It steals the breath from her lungs, and she squeezes her eyes shut.
Katara has to do something. She can't leave him here like this. If someone were to find him and turn him over to the Fire Nation… She doesn't even want to know what they would do with him.
Would they hang him at their palace's gates? Parade him from town to town, showing the entire world that the Avatar is indeed gone?
No. No one will touch him as long as she breathes. Katara couldn't protect him in life — she will damn sure protect him in death.
She rakes her brain for a way out of the city. Considers all options. The train and the ferry are out of the question. And there's no other way through the walls, as far as she knows. That leaves only one option.
Appa.
Katara has no idea where he is — or where Sokka and Toph are, for that matter. If they're well. But if Aang is here, so is Appa. That, she knows for sure.
Just then, she remembers something. Something Aang said in passing before he… He said that he had picked up Sokka and Toph on his way back to Ba Sing Se. They're here, in Ba Sing Se. They can get Aang and Katara out of here. But what if they've been captu—
Katara cuts off the thought. No. She refuses to breathe life into that possibility.
She's not alone. She has her family. All she has to do is call them to her.
All the resignation in Katara's bones evaporates in that instant. She wipes away her tears with the back of her hand, sniffling, and snatches Appa's whistle from Aang's pocket.
She blows it as hard as her lungs will allow her. She blows and blows until her head begins spinning again. Then she waits, staring up at the night sky. She waits for a large, furry shadow to appear among the stars. When none appear, she blows the whistle again, eyes fixed firmly on the sky.
As she waits, she can't stop her mind from running wild. What if… What if Aang is still alive? What if she was successful? The thought of it alone has her heart beat faster, has her blow the whistle harder. What if he opens his eyes again?
Katara blows the whistle until her cheeks hurt, until it feels like there's no more air left in her. She puts the whistle down and waits for Appa.
What if Aang is alive?
She wants to look at him. Wants to hold his hand, tell him she's here. That she's not going anywhere. But she can't. She can't look at him. Because what if he isn't alive?
Katara isn't sure how long she waits for Appa — she has no sense of time anymore. All she knows is that she waits for a while. And no one comes.
Has something happened to Sokka? To Toph? They should've been here by now. Can Appa even hear the whistle from so far away?
Katara's breathing quickens. What if they're not coming?
She's already wasted too much time holed up here. She has to take action. A round of Dai Li patrol could be around the corner for all she knows. She must make a new plan.
Katara can't carry Aang with her — not with the Dai Li lurking everywhere. What she needs is for them to divert their attention far away from here. That way she can find a temporary shelter, until she can get things figured out.
So… she needs a distraction. What kind of distraction or how she could possibly organize it, she doesn't—
Katara's eyes fly open as the plan dawns on her, clear as day.
She will be the distraction.
If she gets captured in a completely different part of the city, the Dai Li will focus their searches in that area — away from Aang. As for him, she has no choice but to leave him here — to trust Sokka and Toph to find him before someone else does.
The plan is quite risky, but it's the only one she can come up with. The only way she can protect him. And if it means she'll have to turn herself over to the Fire Nation, so be it. It's a sacrifice she's willing to make. If she has to die to protect him, she'll gladly do that, too. Her mother sacrificed her life for Katara. She will do the same for her friend. For the Avatar. For the future of the world.
Her mind is made — the die is cast.
Katara blows the whistle one last time, then finally allows herself to look at her friend. In a way, he looks like he's sleeping — or maybe it's her mind telling her that, to spare itself from the brutal reality.
She lays the whistle in Aang's palm and folds his fingers over it with her own. 'Tui and La,' she prays as she clutches his cold hand tightly, 'I beg you, don't let anything happen to him. Watch over him for me.'
Bending down to place a kiss on his shut fingers and another one on the arrow on his head, Katara gets to her feet. She wishes she could wait around for Appa. Wishes she could escape this hellhole with Sokka and Toph. But she can't take the risk. Not with Aang's safety on the line.
She exhales sharply and tucks her hair behind her ears, then spares a final glance at her friend. There's a great chance that her plan will not work, that someone will find him right after she leaves, or… or that this random alley will be his grave for all eternity.
Katara whips her head away, squeezing her eyes to banish the thought from her mind. She has to push aside her feelings. She doesn't have the luxury to lament her friend. Not right now. Not when every passing second is a second he's closer to capture.
Sokka and Toph will find him. She knows they will. It's their duty to rescue him — and hers is to ensure that they can.
When Katara leaps from one roof to another, no one senses a thing. When she comes across a building taller than the one she's on, no one notices a girl scaling up its side. And if she makes a sound, she's long gone by the time anyone can check on it.
She's crossed a considerable portion of the Lower Ring like this, jumping from building to building without stopping even for a moment to catch her breath. There've been a few Dai Li patrols along the way, but none of them have noticed her. Now, though, every fiber of her body is burning and her limbs are quivering from the strain she's put them under. It's only a matter of time before her legs will stop operating altogether.
Katara finally comes to a stop on top of a house located on one of the corners of an intersection. She collapses on the side of the roof out of exhaustion, managing just barely to roll onto her back before she hits the chilly tiles.
Still, though, she doesn't allow herself to rest. She turns her head to study the intersection ahead of her. It isn't very wide, but the building in front of her is too far away for her to jump onto.
Her lungs are on fire as she pushes herself up with shaking arms into a sitting position, preparing to slide down the roof to the road below. Her muscles plead with her to stop just for a minute, but she jumps anyway.
There's a group of drunk men on the street, singing a song out of tune and leaning on each other for support. They take no notice of her. She waits for them to pass before darting across the road and entering a narrower one. Light shines from some of the houses, but there's no one outside. She scans the houses to decide which one's most fit to climb. The one just ahead seems—
Katara hurls herself to the ground within an inch of her life when two hand-shaped rocks materialize from the top of the building to her right, crashing into the wall where she'd stood just a moment before. She whips her head to find a Dai Li agent sliding down the side of the house. She narrowly manages to push herself off the ground and start sprinting before he's level with her.
Water — she needs water. She's still too close to Aang. She can't get caught yet.
Not yet.
Please not yet.
Being as exhausted as she is, she can only run so fast. Regardless, she rounds the corner and bursts onto the main street with heavy footsteps following close behind.
Suddenly, a huge wall of earth emerges out of the ground in front of her and blocks the entire width of the street. Katara gasps and tries to stop, but trips over her own feet instead and topples to the ground, scraping her palms and knees in the process. She tries to get up and run away, but the stones beneath her wrap around her hands and legs, binding her to the pavement.
Behind her, the Dai Li agent catches up to her. He clasps his hands behind his back and lifts his chin high as he looms over her.
"Where is the Avatar?" he demands, voice as cold as his eyes.
Katara glares up at him, powerless to do much else. Then she gathers every last bit of energy left in her body and spits on his shoes.
"Screw. You."
Next thing she knows, the man's fist collides with her temple and her world goes dark.
Katara looks around desperately, unsure of where she is. An endless maze of twisting streets loop around her, lined with buildings that cast shadows all around. She doesn't know what or who she's running away from. She only knows that she is and she has to.
"How could you do this?" Aang's stone-cold voice rises from behind her.
She whips around to find him standing in the middle of the street. His chalk-white skin contrasts the shadows around him. The purple around his lips and the veins crisscrossing underneath his skin are the only splashes of color on his gaunt face. In the place of his eyes, two empty pits glare into her soul.
It's not her friend that stands before her. It's death itself.
When he speaks again, his lips remain still. "How could you let them kill me?"
Katara tries to step toward him, tries to tell him how sorry she is — but a set of hands latches onto her legs and paralyzes her to her spot. Looking down, she sees Aang lying beneath her. His hands start crawling up her shins like spiders. She tries to scream, tries to break free from his grip, but not a single muscle in her body obeys her commands.
Aang's face slowly turns purple. It swells. Rots. The elaborate weaving of muscles underneath his skin surface as he decomposes before her eyes. Blood starts dripping from his nose and out of the sides of his gaping mouth. An endless flow of blood is gushing out of his back. It's transforming the stone pavement beneath her feet into a crimson bog — pulling at her feet, sucking her under.
Cruel laughter echoes from everywhere and nowhere at once. Katara looks up to see a man emerge from the shadows right in front of her. His head is bowed, face concealed by a hood.
When he raises his head, a pair of golden eyes come to light — one of them contorted by a scar around it, the other gleaming with malice as he leers at her. His teeth are as sharp as knives. He enjoys the show as she sinks deeper and deeper into the blood.
Katara wants to scream, wriggle out of Aang's bruising grasp, run away, do something, anything — but she can only stand there and stare at the man while she gets dragged down and down until the blood rises over her mouth and fills her lungs.
The screams swelling in her throat are smothered by the blood — but they follow her into the waking world.
Katara springs upright while her screams echo off the walls. Breathing frantically, she clutches her throat and pushes herself back, back, back until her shoulders hit something hard. Her eyes search hysterically for a man that isn't there.
She's trembling. Shivering. Her heart's pounding a mile a minute. Cold sweat coats every patch of her skin. Her mouth is drier than a desert, throat parched. She's crying.
She can't tell if the darkness around her is a continuation of her nightmare or if she's gone blind. She doesn't know where she is.
Katara swallows thickly. She sits leaning against the wall, trying to bring her breathing back under control.
It takes her a good minute to gather her wits.
The first thing her muddled mind registers are the stripes of emerald green light spilling inside through the barred window of a metal door. Next are the pain and the soreness.
Her memories are disjointed, missing in places, but the sharp stinging in her hands and knees are an effective reminder of when she fell and scraped them on cobblestones. And it's only worsened by the fact that she's been digging her palm into the scratchy mat under her.
Katara immediately retracts her hands to herself and takes a deep breath. It helps calm her swimming head a tiny bit. She looks around, trying to make sense of it all.
What day is it? How long has she been unconscious? What even is this place? Why is every single muscle in her body sore?
She's in a cold, metal box of a room. Darkness swirls in all corners. Through the barred window, she spots metal doors identical to hers. Yet the place is quiet. So deafeningly quiet, she could hear her own heartbeat if she listened close enough.
There's something quite unnerving in the air. It's heavy. Burdened. And it brings a sudden, chilling moment of clarity with it.
This is a prison.
Katara's heart almost crawls to a stop, the realization settling over her like a cold, suffocating blanket.
This is a prison, and she is its captive.
She's a prisoner of the Fire Nation. She gave up everything to save Aang.
Aang is dead.
Katara brings her stinging legs to her chest and wraps her arms around them. The pain and the soreness in her body no longer bother her as much.
Her whole life has turned upside down in the span of, what, a night? Two nights? So much has changed.
How did this all happen? How did she let them happen?
She had sworn to herself — she'd sworn that she would protect Aang at all costs. He's the future, the only hope this world has left. He's her best friend.
Katara settles her forehead on the scraped skin of her knees with a heavy sigh. Is this what her life will be from now on, trapped between four walls? Will she ever see the sky again? The sun, the moon?
What do they do to prisoners of war here in the Earth Kingdom? Does the Earth Kingdom even exist anymore? Did the Fire Nation win the war?
Did Sokka and Toph come to get Aang? Where's Sokka? How is he? Did he hear what happened to her, or has he figured it out on his own by now? Is he eating well? Is he starving himself again, like he did when Mom died and Dad left? How is Dad? Does he know what happened to her? Will Gran-Gran's heart bear the weight of the news, already fractured from the sorrows of a lifetime of war?
Tears gather in Katara's eyes and drip onto her dress bunched up between her hips and bent legs.
How did things get here?
She wants to get out. She wants her brother. Her father. Gran-Gran. Mom.
She wants to hug them one more time. Hear their voices. Smell their scent. See their smiles. She didn't get to say goodbye.
She wants to tell them that she loves them.
She needs them. She needs their warmth, their reassurance that everything will be alright.
She needs Aang. She needs him to tell her that he isn't dead. That he woke up after her and left the city with Sokka and Toph.
But she won't see any of them ever again.
She's trapped here.
Invisible fingers of grief wrap around her heart — squeeze it slowly until it shatters to dust.
Katara will never get to endure one of Sokka's horrible jokes again, or swat his prying fingers off her meals. She'll never get to bicker with Toph. The four of them won't have another crazy adventure together.
She should've been more careful, paid more attention. Should've noticed the flashes of lightning circling in the air, heard the crackling while it charged up. Instead, she was too awed by the might of the Avatar State and happy that her friend finally mastered it.
Stupid! Stupid! STUPID!
She may as well have murdered Aang herself.
She took his future from him. He was going to end the war — finally bring peace to the world, rebuild it from its ashes. Maybe he was going to have a family, despite the customs of his people. He was going to continue the legacy of the Air Nomads. And she's taken all of that from him.
Katara remembers when they went penguin sledding the day she found him in the iceberg. How he had laughed the whole ride, how he had made her laugh — truly laugh for the first time since her mother had died.
She remembers all their crazy adventures together. The pranks they would pull on Sokka. The silly bending tricks he'd do if she was feeling down. She remembers his pain, his despair when he lost Appa in the desert. Remembers when he discovered Monk Gyatso's remains in the Southern Air Temple.
That was really the first time he became her family. And now he's gone. How much more of her family will die because she wasn't strong enough? How many more will suffer because the Avatar is gone? How many more families will be ripped apart because she failed him?
Katara deserves all of this — this life of solitude and misery, doomed to spend the rest of her days wondering the "what if"s. What if she was more careful, more competent? Would Aang have lived? What if she wasn't so damn brainless as to trust that prince? Would Aang have lived then?
What if she managed to heal him? Is he truly, positively dead?
Tears stream down Katara's face like a river unleashed while she sits huddled in her empty prison cell — alone and forgotten. Violent sobs rock her whole body.
With trembling hands, she grasps her mother's necklace tightly. It's her lifeline — the only remaining piece of her family. Her old life. Her freedom. It's what gave her the strength to power through her mother's death, through her father's absence, through the days when she was too overwhelmed from having to keep her family and tribe together.
It's everything she has left.
At that moment, a petrifying realization has the hair all over her body stand on end. Katara is a prisoner — the guards can, and most likely will, take her belongings at some point. They can take her necklace.
They can take the last remnant of her mother from her.
Sniffing, she hurriedly unties the knot at the back of her head and holds the pendant at eye level. Without it, there'd be nothing on the planet to prove that her mother ever existed at all — nothing but memories. Without it, the fading warmth of her mother's embrace would be snuffed out forever.
Katara tucks the necklace in the space between her chest and her bindings, and presses her palms protectively over the strips of fabric. She will not lose it, too, to this senseless war. She's lost enough as it is, possibly more than she can bear. She will not let the Fire Nation kill her mother again.
A/N
This was the very first story I wrote nearly 4 years ago. It's been my baby ever since, even when I was on a 2,5 years-long hiatus. I had the worst writer's block and I didn't know how to get out of it (also real life got in the way but that's not important, we're here to ignore all that babyyy). Anyway for a long while I considered what I should do and, in the end, rewriting the entire thing and starting over with a new fic seemed like the most logical solution, so... here we are! The first 8 chapters are finished, I just need to proofread them. A couple of the chapters after them are halfway written already, but I can't make promises on when they'll be posted.
*incoming shameless plug* Also you can follow me on Tumblr siambre!
