We all know that in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Kya, the mother of Sokka and Katara, sacrificed herself to protect her youngest child, the Last Waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, from the genocidal wrath of the Fire Nation.
This oneshot is not that story.
Katara is captured in the Fire Nation raid, and brought to the Waterbender Prison.
The story can be read here
.
Published on April 3, 2021.
Warning for UNMARKED SPOILERS below, as this story is only a oneshot.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation:
- The author doesn't explicitly reveal whether Kya survived or died in the Fire Nation raid that Katara was captured in. Although from what the reader can glimpse from Katara's memories, the situation does not look good for Kya.
- Hama is not mentioned at all in the story, but it can be presumed that her story played out the same way it did in canon, so she would have escaped decades ago, which justifies her lack of presence in the story.
- And I Must Scream: What life is like for Katara and the other Southern waterbenders in the Waterbender Prison. See Cold-Blooded Torture for more details.
- Barefoot Captives: Katara and the other Southern waterbenders are dressed only in ragged tunics and forced to go barefoot while they're imprisoned. Even after escaping, Katara has to endure Barefoot Poverty, since she's living in hiding and on the run in the wilderness.
- Barefoot Poverty: Given that Katara's only option for clothes is to steal from the military outposts that she raids, it's all but unlikely that there are any footwear her size for her to wear.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- A very bitter one at that. By the end of the story, Katara has managed to escape from the Waterbender Prison, but she's the only surviving Southern waterbender left. And she's had to bloodbend and kill multiple people (even if they're all Fire Nation soldiers) in order to escape. And there's no conceivable way for her to get out of the Fire Nation and return home to the Southern Water Tribe. And worse still, her childhood innocence has been completely and utterly shattered, and she doubts that she would be welcomed home with open arms, fearing that her tribe and family would think of her as a monster.
- The fact that Katara is still trapped in the Fire Nation by the end makes the ending a Downer Ending by virtue of
Fridge Horror, as she's not around to free Aang from the iceberg at the South Pole.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Katara. She's kidnapped, imprisoned, has to watch all of her brethren die in prison, and has to compromise her morals just to escape and survive. And she can't go back home.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The imprisoned waterbenders are kept in a constant state of starvation and dehydration, while facing humiliation from being dressed in rags and forced to go barefoot during their imprisonment in cages. The story takes the time to describe Katara's fear when the soldiers leer at her young body, the aching of her ribcage jutting out against her gaunt skin, and the sheer effort it takes for her to stay awake during the day.
- Darker and Edgier: One of the darkest AUs for Avatar: The Last Airbender as a whole. Katara, a character associated with hope, is taken away from her home as a child and locked up in a horrible prison, forcing her to endure a pathetic and torturous existence. Her situation gets more and more hopeless throughout the story, and even when she finally escapes, she's still pretty miserable by the end.
- Despair Event Horizon: Some of the older waterbenders cross this when they see an eight-year-old Katara brought into the prison.
- Downer Ending: The ending verges on this, as despite having escaped from the Waterbender Prison, Katara has no way of getting back home to the South Pole. And without Katara around to free Aang from the iceberg, things don't look too good for the rest of the world...
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Completely averted for poor Katara, who doesn't even get the mercy of a silver lining at the end of the story.
- Genocide Backfire: Maybe not a true karmic backfire in the sense that the show did, but presuming that Hama's story still played out the same way it did decades earlier, there are now two able and willing bloodbenders loose in the Fire Nation, as Katara learned bloodbending by herself out of desperation in order to escape from the Waterbender Prison.
- Harmful to Minors: Eight-year-old Katara is captured and imprisoned by the Fire Nation. Over the next few years, she has to cope with torture, and she sees all her fellow waterbenders die in the prison. To escape the prison and survive afterwards, she has to bloodbend and kill any soldier who gets in her way.
- Innocence Lost: Katara, at the tender age of eight, is taken away from her home by the Fire Nation and locked up in an inhumane prison. There, she watches the rest of her brethren perish and resorts to learning about bloodbending all by herself to avoid sharing their fate.
- Laser-Guided Karma: This is how Katara views the fates of the soldiers that she kills with her bloodbending. Given that they participated in the torturous and inhumane imprisonment of her and her people, as well as the ruthless subjugation of many other innocents, as well as the fact that she only targets soldiers and not civilians unlike Hama, Katara may well be justified in her stance.
- Last of Her Kind: Poor Katara has to watch all the remaining waterbenders from her tribe die in the cages around her while she's imprisoned.
- Mama Bear: Kya tried her best to protect Katara from the Fire Nation. Unfortunately, in this universe, she did not succeed. There are also the female waterbenders in the Waterbender Prison who try to comfort Katara.
- Papa Wolf: The male waterbenders in the Waterbender Prison try to comfort Katara while she's imprisoned.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Kya still dies trying to protect Katara from imprisonment, but unlike in canon, she failed completely.
- Sole Survivor: Excluding Hama (who doesn't appear in this story), Katara is the only Southern waterbender who lives long enough to find a way to get out from the Fire Nation's Tailor-Made Prison for waterbenders.
- Tailor-Made Prison: As in the show, the waterbenders are kept in cages suspended off the ground, far away from water. And they are given only the bare minimum of food and water to survive.
- Time Skip: According to
Word of God, there is a one-year time skip from when Katara escapes the Waterbender Prison to when the story ends. - Took A Level In Cynicism: Years of cruel imprisonment has left Katara devoid of all her innocence and hope.
- Trauma Conga Line: Over the course of the story, Katara is captured, imprisoned, tortured, and forced to lose her innocence and become more ruthless in order to escape the prison with her life. And she still has to cope with surviving all by herself in the wilderness when the story ends.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Once Katara learns how to do bloodbending all by herself, she uses it to escape and kill any Fire Nation soldier she comes across.
- Would Hurt a Child: Katara was handled roughly when she was captured and taken onboard the Fire Navy ship, and by the time she arrives at the prison she's battered, bruised and beaten — possibly for the soldiers' amusement.
- You Can't Go Home Again: For Katara, an escaped prisoner hiding in the wilderness, living on the run, there's no way for her to find or obtain any transport or passage back home to the South Pole, given that she has to steal food, clothes, and medicine from Fire Nation military outposts just to get by. On a more tragic level though, Katara doubts that her tribe would even want her back, if they knew what she had done to escape the Waterbender Prison.
