Chapter Text
My name is Katara. I’m not a killer—I am a fighter and a healer, but never a killer.
The mantra running though Katara’s head was the only thing keeping her sane during her prison time—yet, it was also the very reminder that contradicted her entire existence there in her cell.
My name is Katara. I’m not a killer—I’m a fighter and a healer, but never a killer.
But chains bound to her wrists and ankles spoke otherwise. Tightly encased around her skin, it dug deep welts into her flesh that stung whenever she shifted or pulled the metal—a precaution to prevent her from water bending. She’d failed to pull them over her thin prison clothes, to offer a barrier between her raw skin and the harsh metal—just like she had failed to use her sweat to try even the tiniest glimmer of healing.
Of course, she knew that these chains weren’t just for water bending. They’d done their job well, but it wasn’t even the main concern when they first shackled them around her limbs. No, it was to keep her from doing what imprisoned her in the first place.
Blood bending.
The horrific art she herself banned years ago, right after the war ended. Right after she started having nightmares of future blood benders stalking through the streets of Republic City or elsewhere, causing the same destruction Hama committed that’d haunted Katara forever.
She would’ve almost chuckled at the irony if she was currently internally suffocating from being trapped in a blue padded room for almost a month straight, along with all the other deranged criminals that awaited their sentence.
Deranged, because she could hear them groaning and whispering and promising the demise of their captors, all while gnawing at the cell bars and taunting whoever dared to pass their door.
Gods—and she was considered one of them.
Katara knew she was Republic City’s case that contradicted everything. What would you do with a waterbender who had banned blood bending years ago, only to break her own law and end up causing a bloodbath of both sides? They were still in the process of trying to figure out what to do with her—all she knew was that Aang was fighting for a trial.
What was she going to do? Especially when she couldn’t even remember most of it.
The bloodbath she caused? The people she killed? After she was done sobbing about it the first night, she tried desperately hard to remember what had happened with absolutely no success. A mental fog had encased her mind, and she was still struggling to realize the fog was even there in the first place.
Another slow breath exited her lungs, a repetitive attempt to slow down her racing heartbeat.
My name is Katara. I’m not a killer—I am a fighter and a healer, but never a killer.
Maybe it was because she’d spent so much time with Aang these past few years, but his pacifist nature was rubbing off of her. His ideology of all life being sacred had stuck to her after the war ended five years prior—she was done with bloodshed and dying and innocent lives being slaughtered.
So then why would she be accused of killing her sister soldiers using blood bending?
This battle against Azula and her Phoenix Society was a rebellion that sparked a couple years before. But she and her friends underestimated the dangerous number of people who joined the Phoenix Society, and by the time they gathered Republic’s forces to storm their recently discovered hideout, it was too late. They’d attacked the Southern Water Tribe and everything went from hell there.
At least… that’s what she’d been told.
Katara could barely remember anything other than a few glimpses of blurred faces and fogged-over memories. Nothing that could help her remember, nothing that explained anything—and overall, more frustration that made her want to disappear.
She was just in the middle of another deep inhale when suddenly—
A rupture of banging filled the silent cell, the iron door clicking from a series of locks.
“Coming in!” shouted the familiar voice of the warden. Muffled noise of keys jingling and metal sliding through slots made her quickly stand to the back side of the cell. More locks clicking.
Gods, how many did they need for her to be contained? There was not a drop of water in sight for her to bend. The air was painfully dry and always cool so there was no chance she could even use her own sweat. Even when she was given food and something to finally drink, they always made sure to restrict her bending by restraining her limbs.
The door slammed open against the wall, loud enough to make her flinch if she wasn’t used to it at this point.
There stood the warden in the archway—a middle aged man with thick, graying hair, and deep lines embedded into his face from frowning so much. She didn’t bother retracting from his painful grip as he took both her wrists and set another pair of handcuffs around them. These were slimmer, but much more effective—the metal made to temporarily reduce the flow of energy to prevent bending.
If worn too long, they rapidly depleted her willpower and could make her pass out from exhaustion. In fact, it did happen once, and the only thing she could recall was Aang enraged at the guards for finding her collapsed in her cell—all before she fell unconscious again.
The memory made her cold as she glanced at the warden’s displeasured face. “What do you want?” she asked, careful to keep a glare off of her face. It was hard not to resent the warden—his harsh treatment felt unnecessary. Then again, she was nothing but a threat to him, and a threat had to be handled appropriately to his cruel standards.
The warden didn’t bother looking at her as he locked her chains. “Your trial has been moved to today on short notice. The council had decided to officiate it themselves instead of leaving it to the Republic’s official court.”
A mixture of relief and shock flooded throat her, the pain melting away from her welted wrists as she said quickly, “What? Today?”
The warden nodded. “Yes. There’s been some sort of emergency with Firelord Zuko that had forced them to move it for this evening.”
Zuko.
The name sent an ache in her chest.
The last time she saw Zuko was nearly two months ago, right before the battle that landed her in custody. She’d walked in on a fight between him and Aang, where Zuko had nearly engulfed Aang in a burst of fire that’d erupted from his body. Ever since then, Zuko never visited her and all the updates from her friends suggested he’d hadn’t talked to anyone either.
Katara swallowed the lump in her throat. “What emergency?” She paused, careful with her words. “Is he—is he in trouble?”
The warden didn’t respond. He finished clasping Katara’s binds, and pulled her out of the door. “We’re leaving,” he said coldly. “By order of the council, we’re escorting you to Republic City.”
Katara stumbled over her own feet as a sense of adrenaline entered her system. “Am I not already in Republic City?” she questioned as the warden tugged her forward down the cold barren hall. It wasn’t made of the blue padded walls in her room—only slick metal with no doors on either side of the narrow path; only hers, at the very end.
“You’re in a remote, underground prison somewhere in Fire Nation territory,” said the warden. “Because of the injuries you sustained in the midst of the Attack on the South Pole, they had to bring you to the nearest hospital—one with a prison nearby.”
Her head spun suddenly from the thought. She had known she was rendered unconscious for nearly a week before she was sent to the prison—but she had been knocked out again for that. She hadn’t even known she’d been underground for these many, many weeks.
Claustrophobia gouged her senses. She wasn’t one to be scared of small spaces, but the idea of being underground for so long made her yearn for air and sunlight even more than she did before.
“Will I be unconscious for the journey to Republic City?” Katara couldn’t help but ask as they reached the end of the hall.
A metal control unit was centered beside a lift, one with a key that the warden inserted in first before using.
“No,” the warden replied tonelessly. “But you will be deprived of any distinguishable senses during your journey.” He pressed a red button and tugged out his key. “We cannot afford anyone to know our exact location—even ones connected to the Avatar.”
Katara didn’t respond as the warden pulled her into the lift. She was half tempted to shrug his brawny hand off her shoulder if it wasn’t for the chains binding her. Instead, she said slowly, “Does Aang know about the trial?”
The warden glanced at her. Paused, before saying reluctantly, “Yes. He was alerted this morning.”
So Aang knew.
Which meant he had to be travelling to Republic City fast, if he wasn’t there already. The last time he’d visited was eight days ago, when an emergency in the Fire Nation had pulled him away.
She’d almost begged him to stay, unable to stand the loneliness of her cell, but she knew better than to ask. He’d been on edge these past few months, his temper unusually short. It was uncanny for Aang to be angered easily—his peaceful nature was always something she was drawn into.
The rebellion is stressing him out, she’d tell herself. Nothing personal.
She swallowed, shifting topics. “What’s wrong with Zuko?”
The warden looked at her coldly as the lift shook and started to rise. “You’re asking an inappropriate amount of questions of a very confidential matter,” he told her curtly, shifting his gaze away with dismission.
To that, she glared at him, and rolled her shoulder to push off his hand that still lingered. “If I’m about to go into trial, I should at least know what I’m going up against,” she snapped. “You telling me whether or not my friends are okay from all nearly dying in the attack would be at least decent.”
“I am not permitted to tell you anything, blood bender.”
Her glare melted as the title settled into the air.
The word rolled off his tongue so easily that it made her go painfully still, like a slur wrapped in distance and cruelty—emitted towards only her and her alone.
Her breath came out more stiffly, as she dared to look at the warden.
She shouldn’t have been surprised to see all that there was in his eyes was hatred—hatred that had been present since the day she arrived, and hatred that would linger for an indefinite amount of time. The depth of them made ice crawl into her veins, leaving her frozen in root of her own fear.
“You heard me,” spat the warden, shoving her forward as if he couldn’t stand even being in close proximity to her.
She inhaled sharply, ignoring the urge that made her want to scream at the top of her lungs.
No one believed her.
She hated blood bending the most. Yet it was her who caused the most destruction out of it. She banned it years ago, yet here she was—waiting to be sentenced by a law she wrote.
She swallowed.
Even if Aang managed to get her out of this, the blood of her mass murder would always stain her hands.
My name is Katara. I am not a killer, but the world keeps telling me that I am.