October Catch-All

[oceanblue]

Characters: Katara, Open
Date: October
Location: Wood Sector mostly
Situation: Katara's Balancing Act
Warnings/Rating:Lots and lots of hurt feels

Katara, as of late, is stuck in a very tentative balance between her own healing and doing her best to be the strength of those around her. She's starting to wear thin and is far too close to breaking, but she's determined not to let it interfere with her aiding the others.

Stresses/Situations include:

-Physically, Katara has yet to heal completely from Zuko's fire.
-The entire poisoned Zuko situation. Her efforts to heal him have been completely ineffective, for which she feels personally guilty. She's having to watch him fall apart and can do nothing to stop him. There's no way to help him carry his burden except to let him hurt her, which, unfortunately for her friends and brother, she's willing to do. She is also battling romantic feelings toward him as well: this level of dedication to someone's wellbeing definitely has an effect on the heart, and she is no exception. The fact that they arrived together out of a particularly desperate moment back home also doesn't help. (Or does it)
-Though her own turtle was spared, Katara is devastated over the murder of the babies, particularly Korra's.
-She's well aware that her bloodbending capability is emotionally scarring, and now she's having to watch over a hurt and very hesitant avatar. She's healing him in silence (after the Kedan's fail assassination attempt) when he allows her near enough, but the tension is wearing her down to the point of actual frustration, both toward him and herself.


She will, however, attempt to hide as many of these as she can from everyone including Aang, her brother, and Akito, lest she be even more of a burden on an already dark situation.

(( Threads are open to any situation you like :) ))

Comments

[oceanblue]

Misty eyes lifted at Wan's admittance. She hadn't expected him to tell her anything about himself, and the surprise made her heart skip a beat. It almost seemed like a step toward getting to know each other.

"I'm sorry... Who took care of you as you grew up?" she asked, never forceful, but encouraging that step. "With mom gone, and my dad helping fight in the war, my GranGran took care of me and Sokka."

[raavashing]

"I did," he said, voice still soft, tired. So tired. "I took care of myself until I was seven or so. Then Yao, a hunter, took me in and took care of me. A couple years after that, he took in Jaya. And a year after that, I had to start taking care of both of them. We moved out of the city, off the streets and into a shack in the trees we built ourselves with scrap wood. I spent every day trying to get my hands on just a few scraps of food for all three of us. Until I finally got so fed up with having no power... that I took it."

Wan opened his eyes and looked at Katara, "Do you remember the story I told the children in the hospital the day you arrived? About the boy who stole fire?"

[oceanblue]

She could see how tired he was, but while she was torn between leaving him to rest and staying to talk, she opted the latter, too hopeful to give up on what could be an incredibly rare chance to gain his trust and offer more of her own. She listened attentively, truthfully intrigued by his story. It... really sounded very odd, coming from the first ever Avatar, but fitting, given what she had seen of Wan. Her heart when out to him, though it was all in his past, and when he admitted to taking power, her eyes widened a little.

He'd find her still wide eyed when he turned to look at her, but she quickly dropped her gaze for a moment, then looked up with a slightly apologetic expression. "Sort of? I, uh... was kind of distracted..." She had, afterall, just been reuinited with her friends, one who, in her world, had just left to fight his final battle with the firelord and the other who had just been lying in the dirt with lightning coursing through his body at full force.

"But I remember you telling the children that that's the story you were going to tell. Was it about you?"

[raavashing]

He nodded and shifted his eyes to Mula, still idly petting her while she purred heavily into his chest.

"Yes. I wasn't born with the power to use the elements," he said in a neutral tone, knowing how that would sound to her. "No human was. I don't know when they will be, between my era and yours. But they weren't."

[oceanblue]

"There were no benders? How did you steal the power?"

The idea was positively baffling.

[raavashing]

"I convinced a group of hunters to let me leave the city with them. When hunters went out, they asked the Lion Turtle for the Power of Fire to use as protection against the spirits in the Spirit Wilds," he began. Telling this story was fairly easy. He'd told less detailed versions to the children at the hospital and to Leonardo.

"Once we were outside the city and in the forest, I pretended to be too scared to keep going and they sent me back to the city. Told me to give the fire back to the Lion Turtle, but didn't follow me to see if I did. I went back and I took the Power of Fire into the city. I broke the Lion Turtle's rules and stole Fire. I used that power to lead a raid on the food stores of the Chou Family. Their family had been chosen by the Lion Turtle further back than anyone could remember to rule over the city. They hoarded food even when so many within the walls went hungry. They cared about their power, not their citizens.

"I was caught, but I was the only one. They took me before the Lion Turtle and banished me. But I convinced the Lion Turtle to let me keep the Power of Fire so I could protect myself in the Spirit Wilds. No one expected me to last the night. Not even me."

[oceanblue]

"Wait, you got the Power from a lion turtle?" At this point, she was completely intrigued and admittedly confused. She listens as he continues, more and more curious as he goes. So he used it to help the people...

That... sounded familiar. She smiles weakly as it resonates with her own memories of doing something similar for the people of Jang Hui. Maybe she and Wan weren't so different.

Hearing that he had been captured, she found, was more surprising than she imagined it should have been. He was the avatar. To think of him younger and without all the power didn't sound like the avatar she had very much imagined when Aang had explained who Wan was. Simple beginnings, though, sometimes held more value than would seem.

"But you did," she says, not caring how obvious the fact is now. "How? What happened next?"

She's almost as eager as a child, and clearly just as curious. The way her blue eyes watch him says it all.

[raavashing]

"I managed to scrape myself out of a few terrifying encounters with the creatures of the Spirit Wilds," he answered as his eyes drifted to Mula and he finally smiled. "I met Mula the next morning. She was caught in a hunter's net. The same hunters I had tricked into letting me come with them. I climbed the tree she was hanging from and was going to get her down. The hunters came back before I could. But I got their attention and led them away from her."

He leaned his head forward to nuzzle Mula's cheek and she turned to nuzzle him back, happy for the attention.

"The hunters caught up with me and were probably going to kill me. But the Aye-Aye Spirit, a Spirit who guarded an oasis I had come across, stopped the hunters and saved me. He brought me back to the oasis and put me in the water. I was healed nearly instantly. I lived with those Spirits for a year. A Spirit Dragon taught me to control the power of fire and I helped protect the oasis from the humans of the the Lion Turtle I was born in. And Mula has been with me since."

[oceanblue]

Her eyes lifted to the cat deer as he told of their introduction, watching the two interact. She was a beautiful creature, and a part of her longed to reach out and pet her herself.

But she didn't, not wanting to upset either of them as Wan continued his story.

She shook her head slowly in disbelief as she took it all in. Spirit dragons and Lion turtles and Aye Aye Spirits? "That's...really incredible, Wan... The time I come from is nothing like all of that."

Her brow furrowed and she looked down at her hands. "Did the spirits teach you how to make the spirit water, too?"

[raavashing]

Wan leaned his head to the side so he could see Katara and give her the most incredulous look, "Make spirit water? I can't make spirit water. That's not how it works."

[oceanblue]

She returned his look with one of her own, completely baffled. "But you just did."

She paused, then, remembering the last she had heard him talk about the water. There's some somewhere on the turtle.

"...wait, you didn't know?!"

[raavashing]

"I haven't-" he started, and stopped as she asked about him not knowing. His confusion was great enough that for the moment it overpowered and drowned out the other feelings he had. Most obviously his fear and discomfort with her presence, "What are you talking about?"

Mula lifted her head off Wan's chest to look at Katara with her deep green eyes, also curious as to what was going on. Wan was getting a lot more animated.

[oceanblue]

She tensed with both their eyes on her, her own widening. "I couldn't have healed something that bad without it. You touched me and the water I was using turned into Spirit Water," she told him nervously, not daring to take her eyes away from his.

How could he not know what he was capable of?

...What else was he capable of?

[raavashing]

Wan pushed himself up, so he could sit, his legs still keeping away from Katara. He winced as his actions pulled on the wound and the muscles strained a bit. But it was nothing at all like it had been when she'd entered the room.

"I know you used spirit water," he replied, putting his hand to his side. "I could tell. But I didn't make it. You got it from my room. You had to have."

Right?

[oceanblue]

"Your room?" She shook her head, leaning back a little and watching him carefully.

"No... I heard you in here and came in thinking you were going to throw me out again, and when you let me heal you you... you did. You changed it. I could feel it."

Her shoulders stayed tense.

[raavashing]

"But I can't do that," he protested. Sure, he'd been the only one to find any of the Spirit Water so far, but he was really the only one who knew how to recognize it. There was no way could have made Spirit Water. That was imposs-

But what if it wasn't?

"I- I've never... How?"

[oceanblue]

She shook her head, wide eyed and just as confused-if not moreso-- than he was.

"I-I don't know. You just did it."

She began to gesture with her hands, demonstrating how he had grabbed her own as it hovered over where he had been laying previously. "You grabbed my hand, said 'spirit water', and it happened."

[raavashing]

He gulped, watching her hands as he was suddenly aware just how much they were moving about. Wan pulled himself a little further away from Katara and curled into Mula's side.

She was certainly convinced he'd been the one to do it. He didn't see how he could possibly have done so, but...

"Can you bring me some water? I'll try it," he murmured, his voice muffled a little by Mula's fur. "Don't expect it to work."

[oceanblue]

Once she noticed how he watched her hands and retreated, she lowered them again, then nodded, pushing away from him herself before standing and leaving the room.

She would return shortly with another bowl, settling down in the same place as before and sliding it to him across the wooden floor.

[raavashing]

Wan watched the water come over and once it was next to him he lifted it from the bowl without touching it. Testing how it 'felt' to his senses as he bent it into a ball. Satisfied it was regular water, he put it back down.

The next few moments were spent taking deep breaths because he was so unsure of what he was doing. He felt stupid. He felt like she was making fun of him. If he did this and all that ended up happening was her laughing...

Wan took a final deep breath and reached out to tentatively touch the water with his fingers, willing it to turn into spirit water.

To his great surprise, it did.

[oceanblue]

She watched him carefully, silently willing encouragement his way as he felt through the water she had provided. If only he could do it again...It would be remarkable. If she could convince him she was safe, they could help each other.

"You can do this, Wan...I promise," she finally allowed in a soft voice.

When he finally did attempt it, and succeeded, she switched her gaze from the water to him, her eyes widening.

Breathlessly, she whispered: "See?"

[raavashing]

Wan pulled his hand from the water and stared at it in sheer wonder, "But it's... how?"

He wasn't really asking her, but she was the only other person there and he had no idea how he'd done that. Raava was just as surprised.

[oceanblue]

She only shook her head in silence, her eyes never leaving him.

[raavashing]

He leaned into Mula more, mostly out of shock. He could make spirit water. He could make spirit water.

"All that spirit water I've been finding... I've been the one making it," he murmured more to himself than to anyone. "I didn't even notice."

[oceanblue]

"That... That's a good thing, right?" she asked hesitantly, watching him as he settled against the catdeer. At least, she thought it was a good thing. If he would allow her, she could carry spirit water again for her healing, as could Korra. He had even felt the remarkable difference himself, and knew how potent it was.