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~The Avatar Fanfic~ All is Conquered-Part3 (NEW: Ch16 & 17) |
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(Continued from The Avatar Fanfic-Part2 Chapters 8-11)
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(Chapter 12)
Toph vaulted over the side of the outer wall of Ba-Sing-Sei and scuttled down along it’s sheer face. The stones that made up the towering fortress wall obediently poked themselves out as Toph’s hands and feet reached for them, climbing down over the rock wall until she reached the ground. As soon as her feet were solidly on the ground, the stones sank gratingly back into the wall in one scattered wave.
She paused a moment to stand still and feel for any pursuing vibrations, and by chance or fate, distant screams from far inside the city reached her sensitive ears.
It was a voice she knew.
Toph’s milky eyes widened as she whispered the girl’s name.
Inside the palace of Ba-Sing-Sei, Katara felt a chill. But it hardly registered in the depths of her deranged mind. She was entirely focused on the door of the destroyed room; the one that had served as her gilded prison for over three months of capture.
She stared piercingly at the open doorway, as if trying to convince herself that her eyes were not lying to her, that it was really open and unblocked and waiting for her to slip through to freedom.
The euphoric lightened feeling on one’s shoulders that only comes with freedom… it was all she could think of. It was like a thirst. That single-minded thought engulfed her, narrowing her field of vision to only the open door, sitting there waiting for her. Nothing moved while Katara eyed the empty space. Satisfied that it was safe enough, she made a tense move toward the uncertain doorway, only for it’s promise of safety to be encroached by the hunched form of her jailer.
Even as Katara leapt back in a panic at the sight of her and stumbled to the wreckage-covered floor, Azula was leaning on the doorframe for support, stiff to the bones from her collision with the marble pillar. She put enormous effort into standing herself up straight as she looked with desperation into the room at her precious waterbender, dark hair tangled and thin green robe tattered and sagging around her shoulders, huddled in the midst of the devastation. Although nothing showed on her face, Azula felt like collapsing to her knees with relief, just knowing that her treasure had not vanished.
Azula’s astonished calculating gaze flicked all over the room, taking in the destruction everywhere; the ripped rugs and cushions and tapestries, the snapped bedposts scattered in splinters all over, the clawed walls and the gaping hole that was torn into the mattress, and finally coming to rest on her brother’s body. Azula’s sharp, quiet gasp made Katara flinch where she sat, still clutching the iron key to her chest. Azula glanced up from the six holes in Zuko’s blood-soaked chest, fixing her disheveled trinket with a bewildered questioning look. What in the name of the Four Nations had happened in this room?
Katara was pinned to the spot under Azula’s stare, her hard muscles paralyzed by fear. She watched the firebender’s sharp brown eyes sweep again over the ruined contents of the room, and her nerves tingled for a chance to escape as soon as Azula’s eyes had left her for a moment. The thoughts in her mind were a shrieking mass of impulses now. She was more animal than human, and more beast than beauty, but the change in Katara only seemed to fascinate Azula.
She saw the lurid fear and the carnal way Katara’s body was poised, hunched over the iron key, crushing it to her breast as if it meant the difference between life and death. The panic in Katara’s eyes was gradually giving way to edgy caution as she met her mistress’s rapt, scrutinizing gaze. There was something wrong with her. Azula took a step nearer to her treasure, watching the beautiful eyes she had spent hours staring into, now glinting back at her like steady, cerulean chips of ice. Azula had never seen such cold aggression in her precious one’s eyes before; they had always been filled with melancholy innocence, always a tiny spark of hope still lingering beneath. Where had all of that gone so suddenly?
Azula took another step, and stopped in alarm as the waterbender bared her teeth with a little growl rumbling in her throat. The brown shape of her face crinkled up at her nose and her blue eyes narrowed, glittering and threatening from under the fringe of her eyelashes. What had happened to her treasure to make her like this?
She wasn’t the same anymore. What could have changed her into such a savage thing? She stared into the acute awareness of these threatening blue eyes. Gods, what had happened to her?
Where was her almond-colored angel in chains?
Azula could feel the panic of losing her precious treasure rising up inside her chest again from where she had shoved and suppressed it away. It was like a cold, squeezing hand had hold of her, and Azula was suddenly very aware of the iron bracelet she no longer wore on her left arm. It lay in two halves on the black marble floor of the throneroom, now useless, leaving her with no way to control the maddened waterbender. With no way to bind her treasure to her side.
She didn’t know what to do. She just felt so lost.
The cold hand of fear was constricting something in Azula’s chest, tightening with panic as she put her hands up at her sides, trying to appear harmless. If she could just get to her, she could take her by the arm and then… and then….
Azula inched closer, easing into a half-crouch like one approaches a stray dog, “Sshh…” she murmured anxiously, as her precious waterbender tensed up and snarled at her warningly.
She edged away from Azula, hugging the key to her chest, the growl risen to a menacing snarl. She grew more rigid with every inch closer that Azula came, becoming more and more aggressive as Azula’s presence threatened her. The only rational understanding she possessed ran through Katara’s mind, screaming; ‘This person will hurt you again if she comes any closer... Get away!’ The fresh memory of the burning cuffs on her arms and ankles was constant.
The insane waterbender was backed against the wall in a crouch, her spine pressing into the furrowed clawmarks her nails had made in the painted plaster. Dark tangled waves of her hair had fallen in front of her glinting blue eyes, which narrowed with malice as she glared at the one she most feared, daring her to come nearer. The key clenched in her fist was no longer what mattered; the figure in red had come here to touch her and burn her again. She would not let this girl with the piercing brown eyes hurt her again. No.
Azula could actually feel herself trembling as she held her hands out in front of her disarmingly. It could have been from nerves or anxiety, or it could be the genuinely murderous glare that her precious waterbender had trained on her. The raw feral quality was apparent all over the darker girl’s body. In the way she hunched with her back pressed to the wall, in the angle of her taut limbs coiled under her like springs, and the way she acknowledged nothing but the thing that threatened her, ignoring the tattered green robe that had been ripped short at her knees and was sliding lower on her shoulders so that the sleeves gathered over her hands. It was her treasure, stooped there snarling at her with murder in her eyes; and at the same time, it wasn’t. A flash of real fear touched Azula in the pit of her stomach as she began to realize just how helpless she was without the iron bracelet on her wrist.
She couldn’t lose her precious treasure. She had to keep her, bring her back under her control where she would stay next to her forever. She was hers to keep; on the soft cushion beside her throne, two steps behind her as she paced through the long empty halls, in front of her at meals, safely in her room or beside her at night. All this Azula could not imagine without having her captured waterbender with her. It was unthinkable that she could slip away. She would bring her back again; she had to.
There was only a little more than an arm’s length between the mistress and the prisoner now, and one was dead-set against the escape that the other thirsted for. They stared at each other’s faces framed with dark hair. One tan, crinkled up with malice, set with crystal-blue shards; one pale, red lips in a determined line, tainted with fear, eyes an unfathomable piercing sable. While one quivered, the other was steady, both minds were on the edge, and only one was certain.
Azula leaned forward and reached one hand toward the waterbender. The darker girl seemed to freeze for a heartbeat as instinct and adrenaline dominated her body.
In that time, Azula’s hand closed around the other girl’s wrists, holding them bound together with the key’s chain dangling from between her clenched fists. The waterbender panicked and sank her teeth into Azula’s arm, only to have her wince and take hold of her imprisoned wrists with her other hand. They sat like that for a moment; Azula holding tight to the waterbender’s wrists with both hands, while she ground her teeth into the firebender’s arm in a last attempt to get free. Then Azula let out a breath she had forgotten she was holding in, and along with it, all the fear that had come from her treasure’s near-escape.
She used one hand to take hold of the iron collar around the girl’s neck and put an end to her painful bite by giving the restraint a sharp twist. The collar moved abruptly across the fresh, raw burns on the waterbender’s almond skin, and she loosed her teeth with a cry of acute agony.
The smile returned to Azula’s red lips as she gripped the cuffs on either of her trinket’s upper arms with intent. Her voice was confident as she looked into the unstable blue irises, “Drop it… Drop the key.” She ordered. There was silence.
Iron clinked as it hit the black marble floor.
Azula’s red smile widened a fraction as she scooped up the key with one hand still on the waterbender’s right cuff. She tucked it and its broken chain into her uniform, and turned her little smile on the ensnared, volatile waterbender.
“Good girl…” she praised darkly, leaning forward to kiss her precious one with secret relief inside. The waterbender’s frantic breaths brushed Azula’s crimson lips, and a bloodcurdling scream ripped through the palace of Ba-Sing-Sei.
A single Dai Lee on guard somewhere in the corridors came running to the room where every guard knew the Fire Nation Princess kept her pet waterbender, and froze outside the doorway. Revulsion and horror flooded through him, erasing all thoughts of aid from his brain, and leaving behind only self-preservation. The grown man loosed a strangled cry of terror, and fled for his life without ever looking over his shoulder.
Inside the destroyed room, Azula lay amidst the feathers and splinters with both arms pinned beside her, an expression of supreme shock etched into her features as she was held a few inches above the floor by the throat…
…clamped between the deranged waterbender’s jaws.
The excruciating pain of her throat began to render Azula partially numb, and she could feel the waterbender’s teeth crunching her windpipe like a straw kinked between two fingers. Azula’s red mouth gulped at the air unconsciously, as her lungs remained empty, and she could feel the warmth of the waterbender’s wild breathing on the side of her neck. Her lungs were burning; a little sound escaped from Azula’s throat, and she felt the girl’s teeth press together even more tightly on her windpipe and the hot breaths on her neck quickened. Azula couldn’t help but wonder if she should be kicking and writhing and trying to scream, and even as her body began to get achy and numb and her vision hazed, she remained aware of her precious waterbender’s mouth touching her throat. The whole room was dimming and her torso began to feel cold, but how warm her caramel lips felt against her skin. The corners of her dark red lips twitched a bit in the semblance of a twisted smile; her last coherent thought was so amusing that she would’ve laughed had she been anywhere else.
Her stolen treasure was kissing her to death....
The waterbender felt the pulse against her teeth slow, and then stop. She gave the throat between her jaws a final shake, and when nothing happened, let the weight drop from her mouth. She paused only to pull the end of the broken chain from where it had fallen out of the red uniform pocket, and awkwardly knotted the fine chain around her neck above the iron collar; a token proving her freedom.
Her bare feet slapped the black marble floors as she fled the horrible room, and burst out the palace doors.
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(Chapter 13)
The city of Ba-Sing-Sei was abuzz with talk by noon. The word among the overthrown citizens was that sometime the night before, the Dai Lee had found the Fire Nation Princess dead in one of the chambers of the palace. Some stories supposed it had been earthbender rebels that assassinated her. Others swore that the Avatar himself had done it. Though the rumors went wild with imagination, not one of them was close to the truth of how Princess Azula had been killed.
A death by suffocation in the teeth of a captured waterbender.
The humiliation the Royal Title of the Fire Nation Monarchy would have suffered if the common citizens were to know. It must have been nothing but the Gods’ grace that sent their Princess to the Otherworld without dishonor.
In only a day, a Regent had come to take control of the fortress of Ba-Sing-Sei, and the Princess’s body was sent to the Capital with a discreet, but showy procession. She was hidden away inside a low tent carried on the shoulders of Fire Nation soldiers, so that no one could see how her pale skin had been tinted blue or the hideous twin black half-moon bruises that covered either side of her crushed throat. Neither the waterbender who was responsible for the death, nor the young earthbender, who was the last of the Rebel leaders, was present to witness the lonely funeral train leave the city. It passed with an almost emotionless air; the Princess had no people that would mourn her here in this conquered city. The sight of such empty grandeur was shrouded with feelings of shameless pity, emanating from the eyes of the few citizens who bothered to stop and watch.
What little was left of the Rebellion dared to hope again, and cultivate new plans. The powerful young earthbender that had escaped the Dai Lee’s most successful attempt to crush the resistance was currently in hiding outside the fortress walls, waiting for the resentful tumult of Princess Azula’s death to settle. Suffice to say, she had found the news to be more than a bit surprising.
Toph had gleaned what she could from her few sources inside the city, but no one seemed to know how the Princess had died. And just the same as in the past three months, nothing was known about the whereabouts of the Avatar, or a waterbender by the name of Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. Continuing to hope was enough to make one feel weary to the bone, and it was starting to make even one as young as Toph feel aged.
It had seemed like such a long time ago that they were all huddled together; Momo perched on top of Aappa’s hulking form as they bellowed and screeched mournfully, Aang doing his best to be the strong one, while Katara cried inconsolably over Sokka’s body. That had been over a year ago. Azula had ambushed them as they traveled, and in the midst of the skirmish, one of her cohorts’ throwing-knives had sunk into the back of Sokka’s raised boomerang hand. The pain distracted him just long enough for Azula to personally dispatch him with a javelin of blue flames through the chest. It had taken months for Katara to recover, and Aang had confided in Toph a few weeks before the coup de tat of Ba-Sing-Sei that he still felt like he was responsible for Sokka’s death. Toph could tell that losing her brother had affected Katara deeply, and instilled an acute fear of others’ deaths in her. Toph wasn’t sure if Katara could have handled another loss like Sokka; and then all of that business with Azula’s coup de tat had happened in the tunnels. Toph had gotten separated from the others in the fighting, and hadn’t seen or heard anything about any of the Avatar Party since. And it worried her more than she cared to admit.
She paused in silence, just inside the line of trees that began outside the fortress walls of Ba-Sing-Sei. It was a forlorn silence, but she allowed it to last no longer than that: a moment. Then, seeming to cast away an invisible weight, she slipped quickly into the fringe of the woods. The security was still tight around the outside of the wall, especially since Azula’s assassination. She had to make herself scarce, put plenty of distance between herself and the city whenever she wasn’t trying to gather information. It was also about the time that the guard was switched, and a fresh shift was always a thorough one, which made the risk of being spotted even higher. And this time, it was just high enough.
“-Hey! Did you see that? There’s someone in the woods!”
“Follow ‘em! Whoever they are, follow ‘em!”
Toph heard the guards shouting to one another instantly, and took off into the deep woods at a run, a low curse hissing through her teeth.
“There they go! Don’t lose ‘em!”
“It’s a kid! Catch the little brat!”
Toph swore again; if they were close enough to see her that well, then they were too close. She had to put some distance between them somehow, but it would be no small task for a blind girl, even one of her skill.
She maneuvered at top speed through all manner of obstacles, struggling to maintain her speed. The hammering of her bare feet on the ground gave her constant halting vibrations from her surroundings to read in less than a second. Toph may have been an earthbending genius, but she was still blind. She jumped streams, a ravine, cut through thick copses of trees and any kind of thorny underbrush that she hoped would hinder her pursuers. They had dropped farther behind, but her lungs were beginning to feel constricted and small, and she was gasping for air. She had been running full-tilt for what must’ve been a quarter of an hour, and her limbs were feeling the effort of her flight. She could tell that the damn trees were thinner up ahead of her too. This was not good.
“s**t...” she gasped, as the forest fell away and left her panting in a dangerously clear patch. Toph’s foot struck the ground hard, testing for someplace to hide herself. There was a cave. She bolted for it, gravel skittering across the cold rock as she halted and threw herself flat against the stone floor.
“Did you see where the kid went? I lost ‘em!”
Toph’s body was flat against the earth, feeling the vibrations of the guards’ feet as they cantered near the cave. She held her breath.
“Hey, this way! He could be at the Avatar’s cabin!”
“Let’s go!” Toph felt their footfalls moving away, continuing in the same direction they had been heading, their vibrations growing weak and then faint as they got farther away. They stopped, and clearing became quiet, but Toph couldn’t move. That guard’s shouted words to his comrades were still echoing through her head incessantly.
‘The Avatar’s cabin’...? What was that supposed to mean? Had they really found the Avatar, and why had no word of it ever been leaked to the people? Her sources would have picked up on it in a second if anyone had known. How long had it been kept a secret? How much had happened while she had been wandering around utterly clueless? Dammit! How much had she missed? Toph ground her teeth furiously; she couldn’t possibly ignore this. She had to know how the Avatar was involved.
Before she raised herself off the floor of the cave, she placed both hands palm-down on the chilly rock and felt for any lingering vibrations from the guards’ pursuit. All clear. She hefted herself lightly to her feet and warily left the cave, heading slowly in the general direction the men had taken, with enough time to let them get far ahead.
She hadn’t been walking for more than five minutes before she felt another area devoid of trees up ahead. This time it was suspicious; there was a structure of some kind built haphazardly at its center. Toph could tell by the weak image of vibrations she received that it had been built without bothering to set a solid foundation into the ground, as if it had been assembled in some sort of rush.
Checking to make sure there was no one anywhere around the clearing, Toph approached the thing with both hands out. She found herself touching the rough bark of a big log; it was a cabin, then. She moved along the outside walls and almost fell through the gap of the open doorway. The dirt inside had been solidly compacted and Toph could smell ashes from a fireplace. Whatever this place was, it had been lived in for a decent amount of time.
Toph was just feeling around inside the rough little cabin, when a sudden set of vibrations alerted her to the presence of two people approaching. She readied herself inside the doorway of the ramshackle house, and listened for voices.
“We will have to lay low here for a while.” It was a gruff old man’s voice; “They would not expect us to return here so soon, so we will be safe for the moment.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right. But what if we can’t find Katara and the others...?”
Toph’s milky eyes grew wide; THAT voice she knew. She had only spent ages traveling with the stupid kid. Relief flooded through her and Toph bellowed at the top of her lungs.
“Hey, Aang!”
Toph could feel the vibrations of the two sets of feet lurch into a run at the sound of her voice, and waited in the doorway for them to reach the clearing. She could hardly hold back the grin from her face as she heard Aang’s voice calling back through the thinning trees.
“Toph! Toph, is that you?”
“Don’t strain yourself, Aang! You haven’t fully recovered yet!” the old man’s voice was saying.
But the Avatar crashed through the bushes at full speed, thwacking low branches out of the way with his folded glider as he ran. The old general chugged along behind as they burst out into the clearing around the cabin, and caught sight of the small green-clad girl standing barefoot in the doorway of the cabin. She was really there; he wasn’t imagining it. Even though he could feel his legs giving out under him, he kept running until he collapsed right on top of her.
“Toph!” the tattooed boy cried, hugging her as he slumped toward the ground, forcing her to heave him back up to his feet as best the smaller girl could.
“Aang, are you alright?” the old man puffed concernedly, “You shouldn’t have run all that way. You are still recovering.”
But the boy wasn’t listening. His face was buried in Toph’s shoulder, “I thought I’d let you all get killed because of me...” Aang said, sniffling back tears, “It was all my fault, and...”
Toph hugged the poor excuse for a master-of-all-the-elements back reassuringly, “Chill out, Aang. I’m just fine. I’m not dead, so suck it up, okay?”
Aang nodded into the shoulder of Toph’s earthbending uniform. Next to them, the old general let out a puff of sedated relief.
It was at that moment that Toph’s keen hearing registered the sound of another pair of footsteps dangerously close, at the edge of the clearing only ten or so feet away. She hadn’t heard them approach with Aang’s noisy arrival, and snapped her head around in the direction of the trespasser.
“Who’s there?” she yelled threateningly at the bushes she could not see. Behind her, she sensed the old man inhale sharply and become tense. Aang’s head lifted from her shoulder, and she felt his weakened body go rigid as he gasped.
“Katara...” Aang’s childish voice wavered painfully as he clung to Toph to keep standing, “...What happened to you?”
And there she stood: a scarred and darkened predator in her torn green garment, melting out from the summer foliage. The waterbender’s icy blue eyes were wide with shock as they peered past her wild tangles of dark hair, at the Avatar and the small blind earthbender together.
Somewhere inside, a broken girl was already keening desolately, but outside, a snarl began in her throat, and the iron key clinked softly against her metal collar as she started towards them with rage etched into her face.
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(Chapter 14)
Aang stared at the figure emerging from the bushes in horrified disbelief.
This couldn’t be Katara, there was no way this was the girl he knew. His Katara was sweet and gentle and spirited, and she would have been too busy asking if they were all alright to be concerned about herself, and apologizing for not finding them sooner. She was neat, and collected, and most concerned for those she cared about. She would have come running up to them where they stood grouped together and thrown her arms around them and said how glad she was that everyone was okay and that she had been worried about them all.
But this wasn’t the same girl from three months ago. The sweet innocent girl that had been captured during the coup de tat of Ba-Sing-Sei had been destroyed.
She had been warped and hardened into this animal thing that crept towards the motley remains of the Avatar party with betrayal smoldering in her every feature. She was fixated on the pair standing together, the Avatar and the blind earthbender girl, and spared the old man behind them not even a glance. She ran her gaze over their arms as they held onto each other, with wounded agony screaming from her eyes behind her wild hair.
The features of her face twisted in anger, and her caramel lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl then. The dull glint of the iron bands around her upper arms and ankles and around her throat was framed by heavy scars in her tan skin, and the bitter smell of burnt flesh lingered. Her chest rose and fell above the ragged green robe as she breathed heavily in her rage, and her fists trembled beneath the long ripped sleeves.
Toph’s misty eyes were scrunched confusedly as she stared hard at the transformed girl, as if she were nearsighted instead of blind. “Aang. What’s wrong with Katara? Tell me.”
The boy Avatar couldn’t bring himself to speak, he just stood leaning heavily against her, eyes riveted to this Katara.
“Aang! ” Toph yelled, grabbing his arms from her torso and shaking him, “Tell me what’s wrong with her!”
“...This is the same girl that traveled with you before?” the old man said behind them, the tone of his voice aghast, “Something horrible must have...” he couldn’t finish what he was saying either. Katara’s low snarl had gotten louder when Toph grabbed Aang and shook him.
“Dammit all! Tell me something useful! What’s wrong with Katara!” Toph seized Aang by his shirt, “Tell me!”
“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” Katara roared suddenly, and Toph felt the vibrations of her feet move towards them in a rush.
“Katara!” Aang cried, before Toph shoved him at the old General to be dragged back towards the relative safety of the cabin, and adopted a fighting stance.
Toph received a savage blow to the face that sent her sprawling, a cut from Katara’s nails opening up across her nose. No sooner had the earthbender hit the ground than Katara was on her again, trying to pummel the smaller girl lying on her back in the dirt of the clearing with a thin stream of blood running across her face from the cut on her nose. The first punch connected with Toph’s stomach, wrenching a solid grunt from her jarred lungs before she could put up her hands to block.
The next two thereafter were met with each of Toph’s small, calloused palms, snagging the crazed waterbender’s fists firmly in her grip, bringing her punching frenzy to an abrupt halt. Katara let rip a skin-prickling yell of frustration at having her hands disabled and heaved forward to smash their foreheads together, and Toph only narrowly avoided the headbutt by sharply twisting her own head to the side, so that Katara’s wild attack connected with the hard-packed earth.
Before Katara could raise her skull from the deep depression she had left in the ground, Toph, still holding tightly to the other girl’s clenched fists, slammed both her elbows to the ground on either side of her. A column of earth shot up below each of her elbows and slammed into the deranged waterbender’s torso, hurling her off of Toph’s smaller frame as she released her hold on Katara’s fists.
The insane waterbender landed solidly on all fours, then righted herself, and Toph jumped to her feet while she had the chance. They both froze for no longer than a second, watching each other for a next move.
The sudden silence was deafening. Droplets of blood from the cut across Toph’s nose ran down her cheek and dripped from her chin, leaving a red trail beside her mouth, that she ignored in her acute concentration on Katara’s stilled vibrations.
Toph didn’t seem to notice that the drops never touched the ground.
The muffled sounds of the Avatar and General Iroh moving around inside the cabin could be heard in the deathly hush. The boy was struggling against the old man to get back outside, and snatches of his frantic protests penetrated the log walls thickly; “...Katara is ou.......but I know th........ust l...t me go...! ”
Katara moved a fraction closer to the cabin, focused on the sound of the Avatar’s voice, and Toph sensed it. She instantly moved protectively in between the cabin and the violent waterbender she had once known. Katara snarled threateningly at the blind earthbender in her way, and the key she wore around her neck clinked against the iron collar.
A shrill whistle of air reached Toph’s ears as her lost blood came snaking through the air to lash across her chest like a lead whip. Her back hit the ground with phenomenal force, and she lay there stunned, with a red stain across her torso where the blood-bending had struck her.
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(Chapter 15)
The thick summer brush snapped and crackled as he labored through it, the harsh sound of his own breathing the only other sound to be heard in the forest outside the great fallen city. He leaned against a tree’s narrow trunk, one hand clenching the front of his bloody Fire Nation uniform. The pain that laced through his body with every heaving breath originated from six needle-like wounds in his chest. Swallowing dryly as he focused on the faint trail of the one he tracked, Zuko pushed himself away from the treetrunk and clenched his teeth as he forced his muscles to move him forward.
His head had been swimming with the acrid smell of blistered flesh when he had come to in the wrecked prisoner’s room. He had rolled over to a shockwave of pain from the six points in his chest, and the six drops of reddened salt-water that had been waterbent into needles, squeezed out and soaked into his uniform as Zuko lay on his side trying not to make a sound. When he opened his eyes, a yell had escaped him at the sight of Azula spread-eagled on the floor, with hideous, blackening, human teeth-marks on her throat. He had staggered from the room, pressing some long shreds of tapestry to his wounds to keep from leaving a bloody trail, and slipped out of the palace in the commotion as the Dai Lee discovered the Princess’s body.
It had been the shock of his life to find his sister dead. He hadn’t thought it was possible to kill someone as heartlessly cruel as Azula. But clearly, he had been wrong. He was the only one who knew the truth about the Fire Nation Princess’s death; the only sane one. The sole other, he was already looking for...
Toph’s whole body reverberated with the force of Katara’s attack, and her ears rang form the force of her own frame being slammed to the ground. It took every ounce of concentration she had to roll towards the cabin as a thin crimson javelin sank easily into the packed dirt where she had been.
A furious snarl came from the demented waterbender, and Toph pushed herself up off the ground with her hands as she disorientedly tried to get to her feet, her back almost to the cabin’s outside wall.
The waterbender summoned back the small splash of blood, and it writhed dangerously in the air in front of her. The ghost of a girl called Katara still drove her with the single-minded desire to reach the boy in the cabin. She was only the smallest shred of a thing, left in the back corner of a torture-twisted mind, but she cried the boy’s name over and over again, a broken creature breaking beyond the point of return. And the raging waterbender outside obeyed her soundless pleas, as she hurled her amorphous weapon in the direction of the small blind earthbender.
Toph’s milky eyes were wide with instant horror as she felt the angle and force of the attack from the waterbender’s body. "Katara, NO!" she screamed, as she slammed both fists to the ground, and forced a huge pillar of earth up from the ground behind her.
The pillar gave a deafening crack and then a shattering crash as the blood-bending connected with it in a massive cloud of dust, and rained clods of hard earth down over the small earthbender’s huddled form. She coughed in lung-fulls of the drifting dirt where she crouched on her hands and knees, and struggled to make sense of the resounding, jumbled vibrations that echoed through the ground.
The hot sunlight faded back to the clearing through the huge cloud of brown, illuminating the faint shadow of the cabin through the settling dust, its form impossibly misshapen from the pillar’s fall.
On the other side of the clearing, standing in the undergrowth like a ghost with blood staining the front of his scarlet clothes, was Zuko. And he was the only witness.
He sagged with shock at the cross-view he had of Katara’s wild profile, the young earthbender girl a distance away, facedown on her hands and knees, and the last falling particles of earth drifting over the crushed remains of the Avatar’s cabin behind her.
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(Chapter 16)
All sounds from the forest had ceased. It was so silent that Zuko could hear the hiss of dry dust and soil raining back down over the wreckage. A hot wind blew some of it into his face, where it stung the inside of his nostrils as he stared at the huge pile of log and timber splinters sticking up from the rain of dirt at horrible angles. He didn’t even notice himself shudder at his next thought.
Somewhere under all of that was the body of the Avatar.
After almost a year and a half; after being hunted like an outlaw or a wanted murderer by every soldier in the Fire Nation; after countless battles with hired assassins, guards, officers of all classes and ranks, and the Fire Nation Prince and Princess themselves: the boy Avatar had been killed. By one of his past traveling-companions no less; the one who was supposed to be something more than just a companion.
And there she stood; like a maddened statue clothed in green. The most indescribable look of anguished shock softening the rage on her face. The madness was gone for a moment as she saw the damage that had been done. The grief she wore was clear as day to all those present, but only the Gods knew if the same girl they had all known was still there. They would never know if it was the beauty or the beast.
All Zuko could see was the poor prisoner girl that had spent three months in the palm of Azula’s hand. The girl who had lain on the floor of the iron dungeon as fragile as glass, her life hanging by a thread. The beautiful human doll with dead eyes that had sat at Azula’s feet, and her side, and followed her everywhere like an obedient slave. The girl that had so suddenly gone insane, and attacked him and killed her mistress. He had watched it all happen, so slowly and so quickly, the changes seemed warped in his mind. All those times before, it felt like he had known what would happen to her, and still he had told himself that he would protect her and did nothing. It seemed like he had both lied and failed, and she had paid the price. His own indecision had done it. And now it had come to this. She had killed the Avatar. And all because he hadn’t had the strength to get her away from Azula, to stop her suffering when he had the chance. There had been many chances. He had let them all pass. Now the consequences were bearing down on him with an inhuman weight as he looked at her. The guilt cut him like a knife into his chest. And it seemed to have six tiny points.
And since old habits die hard, he did nothing, again. Only watched... and allowed his wounds to bleed.
“AANG!” It sounded like her throat could be ripping as she screamed, and Toph had nothing else to focus on but the harsh sound of Katara’s hoarse grieving yells.
“AAAANG!” She screamed so hard, it was as if in her insanity, she expected the boy to rise up out of the rubble and answer her.
“AAAAAANG!” This last scream was stained with despair, and Toph for once was glad she was blind, and would not have to see what end her dear, painfully young friend had met. It didn’t matter that she knew exactly what had happened; she would never have to look. She stayed on her hands and knees, listening to Katara scream. She blocked out everything but that sound. That sound she couldn’t block. Katara’s voice tore through everything. She didn’t even use words anymore. It was all one long hoarse scream, punctuated by the sudden thud of Katara dropping to her knees.
Toph felt the wave of motion fan out in a ripple from the spot where Katara had dropped. It passed beneath her and she felt the jumbled heap of splintered timbers behind her. The vibration illuminated every tell-tale splinter and spike it touched, reaching deep into the mass of destruction like a cruel eye, until Toph blocked it out. Before she could sense anything but destroyed wood, she shifted her desperate concentration away, and heard Katara weeping.
She sounded so small, like a little bit of something set adrift on a river. Katara had been swept away from them all long ago, and trying to swim back was drowning her. She was already so distant from everything in her past, she was barely even there. Every thought was muddled with grief and swirling with echoes from the mind of the girl called Katara. Those things weren’t real to her anymore, they’d been washed away, or left on the banks of the river as the undertow pulled her down. Memories didn’t save you; they held you in the past, and Katara’s past held her. Its grip on her was so absolute she didn’t know any other way. She knew only what she felt and what she wanted. And she knew only what would get it. She had wanted Aang; she had needed this girl that had stolen him away from her out of the way. She had tried to have what she wanted; and now Aang was gone. It was this girl’s fault. That was all she knew.
Grief for something she couldn’t seem to remember anymore... and rage that would make the limitless grief go away. That was all she knew.
“...Katara...?” The girl was speaking to her. How dare she try to say anything when it was her fault something so terrible had happened. She couldn’t remember what it was, but somehow she just knew that it was better not to remember. And she spoke in such a tiny weak voice, as if she had done nothing wrong. It stoked the rage inside her, and anger felt better than sitting in the dirt grieving for something she didn’t want to remember. It was a screaming irrational wave that carried all the hurt far away. Hate her, the wave said, she is to blame. Nothing can be good again until she is gone.
“Katara...?” Toph called tentatively to the sobbing creature again, numbly hoping for a human response.
Another exploding wordless scream was her reply. Until she ran out of air in her lungs and inhaled with a shuddering gasp, “It’s all your fault!”
“Katara--”
“It was you! You did it!” she screamed senselessly at Toph.
“Katara, I--”
“You did it! It’s all your fault!” Toph felt her getting to her feet in a haze of rage.
She forced her limbs to move, to push herself up off the ground and scramble backwards as Katara came shrieking after her with nothing but her bare hands. All forms of waterbending had been forgotten; she was just a grief-enraged creature now. But that didn’t mean it was any easier to defend against her. Toph evaded Katara’s slashing clutching fingernails by scuttling backwards on her hands and feet, looking for an opening that would allow her to get back up. She brought one foot down hard and the earth beneath Katara heaved, throwing her back a few feet. It bought Toph just enough time for her to jump up from her graceless crabwalk across the ground. And just enough time for the insane waterbender to roll over and snatch up a jagged splinter from the dusty soil. She charged as the smaller girl was springing to her feet, dark hair and torn fabric flying as she gripped the lethal shard of wood.
In his final moment of stupidity, from across the clearing, Zuko yelled to the blind earthbender as he saw Katara snatch up the chunk of wood and lunge. “Look out!”
And Toph, startled by the voice of another enemy, turned her blind eyes toward the firebender, sealing the fate of them all.
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(Chapter 17)
In a single swift movement, several things happened: Toph turned away from Zuko’s yell, and slammed her heels to the ground in a desperate defensive maneuver as she felt a vicious hand grab the front of her earthbending uniform. And the maddened waterbender snatched the smaller girl off the ground with one hand, driving the pointed splinter of wood down on her with the other.
A solid boulder of earth and rock crashed into the side of Katara’s body from head to toe, hurling her aside with crushing force. The splintered stake grazed across Toph’s throat as the waterbender was swept away, and Toph fell neatly to the ground. She landed with her palms flat against the dirt, and immediately felt for the vibrations of Katara’s fall somewhere on either side of her. But when the next sound came, it was not the sound of a body crashing into the ground.
The splintering impact came from behind her; in the wrong place. Toph froze with the sudden understanding of what she had done.
“NOOO! KATARAAAA--!” Zuko’s anguished voice tore through the quiet of the clearing where the Avatar cabin had once stood, and he stumbled out of the brush towards the spiked heap of destroyed timber. A savage stab of pain seized his lungs at six even points, and he bit off an agonized sound as it brought him to his knees. Still he dragged himself closer to the jagged ruin, determined to make it. Determined that he would not be too late again.
But he already was, and it was over. He had seen it himself, and he had realized in an instant that it would be either one of them, or the other. It was out of his hands; the choice had been made. Toph had only barely saved herself, and Katara had been forced to shoulder all of Fate’s cruelty.
At the same moment that Toph had summoned the boulder to save herself from Katara’s stabbing dagger of wood, she had been lifted off her feet, and the aim of her earthbending had been skewed. The hurling earthen boulder had done its job; it had smashed the attacker cleanly away from her in the narrowest of escapes. It had lost its momentum and careened into the ground, as the insane waterbender flew soundlessly through the air. And the boulder’s altered course had sent the senseless girl hurtling onto the spikes and points of the destroyed cabin.
Tears were squeezing from Zuko’s scrunched eyes as he covered the last few feet on his hands and knees, doubled over from the lancing pain in his torso. He refused to let it all be over. It just couldn’t be; not so suddenly.
He dragged himself up at the edge of the pile of jagged wood, feeling the dozens of long splinters pricking and jabbing all over through his bloodstained uniform as he leaned out over them. They were like thousands of tiny needles and knives stabbing unforgivingly against his skin. A knot of all-consuming fear choked at the back of his throat, and he couldn’t be sure anymore that the pain in his chest was from the six-pointed wound that was meant to kill him.
He was standing now, with one hand holding onto a fragment of wood and the other clutching the front of his bloody uniform. He had made it to her. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Zuko opened his scrunched eyes.
Katara lay unreachable in the middle of the wreckage; on her back, with her tangled dark hair splayed out from her head with little wooden needles protruding through it like thorns. Her limbs were skewered at her sides, held above her body in its pierced green garment, which had sunk deeper into the bed of needles with the force of her impact. Her calm blank face stared up at the harsh sun, clear blue eyes half-lidded, as if with sleep, and her caramel lips gaped soundlessly open. Everywhere beneath her, the wood was turning red as it ran down along the hundreds of jagged shafts, to seep through to where it might stain the body of the young Avatar, buried at the bottom of the forest of wooden points and knives she lay on.
Zuko tore his eyes away from Katara’s staring face, retching between sobs, and Toph remained frozen where she had landed, hearing and feeling nothing for the hours it took to remember how to live again. They both fell into separate worlds of horrible pain and despair, and raged and wept and screamed inside. Outside they wept for the girl they each knew and lost, they wept the tears that she would have wept for herself, because she couldn’t. All under the hot sunlight that seemed to expose it all clearly and starkly to the whole world. Forcing them to see the unfairness that they already felt for her, unable to make excuses for the suffering she had been made to endure and her horrible death. Unable to blame anyone but themselves.
It was hours before their ears heard each other again, and their hands and knees felt the dusty ground underneath them again. Hours that felt like an eternity lost in the darkness of their own grief, before they remembered that they were alive, and that the world was still turning. The sun was going down, and they stood beside each other silently for another short eternity, as they remembered how to exist with others. When they finally spoke, it was impossible to tell if they were just remembering how to form words without sobbing and screaming, or if it was to one another.
“...I don’t know what to do.” The small earthbender confessed in an almost inaudible whisper, feeling more unsure and tinier than she had ever felt before in her life.
Zuko was gazing in silence at Katara’s face as she stared up to the sky. “....We should make a pyre.” he said, barely recognizing this even-toned voice as his own, “To say goodbye.”
Toph planted her feet and gently sank the mass of pointed wood into a depression in the center of the clearing to keep the rest of the forest from catching fire, and having done her part, stepped back for Zuko to do his. The outcast Prince stood for a moment longer, looking at Katara’s green-robed body resting on top of the mound of timber. Feeling his hesitation, Toph asked a simple question:
“What was she to you...?”
His gaze flickered down a little in silent thought, then returned to Katara’s almond-skinned face. 'What had she been to him'... He seemed to be searching her glassy blue eyes for an answer to give, even though he already had them all.
She had been beautiful to him. And vulnerable, and fragile, and spellbinding. And so painfully close beyond his fingertips could reach, even until the very end. He had broken a little bit with her as she cracked, and fractured more and more each time as she broke and shattered. He had wanted to be near her, and touch her, and hold her. He had wished he could have comforted her. He had wanted to protect her from everything that could do her harm. And still she had been a mystery. She had been all that to him and something more.
Zuko thrust a tiny soaring spark from the tips of his first two fingers, and watched the little flame that would grow to swallow her up catch in the dry jagged wood. He could feel the earthbender waiting for his answer, as he returned his eyes to Katara’s smooth brown face. The smoke swirled, bitter and gray through the air, burning Zuko’s nose when he breathed and becoming thicker as the rest of the wood started to smolder.
He knew somehow that to answer would belittle everything that she meant to him. It would taint her in some way. Words would do it no justice; just as pity would be an unfitting feeling to send her off with. He knew just what she had been to him, and he knew just how he would show it. There would be no answer to the earthbender’s question. It wasn’t needed.
Zuko stood in complete silence as the fire ate away at Katara’s pyre, remembering everything he could about her. And when the flames of the pyre began to blacken the torn edges of her green robe and singe away her soft dark hair, Zuko followed her gaze up to the sky. He fixed his eyes on the clear blue he saw there and waited for the fire to take her, not wanting to watch it burn away her smooth skin and calm face. He thought back to before she had been Azula’s prisoner. He saw in a different light the spirit in her eyes, and the purpose in her stride. He saw again the rhythm with which she had moved, and the firm resolve with which she had fought. He saw her from behind the hazy veil of memory, and strained to make her clearer, strained to make her voice more than just an echo in his thoughts. As hard as he tried, he came no closer than he had already come, and he was struck with sudden, powerful regret that he had never truly known her. She would be a mystery to him always. And his greatest regret was that he had never even seen her smile.
The pyre burned bright and orange after the sun had set, and Zuko watched the pillar of smoke and heat make the darkening tops of the trees shiver and waver behind it. He imagined he saw her face in the ripples of hot air, looking back down at him where he stood beside her blazing pyre. When the stars winked and flickered in the warm night air, the pyre had burnt down to glowing red charcoal. Still he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the stars shimmering and dancing in the heat of the dying fire. He watched the loose cluster of them that her face had been looking at in the daylight, and chose one for her. He would give her that one, and she could look down from it as he tried to imagine her smiling. He knew he would look to it every night for as long as he lived.
The sky seemed to be glowing a soft indigo above the ragged black silhouettes of the trees before Zuko allowed himself to sink to his knees where he had been standing, and lay himself down on the dusty chilled ground without moving his eyes from the spot where Katara’s star blinked. The embers snapped quietly in the dark as his eyes drooped, and closed out of utter exhaustion. Zuko fell into thick dreamless sleep beside the last dying embers of her funeral pyre, and woke heavy and cold with the first gray rays of sunlight.
The earthbender was gone; she had left sometime in the deep night after the last sparks went cold. Zuko opened his eyes to look up at the same spot Katara’s clear eyes had last gazed on, and he lay there on the chilly dirt for a long time without moving. He finally drew in a deep breath; his lungs strained by the six aching points deep in his chest, and let it out long and slow. Then he struggled painfully to his feet and approached the wide patch of cold ashes.
In the center, five objects jutted out of the gray salt-and-pepper ash. Zuko walked carefully through the scattered colorless grime and knelt down beside the spot where Katara’s body had been. Sifting gently into the soft grit, he touched the iron collar that had been fastened around Katara’s throat. It had been cracked in half by the heat of the dead fire like each of the other bindings. Zuko reached into the ashes just above the fittingly destroyed collar, and closed his hand around the small iron key that had imprisoned her for so long before it had hung around her neck as a token of her freedom. He brushed the gray ash carefully away with his other hand, and tucked it inside his red bloodstained uniform. He stood, and cast one long lingering glance over the clearing in its entirety, as if he were burning everything he saw into a special place in his mind. Then, without even dusting the ashes from the knees of his clothes, Zuko walked away from the flat patch of gray. He left the empty clearing full of terrible memories, and never looked back.
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The coup de tat of Ba-Sing-Sei was recorded in Fire Nation history as the greatest military achievement made by any single member of the Royal Family, and Princess Azula’s death was the greatest tragedy for generations to come in the Land of Fire. The invasion of the other Kingdoms weakened with the Princess’s passing, and the Fire Nation lost its grip on the fortress of Ba-Sing-Sei. A powerful blind earthbender led the Resistance, and reclaimed the great city for the Earth Kingdom in the following years. One by one, the other Kingdoms broke the Fire Nation’s grip and ended the long war. A new Avatar was born, and the stories of the Young Avatar, the last of the airbenders, passed into legend.
There are still rumors that, if one searches and listens hard enough, a mysterious old traveler will tell the story of the Young Avatar’s last adventure. The tale is long and terrible and tragic, and the old man’s scarred eye narrows to a slit and his wrinkled hands reach up to finger a small blackened key hanging around his liverspotted neck when he tells it. But the truth is worth its weight in gold, as the old traveler says, and some things are too valuable to be taken for granted.
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In one crucial moment, many things can happen. Even the smallest details can have so much sway that they ruin and take lives, and cause grief for years to come. And the worst ones are the details that no one controls. They are the most fair, and the least fair all at once, because no mortal hand is behind them. But as unfathomable as Fate may be, it has never once been called ‘merciful’. And humans will always shoulder and assign guilt as they see fit.
So judge as you will, the Fate designed for the remnants of the Avatar Party....
~::{ END }::~
 Mitsukeru Furidomu · Mon Jul 30, 2007 @ 07:19pm · 0 Comments |
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