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While Katara put on a happy face and hugged the man that had apparently married GranGran, a part her wanted to flinch away from him. The memory of Hama far too fresh in her mind, especially after her “life-changing” trip with Zuko. Coming back down from everything that happened had been rough to say the least. Katara remembered dry heaving as her actions over the those past 24hrs hit her like a ton of bricks. Even now it made her physically ill to think about.
Katara spent hours walking around the White Lotus Camp, just trying to sort out her emotions as much as possible before they had to face the Fire Lord. She’d passed the main tent seven times at this point. Katara was half-tempted to tell Pakku what she’d been forced to learn, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t understand. Pakku was confident and prided himself on his waterbending abilities, Katara couldn’t see him understanding the fear she felt in those moments. When the full moon suddenly felt terrifying instead of exhilarating.
It was her eighth loop around the camp when she decided she absolutely needed talk to someone.
By her ninth loop she found herself standing frozen in front of Jeong Jeong’s tent. Hesitating for a moment Katara took a deep breath, steeling herself.
“Jeong Jeong? It’s Katara, can I talk to you for a moment?” She called from just outside the tent. Everything was silent and the longer the silence stretched, the more Katara worried he might actually be sleeping. Just when she was almost ready to walk away, Jeong Jeong emerged from the tent. He took one look at her and seemed to instantly understand this would not be an easy conversation.
“Come. There is a spot I mediate at in the morning, we can talk there.” Jeong Jeong led the way to an area with several flat boulders on the east side of camp. It was out of the way, but close enough that should something happen, they wouldn’t be caught unaware.
“You look well. Stronger than when our paths last crossed.” He said as he settled into a comfortable position.
“I’ve learned a lot in the past months, sometimes it feels like it’s been years. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” Katara responded sitting down next to him, she couldn’t help but think back to that day on the riverbed. She hoped this conversation would end better.
“Hmm. Then what exactly would you like to talk about?”
“Before the Solar Eclipse, Aang, Sokka, Toph, and I traveled through the Fire Nation before meeting up with the invasion force. There was this village where we met this old woman, Hama. She was a waterbender from the Southern Tribe and she offered to teach me.”
“In the Fire Nation?” Jeong Jeong was taken back. a waterbender hiding in the Fire Nation, it was unheard of. Still to be able to hide in plain sight was impressive, more than that it was dangerous beyond compare. One mistake, one reaction on instinct would be a sentence worse than death.
“She was a prisoner once, but she found a way to escape. Made a life for herself in the Fire Nation, running an inn. I learned so much from her in those two days…” Katara struggled to keep her voice steady, it was the first time since everything happened that she discussed how happy she was that first day. Meeting another waterbender, one from her tribe, from her culture. It had been everything she ever wanted - before it all rotted from the inside out, that is.
“I thought Pakku was your master?” Jeong Jeong asked carefully, keeping his distaste for the man out of his tone for the most part; even if he couldn’t stop himself from spitting his name out like an insult.
“He almost wasn’t. Before he realized GranGran travelled halfway across the world during a war just to get her independence from the Northern tribe and well him; he said, ‘I should go back to the healing huts with the other women’.” Katara knew Pakku had changed, and from that moment on had treated her as a warrior. She knew that, but that couldn’t change or take back what he said and done before. Let alone how it made her and others like her feel.
“What!” Jeong Jeong seethed, Katara could swear she saw sparks form in his hands, “I will never understand that man. He’s given a blessing and he throws away healing, a great art that gives life, as women’s work. If only I was blessed as you, I would learn healing just to spite him.”
“I think you’d make a great healer.” Katara laughed, making Jeong Jeong chuckle even if only a little bit.
“I would be a better fighter than him too. I think I would choose to heal though.” It seemed for a brief moment that Jeong Jeong lost himself in the fantasy of being a waterbender, a healer. All that bitterness and weight gone.
“I’d be your student, I bet you’d teach girls to fight.”
“Of course, I had many women as students… They all became weapons in the end…”
“You could teach them both, to heal and fight.”
“Yes, balance. I think I would teach that.” Jeong Jeong sighed deeply and like that the bitterness returned, “Putting the squabbles of old men aside, you wanted to talk about Hama.”
“Right, even though Pakku did teach me, he was refused to at first and even afterwards when he realized he had been in the wrong, I was still his only female student. Then there was Hama, who wanted to teach me from the moment we met. We’re from the same tribe, she was so eager to teach me and pass along her knowledge. She was what I wanted Pakku to be… then the full moon came -” Katara cut herself off before she could say another word, feeling the tears pooling in her eyes. She closed her eyes as tight as she could trying to stop them from falling.
“Waterbenders draw their strength from the moon, opposite of firebenders.” Jeong Jeong commented neutrally, giving Katara a moment to collect herself. Comforting wasn’t something that came naturally to him - living the woods alone for years on end had hardly helped that - but he could at the very least give Katara the time she needed to get the words out. Clearly, everything wasn’t as innocent as it appeared for Katara to be this shaken.
“That night she took me out in the woods near the village. People had been disappearing whenever there was a full moon, but she said it would be fine, we were at our most powerful after all. And I knew Aang was in the village trying to figure out what spirit was causing it with Sokka and Toph. Then… she told me how she escaped, the final technique she wanted me to learn.” Katara started sobbing, reliving the horror of that night. Jeong Jeong hesitated, before reaching out and placing a reassuring hand on Katara’s shoulder.
“Take your time. We have several hours before either of us is needed.”
“She told me how she learned to control the rats in her cage – controlled their blood. The night of her escape she took control of the guard’s and forced them to unlock her cage. Bloodbending, she called it.”
“I see, that’s quite upsetting to learn.” Jeong Jeong felt dread settle in the pit of his stomach, to the point it was almost painful.
“That’s not the worst of it.” Katara muttered and slouched forward, making herself look much smaller. Jeong Jeong patted her shoulder awkwardly for a moment, before just leaving it there. Idly, he wondered if he should hug her, that was generally considered a comforting gesture as far as he knew.
“I refused to learn it. I didn’t want that kind of power, controlling someone like that… Hama, she didn’t like that. She bloodbent me. It was terrifying, I couldn’t do anything. She forced me to move however she wanted… I’ve never felt so scared in life.” Katara had to stop constantly as sobs wracked her body but she was determined to make it through this.
Jeong Jeong felt this was distressing enough to warrant a hug, carefully he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Not quite sure, if this was helping at all. Katara just turned into his chest and sobbed.
“In the end, she couldn’t control me, not for long anyway. As powerful as the moon made her, it made me stronger. I broke free. But that’s when Aang and Sokka showed up. They’d figured out there was no spirit, Hama was the one behind the disappearances. They found out that she had created this prison inside the mountain, for the villagers she kidnapped. They’d come to help me, but they gave her leverage. She took control of them. Made them attack each other. I couldn’t stop everything, her, them. I don’t even remember making the choice, but I took control of her just to make it all stop.” Katara mumbled into his chest, tears still falling.
“Katara, you must know you did nothing wrong.” Jeong Jeong tried, he understood how terrifying it was to have something inside you so dangerous wanting to claw its way out. But this? Katara wasn’t to blame, she’d been forced into a situation where her only choice was to control or kill Hama. Only Katara would truly become the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, had she killed Hama. Even unconsciously to save her friends, he doubted Katara could do it. Jeong Jeong found could not fault her for sparing Hama or bloodbending to avoid making that choice. The blame rested solely on the heads of the Fire Nation soldiers, as far as he was concerned.
“It gets worse.” Katara took another deep breath, steading herself once more before pulling back from the hug. Katara wiped her tears away and hugged her knees tightly. Jeong Jeong couldn’t imagine what more there could possibly be.
“About a week ago, I snapped at Zuko about how my mother was killed in a Fire Nation raid. He figured out what naval unit it was and offered to help me get revenge. The whole trip I didn’t sleep at all, I was just so angry, and I could feel the full moon. The power flowing through me and for a minute as I bloodbent the man I thought killed my mother in cold-blood, I understood Hama. She was insane and wrong, forcing innocent people to pay for the military’s actions but in that moment, I understood the pain, the anger and the hurt she felt. I was going to kill him… He was the wrong man, the man we were looking for retired two years ago to a small town. The full moon was gone when I faced him, and I think if it wasn’t, I would have killed him. He was an empty shell of a man, not even worth killing but under the full moon… With all that power, I think I would have done it.” Katara confessed tears rolling down her face, as she admitted everything she felt in those moments. Jeong Jeong pulled her into another hug, making sure to give her plenty of time to pull away if she wanted. It seemed to calm her down the first time, so he figured it should work again… probably.
Katara found herself crying on Jeong Jeong’s shoulder again. She didn’t want to cry. She was sick and tired of crying, but it was first time she’d openly talked about all of this, processed this. As hard as reliving it was, bottling it all up wasn’t much easier. And as awful and out of control as this felt, deep down Katara knew she needed this. Crying included, even if her eyes were starting to feel raw and Jeong Jeong’s shoulder was uncomfortably damp.
Jeong Jeong couldn’t help but empathize with the young waterbender. He knew the horror she felt better than most. That moment when bending felt more like something that controlled you instead of the other way around. As if it had a mind of its own. It was the type of terror that had a vice grip on his heart, and that he struggled with every single day.
And in all of this, it was alarming how easy it had been for him to forget that Katara - a master waterbender - was also a scared, traumatized child just barely coping with everything the war put her through. War and death didn’t care about age. And while Jeong Jeong had seen Katara act like the adult this war turned her into; the girl crying in his arms about nearly killing a man she hated for taking her mother’s life was ultimately a child. A powerful and skilled child, but a child, nonetheless. He didn’t know how to help her. It had been a long time since he had been even considered a child. Even then his childhood had been near nonexistent; firebending prodgies were treated and trained like soldiers no matter their age. Living weapons, nothing more and nothing less. Still holding Katara as she cried, a memory sparked within him. A voice singing, it had been years ago; the one time he’d been deathly ill as a child. Probably, a nurse or whomever had been told to watch over the patients.
“Leaves from the vine,
Falling so slow
Like tiny shells
Drifting in the foam
Little solider boy
Comes marching home
Brave soldier boy
Comes marching home.”
Jeong Jeong, didn’t even know if there was more to it or just that one verse, that’s all he remembered. He wasn’t even good at singing but Katara’s breathing seemed to slowly be evening out. With nothing else to do, he just repeated the verse. Again, and again. Again, until Katara let out what Jeong Jeong supposed was a laugh, only it sounded more like a cough. Katara’s voice hoarse from crying when she finally spoke;
“I’m sorry. I know you idolize waterbending, it can’t be easy for you to hear about this. I just needed to tell someone, and I thought you might be able to understand.” Katara sniffled before turning a bit and returning the sideways hug from a more comfortable position.
Too stunned to move, Jeong Jeong let her. He wanted to scream at someone, anyone really. Everything Katara had been through, everything she’d confessed, and she still seemed more concerned about his comfort than her own. It was just like when she’d been burned. Trying to get him to see his firebending as a gift, even after Aang had burned her. It physically pained him to consider this was a product of the war, of trauma. Trauma he had, had a hand in at one point in his life. Another part him just desperately hoped Katara was simply that compassionate, that this was just how she was. Not that, that was much better. Compassion was a difficult burden to bear in a war-torn world.
“I idolize waterbending, yes. However, that does not make me blind to how dangerous water or waterbending can be. I spent many years at sea, it would be foolish of me to ignore how often tides or storms dictated what we did. And it does not make me blind to how clearly upsetting these events were and still are to you. Or how your account of everything mirrors my own experiences with firebending.” Jeong Jeong left it unsaid that now she was walking her own razor’s edge, he didn’t want to think of her being torn apart in the same way he was. Then again her ‘curse’s’ nature was one so very different than his own, it gave him some comfort to think her fate would be different from his own.
“I don’t know if it was bloodbending or imprisonment that drove Hama mad. I just don’t want to be her. I don’t know what to do.” Katara confessed in a whisper so faint Jeong Jeong almost didn’t hear her.
“Hm.” Jeong Jeong knew what Fire Nation prisons were like, harsh and unforgiving. Conditions were beyond just inhumane, living in those places was a special kind of torture. To contain a waterbender they would have to be extremely careful, water was life itself and was in almost everything – even the air. Hama used that to her advantage and created bloodbending to escape her horrific situation. It was impossible to say what truly broke Hama in the end. Still, something kept nagging at him and for all of his preaching about fire being destruction; in his exile, in his darkest days and on the coldest nights for those brief moments it became something more. Not quite life the way water was but something more than destruction, it was always short-lived but in those fleeting moments it was enough. Idly in the back of his head, he wondered if bloodbending as the opposite of his experience with firebending, where those moments were the darkest, or if it was identical and there was something… just more that they were missing. Though even he could see that this was not the time for that conversation. It simply wasn’t what Katara needed, at least as far as he could tell.
“I cannot answer any of that for you. However, for the brief time I have known you I don’t think you would ever be capable of doing what Hama did. If you were anything like her, I doubt we would be having this conversation.” Jeong Jeong offered.
“Thank you.” Katara replied softly, “A part of me is terrified I’ll turn into her. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I keep telling myself that. It’s nice to hear someone else say it.”
“I suppose it would be.” Jeong Jeong muttered, it was a foreign concept to him. Destruction was his nature, no amount of outside reassurance would change that. No those would just be empty platitudes in his case.
“I’m sorry I can’t exactly offer you the same thing…”
“Do not concern yourself with that.” Jeong Jeong reassured her, the physical pain of this aspect of her being a product of trauma returned but there was nothing he could do. Instead, he settled for letting her continue to hug him, hoping that would be enough. He hadn’t a clue what to do, if it wasn’t, though he supposed if it came to that he could start singing again. Thankfully, Katara while still shaken seemed to be considerably calmer.
It took Jeong Jeong far longer than he was willing to admit, to realize that Katara was practically half asleep on his shoulder. It wasn’t exactly surprising considering the late hour and the rather draining conversation. Gently, he shook her shoulder waking her.
Softly Katara apologized as she comes back into consciousness, “I should probably get some sleep.”
“Probably. You and your companions, are sleeping on the Avatar’s flying bison in the center of camp, correct?”
“Appa and yeah.” Katara confirmed as she stood.
“I will walk you there.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I am aware.” Katara paused considered him for a few minutes before smiling gently and shaking her head.
“Here, at least let me.” Katara made some hand motions, waterbending his shoulder dry discarding her own tears into the earth around them. It was almost symbolic, but Jeong Jeong knew from experience that this would not be something she could discard so easily.
Jeong Jeong nodded, and they began the walk back to camp. They feel into a comfortable silence, reaching the snoring bison in no time. Sokka was fast asleep cuddled into Appa’s fur. Katara regarded them for a minute before turning back to Jeong Jeong and hugging him. Stiffly Jeong Jeong returned the hug, awkwardly patting her back. “Thank you for understanding.”
“It is a burden I would wish on no one.”
“I know, I wouldn’t either.” Katara pulled back from the hug, “Good night.”
“Good night.” Jeong Jeong responded automatically, before turning back towards his tent.