fire is destruction
“Here, this should help your headache,” Katara murmurs, pressing a wet, half-strained cloth against Sokka’s forehead. She moves away from him quickly and he squeezes loudly.
She cringes when Sokka starts coughing, and begins rummaging through their things, “Oh, Sokka. I have to give you some medicine.” Katara squints at a container’s smudged label. It was Sokka’s handwriting—so even if it wasn’t smudged with water, she would still struggle to make out what it says. Sokka never was good with writing, but he had really liked to read.
She gives up trying to read the label, and opens it. She sniffs it experimentally. “Oh—it’s toothpaste.” Katara opens some more containers, and eventually, she realizes that she’s looked through everything they have. They don’t have any medicine, not even a medicinal tea packet. Figures. They could pack salt, tea packets, seal jerky, threads and needles, amongst other things, but they couldn’t pack medicine.
Hama was a great teacher in both healing and combative waterbending—and it was especially impressive since she escaped from a Fire Nation prison—but Hama had said it’s better for illnesses like fevers or colds to just run their courses. She said it was best to soothe a sick person’s pain with tea and medicine, because using waterbending to try and rush someone’s body to heal from a cold or a fever could have dire consequences on the body. Hama even gave her a few scrolls on different healing techniques; she told Katara that her combative waterbending was ‘most satisfactory’. (Hama was better at combative waterbending and advised Katara to learn as much healing as she could at the North. She said she hadn’t bothered to learn healing as much when she was younger. Still, she did know a lot about healing and helped Katara when she could).
Despite Hama’s praise, Katara still thought her combative waterbending wasn’t that great. She wasn’t a master; she couldn’t teach Aang as well as a master could. Aang wants her to teach him but she refuses. They’re going to the North Pole to get Aang a waterbending master (Hama was blunt and said she didn’t want to teach Aang).
Besides, shortly after Aang arrived at the South Pole, the Fire Nation showed up—so it wasn’t like they could’ve stayed if they wanted to.
(Aang told her later on that the monks said he had to train at the North Pole, anyways. He said he wished he remembered it earlier—and he also said something about the monks informing him that the North Pole needed the Avatar for something important. The monks hadn’t told him what the ‘something important’ was—which he confessed to feeling guilty about. Aang felt as if, maybe the monks did tell him, and maybe he just forgot what it was. She gave him a hug and assured him that it’ll all be alright, and it made him feel better. Katara didn’t want to make him feel worse by pointing out that the North Pole probably didn’t need the Avatar anymore—because he was in an iceberg for a hundred years—so she busied herself with mending Sokka’s socks.)
(They can’t get to the North Pole fast enough.)
“Aang, I’m gonna go get some medicine for Sokka,” Katara calls out to the young monk, grabbing her water skin. Aang looks over at her with a frown—their talk in the cave still seems to be on his mind. He hasn’t spoken much since they found somewhere to camp out.
Aang turns around to look at her. He walks up to her, gray eyes still showing hints of sadness, of regret from running away all those years ago. Before Katara could comfort him properly besides telling him a gentle “Well, maybe it was meant to be, Aang”—the fisherman’s wife came and got them.
“But Katara,” Aang says quietly. “I could—I could go. I could use my airbending to go really fast and I would be back so fast. I could—“
“No,” Katara shakes her head, looking at him. The fire crackles, embers flying about. The lively fire illuminates the pair of friends in orange, yellow. “You can’t go, Aang. I mean it.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but Katara beats him to it. “Aang, no. You’re wanted by the Fire Nation. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if they caught you. You know what they wanted—no, what they tried to do to the waterbenders from the South Pole. They tried to take their bending.”
Hama told her how they used the waterbenders for experiments , and that she escaped using bloodbending before they could do it to her. All the water benders they tried to experiment on died. Hama was desperate and angry, and used the full moon’s power for vengeance. She never went into full detail of what she did with bloodbending, but Katara figured it out.
Katara refused to use bloodbending for anything other than healing; Hama never mentioned it again after Katara learned how to do it.
“I know,” Aang mumbles, fiddling with his fingers. “I just...I don’t want you to get hurt, Katara. Me and Sokka—we need you, you know.” His voice breaks with vulnerability and Katara feels her heart ache.
She pulls Aang into a tight hug, a warm feeling in her chest. “Aang. I’ll be okay. I’ll be back before you know it,” she whispers reassuringly. “I know what herbs and plants to get. Sokka would get sick at home—cause he can be a clumsy oaf, and he would fall in the water, and I would be the one to help him get better. Sometimes, Gran Gran would help, too. But, I’ll be back soon, so don’t worry about me too much.”
In the South, everything would be dried, preserved, frozen or just have something done to it so it would last longer. Gran Gran would teach her which dried herbs and plants were best for sickness, relaxation, etc. Katara figures fresh herbs and plants would be better, and that they wouldn’t look much different from their dried or persevered counterparts.
She feels Aang nod against her. “Okay, Katara,” he says and pulls away from her. Gray eyes stare at her. “But if you don’t come back—“
“I’ll be back,” Katara interrupts, crossing her arms. She doesn’t want to think about any other possibility, about not coming back.
“If you don’t come back...what do I do?” Aang asks in a small voice.
She attaches the water skin to herself and grabs an empty container for Sokka’s medicine. “Okay, Aang, let’s say I don’t come back—hypothetically. You leave with Sokka on Appa. No exceptions.”
If she’s gone for too long, it means the Fire Nation got her. And that meant that it wouldn’t be long before they found Aang and Sokka.
“But—“
“Aang. I will be back,” Katara grabs the map, just in case she gets lost. “But if it gets to be night time and I don’t come back, you leave with Sokka on Appa. No matter what.”
Aang looks at her, and she can tell he wants to argue with her about this, but he just nods his head silently, and sits down by the fire, by the end of Sokka’s bedroll. Katara tells Sokka goodbye from a distance, and gives Aang another hug. She gives Appa and Momo their own goodbyes, too.
Then Katara leaves, and sends a silent prayer to the Spirits when her back is turned to her brother, Aang, and the animal companions.
She’ll be fine. She’ll find all the things she needs and she’ll be back. Soon.
She has to.
—
Katara has been walking for a long time. She hasn’t found any of the things she needs—she couldn’t even find anything for a medicinal tea. Katara groans, stopping to sit against a tree, feet aching. She unrolls her map and frowns as she looks over it.
She has no idea where she is.
According to the map, there should be a river close by. Katara inhales deeply and tries to sense her element. And...nothing. She must be too far away from it; she can still feel the water in the air, though. It’s all around her. Katara puts the map down, and raises a hand.
Water forms into her hand, in a ball. She freezes it then turns it back to water, for no reason other than the fact she can. Katra looks at the map, playing with the water in her left hand. “A herbalist,” she mumbles. Katara frowns. She thought she could find all the herbs and such by herself, but that wasn’t working. She thought the herbs and plants were common and that she could find them with ease, but apparently not.
She gets up, putting the water into her water skin. She gathers a bit more water, enough to fill it up. Katara starts walking to the herbalist, giving the sky a glance. She still has time to get back to them.
And she will go back to them. She can feel it.
—
“Frozen frogs,” Katara huffs, grabbing them and putting them into the container she bought with her. “She better not be lying to me.” The herbalist was gray haired and was talking and walking about with a black mortar and pestle. Katar had run in, explaining that she needed a cure for her brother and the herbalist started making something in the mortar and pestle.
Katara had reached for it when the herbalist put in the supposed last ingredient—but she just slapped her hand away! Katara, at that point, was losing patience. The herbalist just calmly explained that it was Minyuki’s special meal and that what Katara needed for her brother was frozen frogs.
Katara asked if she was crazy. The herbalist just smiled and said yes. Before Katara left, though, the herbalist gave her a scroll...on burns. Salves and pastes and all kinds of things for burns and burn scars. “The Fire Nation is close by,” is all the herbalist said. Katara didn’t feel like explaining she was a healer, so she just took the scroll and left.
And she’s now in an ankle deep river, grabbing frozen frogs. She loves water, of course she does—she’s a waterbender. But that doesn’t mean she wants to be in green, murky water—Katara yelps when she feels something swim past her ankle, grazing her skin with scales. She screws the container shut with a huff.
Now, to get back to Sokka and Aang with these stupid frozen frogs—
An arrow pins her right arm to the huge log behind her before she can blink. She shoves the container with frozen frogs in her robe, between her breasts. Katara quickly makes a shield of ice, and the arrows fly through it, shattering it within seconds. Katara sends large icicles through the forest, thinking that her attackers are in the higher ground, which isn’t good for her at all.
Katara makes a thicker ice shield, just to buy her a bit of time. She tries to remove the arrow with desperation, but it doesn’t work. It’s inches deep into the log, and—the ice shield gets shattered again, her legs get pinned while she’s distracted.
She can’t see who’s doing it—she can’t—
Her left arm gets pinned despite her best efforts.
Katara could cry.
Really.
She could.
—
“Hello, Prince Zuko,” Uncle Iroh greets him with a warm smile. “Will you join us for music night?” He asks quite cheerfully, lingering at the doorway. Zuko’s disguise is under his pillow, waiting to be used. Uncle Iroh has a cup of tea in his hands, steam coming up from it. “We could use a—“
“Uncle, I’m going to bed. Maybe next time I’ll join you and the crew for music night, okay?” Zuko gets under the covers and he doesn’t have to look at Uncle Iroh to know the old man is smiling at him.
“Okay, Prince Zuko. Have a good night.” With that, Uncle Iroh closes the door. Zuko waits for a few minutes then gets out of bed and stretches. Zuko always makes sure Uncle Iroh is far away from his room before he makes his escape. He gets into his black clothes and grabs his—no. He grabs Ursa’s Blue Spirit mask and puts it on, almost as if it’s part of his daily routine.
He inhales deeply and closes his eyes. If he focuses enough, thinks hard enough, he can almost see the turtle-ducks in the pond, the garden with its flowers blooming—he can almost see Ursa.
He tells himself he wants to capture the Avatar to please his father. And that’s what he believes, what he thinks, but sometimes…
Sometimes, he thinks he just wants Ursa back. He needs to know, needs to ask her: “Why did you leave? Did father tell the truth when he said you didn’t love us anymore?
He wants to ask her a million questions, and there’s this—this feeling he has, right in the pit of his stomach, that tells him: ‘You’ll never know what happened, Zuko. You will never find out.’
Thoughts of home, of Ursa, of Ozai, of Azula invade his mind. He thinks of Lu Ten, for a second. Could he have saved his older cousin, by any chance? What would Zuko say to Lu Ten, if he somehow could turn back time?
He shakes his head. He knows what he’d say, what he’d do.
He’d say: “Don’t fight in the war, Lu Ten. Your dad will never be the same after you die. Nothing will be the same after you die.”
And Lu Ten, being Lu Ten, would just smile down at him. He’d tell Zuko not to worry. He’d say many things to Zuko, to assure him and comfort him, and he would leave to fight in the war anyways.
Lu Ten never thought he wouldn’t make it back home. Lu Ten—and Zuko himself—had thought he’d come back home, safe and sound. And that didn’t happen.
And everything changed.
He sneaks under the Pohuai Stronghold, the prison that’s holding the Avatar’s friend—the stupid waterbender. He didn’t know her name, if he was gonna be honest. Zuko couldn’t really introduce himself to her when every time they were face to face, they were fighting.
She’s the enemy.
That’s all she is.
‘So why are you saving her? Turn back,’ the voice in his mind says to him, almost in annoyance, ‘You don’t need her to capture the Avatar, anyways. It’s better that she’s locked up. It’ll be easier for you if you just leave her in the prison to rot.’
But the other voice—the one that sounds eerily like Ursa—tells him, ‘Zuko, no. You know what Zhao will do to her to get information. He’ll do anything to get what he wants. You have to save her. Zuko, you know better—and you’re already here, aren’t you? If you really thought it would’ve been better for her to stay in prison, you wouldn’t have come at all. You even got her a canteen of water, Zuko. You’re not as bad as you try to be.’
“You have a good heart,” Zuko whispers to himself. Ursa said that to him, once, forever ago.
And maybe—maybe it’s true.
Maybe.
He takes a moment to himself and focuses, hard—he hears his mother’s voice, murky sewer water just a few feet away from him, the moonlight shining its pale light through the sewer drainer’s bars, onto him.
The moonlight casts a shadow of him and Zuko looks at it.
He swallows and listens to his mother’s voice replaying in his head the way it always does. “Zuko, my love,” Ursa had said to him that night, “you’re such a caring person. You have a good heart, a good soul. Never forget that, and—“
—Never forget who you are.
He inhales deeply, and jumps up, grabbing tightly onto the sewer drainage bars. With his heart drumming hard against his ribcage, Zuko gets out of the sewer when he makes sure no one is around.
—
Katara tugs hard at the chains binding her, knowing it’s pointless to try, but she does it anyway. The chains are so uncomfortable, she can’t move her body at all. She can move her head and neck, though. Katara briefly ponders over freezing the water in the air over her fingers, over her hands. She tosses that thought away with a frown.
She can’t even move her wrists, so what good would that do?
Katara glances around her cell. It seems like she’s only one in here, which she doesn’t mind. However, Katara thinks it’s strange no one’s come in yet. A lot of time has passed since she was chained up.
In fact, she doesn’t have any idea what time it is, doesn’t know how long she’s been chained up, but she feels the time passing by, slowly, slowly. It must be night time by now, if she had to guess. She could feel the moon, the power it gives her. She knows it’s not a full moon, though. She knows what a full moon’s power feels like.
Katara just hopes Aang kept true to his word and left.
The door opens.
“Hello, waterbender,” a man walks into the room alone, standing tall. Instantly, Katara can tell he wasn’t a good person, if his cruel smile is anything to go by. He has sideburns, and his hair is both gray and brown. “My name is Admiral Zhao, and you can tell me where the Avatar is right now, and you don’t have to get hurt.”
The man, Zhao, apparently, stands in front of her. He summons a fire in the palm of his right hand, looking right at her.
“I would really hate to burn you, waterbender. Just cooperate with me, and tell me what I need to know, and this will be over very quickly.” The fire in his hand grows.
Katara glances at the fire in his hand, glares at him fiercely and grits out, “I will never tell you anything, no matter what you do to me. You will never have the Avatar.” She keeps her chin high with defiance.
A small, small cowardly part of her tells her to give in—to tell him what he wants to know about Aang, because she doesn’t want to get burned.
She doesn’t want a scar like...like Zuko’s.
She remembers seeing it for the first time and thinking about how painful it must have been.
Katara silences the cowardly part of her with ease. She refuses to be afraid.
The last time she was afraid was a few years ago—when her mother was killed, and the smell of her charred flesh burned itself into her nose, and the memory of seeing her dead body was permanently embedded into her brain.
She hates the smell of burned flesh. She doesn’t want to know how it feels to have her skin burned like that.
But the world needs Aang, and she can’t let him get captured just because she’s a coward.
She can’t be a coward.
Not now.
Not ever.
Zhao’s eyebrows rise almost in amusement. “You should tell me, waterbender. Unless you want to be burned.” But he smiles—smiles as if burning someone brought him joy. It probably did. Fire benders probably burn people as a hobby.
“So, this is your last chance before I burn you, waterbender. Tell me what I need to know. Where’s the Avatar?” He questions, stepping closer, the fire in his hand flickering.
“You will never know. You will never have the Avatar,” Katara tells him, strangely calm, as if her body and mind weren’t screaming at her to do something. To hurt him.
But she can’t move any of her limbs, and they took her waterskin, and she just feels tired. She can feel his blood, just barely. But when she’d bloodbend at home, it would drain her so much, even on a full moon.
Katara blinks slowly as Zhao and his fire get way too close.
She just wants her mom.
That’s all.
She didn’t ask for any of this.
“You know, it's a shame I’ll have to burn you, waterbender,” Zhao starts with burning her hair slowly, his sinister smile making her want to vomit. “You could‘ve given me the Avatar’s location. You could’ve prevented this from happening. But you didn’t.”
His fire gets dangerously close to her skin and she trembles, praying to every Spirit she knows, as tears go down her cheeks.
Zhao looks into her eyes and whispers, “You chose to get burned, and now, you get to live with it, waterbender.” He makes his tone sound sad and disappointed, but he smiles at her, and raises his fire engulfed hand.
Katara swallows hard; she accepts what happens before it happens.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t scream in pain when it happens.
—
Zuko hears the scream and it stops him right in his tracks, even as a guard runs up to him. That scream sounds like his, when he got burned four years ago. He knocks out the guard running toward him and quickly handles the other guards that go up to him, as well. Zuko runs toward the door where he’s sure the scream came from and busts it open with a powerful kick.
Zhao turns around instantly and firebends at him. But Zuko dodges his fireblasts and fireballs with complete ease, and then, Zuko gets close enough to Zhao, and—
And Zhao’s blood stains the dual dao sword in his left hand. Zuko swallows, pulling his sword out of Zhao’s left side and Zhao falls to the floor, a pool of blood forming.
Zuko looks at the waterbender and she’s unconscious, her head tilting to her right. The scent of her burned flesh almost makes him recoil, but he stands his ground, his heart beating fast as he examines her burn. The burn Zhao gave her is on her left side; it starts at the bottom of her neck and spans over a good portion of her shoulder.
It looks like a handprint. Her burn uncannily reminds Zuko of his in the way it’s too sharp, too detailed to have been done from a distance. It was done hand to shoulder directly and it stops at the shoulder bone, where the shoulder connects with the the arm.
(Zuko fears that if he had been a second or so more late, Zhao would have burned the waterbender’s whole arm, whole body.)
Zuko slices her free of the chains within seconds, sheathing his swords on his hip rather than his back, and puts her on his back, carefully placing her arms around his neck. There’s a container on the ground; he doesn’t know what the container has inside of it, so he kicks it out of his way.
Ideally, the girl would be conscious, not burned and working with him to escape.
Zuko suddenly remembers her necklace—the betrothal one he found on that ship.
He’ll give it to her when she wakes up—no pirates required.