Katara has a criminal empire to run, a family to protect, and plenty of shadows from the past who want to tear it all down.
Part 1: The Wind Howls (1/2) - She has him back, and everything should be perfect now, but it’s not. She’s more worried than ever. And she hasn’t slept in days.
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A/N: Mafiosa!Katara and Gaang™ gang because I want it and am willing it into existence. Basically took “Sokka and I, we’re your family now” and made my take on a bending-mafia-families AU lmao
Words: 1,748
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Katara punished her book for the weather and nearly tore it when she flipped the page. The words blurred again. She glared, hoping to become a firebender and burn a hole through the damn thing.
The door opened without a knock, and the frame of her vision shook, bordering on crimson. Mercy was still a foreign concept, and nearly ninety-six hours awake had mutilated her ‘moral code’ into watery dough. A few twitches of her fingers closed her hand around veins and arteries, but her bending recognized her intruder’s old blood and fresh wounds before she could register why her power wasn’t listening. It was worse than a tranquilizer. Worse than chloroform in a black alley. Aang’s heartbeat pinned her to her seat and ripped out her fangs like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Katara remembered that time was a thing that would still pass whether or not she kept breathing. Fresh rain met the wall of windows behind her. Her thumb dragged over the ear of the page. She crawled into the dull thump of his heartbeat and sank into her chair, hiding in his rhythm like it was a cave.
The soft click of the door startled her like it was a strike of lightning, stuttering her breath and rallying her instincts to probe for the nearest skein of water. She shifted, impatient for him to be closer, waiting for enemies to burst from the shadows.
She re-read the same paragraph until he limped — badly, on the left side — to her desk. He paused, thinned Katara’s sanity, and sat in one of the leather chairs across from her. His silence filled the room with static. The full moon taunted her with power for all the wrong problems. The storm put a distance of hisses and low rumbles between them, bleating her pulse against the drums of her ears.
“What are you doing?” Aang gently asked.
Katara propped her head on her fist, her voice like paint peeling from the side of an old ship. “I’m reading.”
“You’ve been staring at that page for seven minutes.”
“I’m reading slowly.”
“You’re sulking.”
She almost looked up. “I am not sulking.”
“And now you’re lying.”
Something made a spark, and Katara slammed her book, still open, on her desk. “I am not lying.”
Her almost-shout did things that the thunder could only dream of, but before Katara could retreat, Aang leaned forward, onto her desk, mirroring her posture and leaving inches between their faces. It brought the smell of the wind in his clothes, and his element tickled her frayed hair from her cheek. His presence was warm. In every way. Warm hues, warm feelings, warm heartbeat, warm memories—
It took longer for the crimson to leave her vision this time. The thin wound wasn’t the worst, but it was the most noticeable, crawling across his face and over the bridge of his nose like a comet touching from beneath one eye to under the other. It was a bleach-white horizon that his eyes sat just above, but what he leveled her with didn’t allow her the freedom to consider her to-kill list in detail.
Katara had been shot, captured, tortured, ransomed, and used as a bartering chip far more times than she dared to remember, but even oceans would part for the look that Aang gave her when she tried to dance around the truth with him and win. She scowled, not that it helped her. Intensity clouded his eyes in a smokescreen, and grey irises darted in short, sharp glances that wouldn’t have been noticeable if he was any further away.
Katara’s finger itched to turn the page. Aang’s breathing had been steady, but when he exhaled again, closing his eyes, it took the strength out of his shoulders and kicked her in the chest.
“You promised you would stop looking into this.”
Katara snapped the book shut and set it aside. “I told you to stay away from the hospital.”
“I had to see her. And you went there, too.”
He didn’t mention a name, but still, Katara’s nails dug into her hands and threatened to draw blood. She seethed, but her fire didn’t phase him. Always him. Only him. Even in her office she was powerless.
Lips pulled into a tight line, she took a calming breath and held it, waiting for it to start working. Aang didn’t look away. His smokescreen was looking more like a storm and shone lightning like steel blades clashing.
She knew what her glare did to good men, and she knew it didn’t work on him, but she looked away all the same. Her eyes found the book, and the pins and needles from her held breath suddenly became the cold gasps of a child who couldn’t run fast enough. She saw the splintering of ancient wooden doors and the darkness that spilled from them. She felt the ice of new irons and the strain they put on growing bones.
And the screams. There should have been screams…
Katara blinked and was back in her office, greeted by the sheets of bullets on her windows and the warm heat of Aang’s attention. She looked at him. He was the same as her gaze had left him.
She didn’t mean to sound so defeated, but she was so tired of losing. “What were you thinking, Aang?”
“Katara, you’re scared and angry and hurt and I get it, but you don’t have to save me anymore. I’m right here.”
“I can’t sit by and do nothing. If I don’t fight for you, then no one will.”
She had seen men recoil from a bullet through the heart, but Aang caught himself just before the stage of crumpling to the ground. His gaze dropped, staggering to her necklace and then to her desk. “…I guess you’re right.”
Katara scrambled to pick up his pieces. “That’s not what I—”
“I know.” He splayed his palm, pretending to read the lines. “You didn’t mean it.”
Lightning lit up the room, like a picture being taken. Katara combed back her hair, fiddling with her low ponytail, and gave up trying to keep her empty hands occupied. “Can you just—” She grabbed the air like she could hold onto the problem. “Can you just promise me that you won’t do something like that again? Please?”
It was the closest she had ever — ever — come to begging, but Aang kept his eyes on his palm. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m not one of your goons to boss around,” he said, still without looking up, though his brow furrowed with a small crease.
“At least they know their limits. None of this would have happened if you had just let me handle it. This is my family, and that includes you, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because you need me, too,” he said, with a soft voice that could shake a stadium. “And I might just be a speedbump to knock you on your ass and make you think twice before you do it anyways, but you’re my family too.”
The silence yawned, hissing with a thick but fine sheet of rain. If it weren’t for her desk, Katara would have hugged him. Probably. Doubt opened a pit in her belly, and her throat threatened to seal shut. Instinct and intuition went to war and left her with the sinking feeling that touching him would just prove how far away he was.
Aang still didn’t look up from his hand. Katara tried to find the right words and, more importantly, how to say them, but all she could manage after so many years of lying was a tender inflection of his name. “Aang…”
“They made me forget your face,” he said, deflating like saying it out loud finally made the scars real. His voice was watery, broken on the last vowel, and took a sledgehammer to Katara’s chest. “And now you…” He gestured. “Now you’re there and I’m here and…” The word died. He paused, then dragged his eyes up to hers. “You think of them when you look at me, so I see them, too. They scare me. And now you scare me. And I don’t want to be scared of you because I don’t want to stop looking at you. But it scares me. A lot.”
“I…Aang, I’m sorry—”
“I know. I know,” he said as he stood. His eyes roamed her empty desk, trying to find something of hers and settling on the book, which broke what was left of him. “…You didn’t mean it.”
Katara stood, but the desk was still in the way. “Aang, wait—”
“I'm going to take a walk to…,” he trailed, more in his own thoughts than in her office. “…I’ll get Zuko so you don’t worry.”
She should have gone after him. She should have done something, but her legs were pillars of cement. The door bled fluorescent yellow light into her twilight and took him, in his red and orange robes from across the world, with it.
Something cold crawled out of the old attic of where her heart was supposed to be. It cracked, weaving thin white scars — like his — in a web across her vision. She braced herself on the desk. There was nowhere to hide. No heartbeat. Not even a wound to distract her with its pain. She closed her eyes and bared her teeth and wished she had the strength to cry without him. Just this once, without him. She was so full and so empty and on the verge of combustion—
Something broke, something small, like a cornerstone, and Katara plopped into her chair. She breathed just like he taught her and eventually rubbed her face. Her bones ached. Everything ached. She was so tired of losing. She just wanted to sleep without knowing that she would wake up, still stuck in her worst nightmare.
Thunder growled above the city. Katara picked up the book. It was blurry, no matter how much she blinked. She dragged her nail over the scuff marks, feeling the minute pilling of old leather like a topographic map of the past.
Aang’s absence reminded her why she was reading, but she wasn’t sure if she could anymore. The book took on the weight of a planet, her arms even moreso.
Realization dawned slowly, like a dog attack in slow motion. The thought was a shadow bleeding out of the tall grass to fill her stomach with ice.
She peeled open the pages, praying to whoever would answer.
It burned. It burned like fire never could. It ate her away from the inside out, like cinders consuming a dry leaf in the time it took to blink.
The raindrops became smaller, like a mist, and gently brushed the windows. Standing was a miracle, but Katara dragged her feet around her desk, falling into Aang’s chair.
It was warm, like his shadow always was. She crawled into the footprint his life left behind, imagining his heartbeat in the hug of plush leather and the smell of salt and sand that reminded her where home was. Katara told herself to breathe and sank into the reasons why. Her legs curled beneath her, like when she was a girl, back when she wore her mother’s dresses to imagine herself a hero and not in three-piece suits to mask bloodstains.
She read the book slowly, from the beginning again, trying to love even the words that hurt. When lightning struck, she held it closer, trying to protect it, even though she knew that she couldn’t.
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Don’t know if I described it well enough, but Aang’s ‘scar’ (quotes because it eventually seals up into a thin line) is supposed to be like the bottom arch of the Yu Yan archers’ tattoos.
You guys!! It’s official, my very first original project is currently underway! I’m very excited about it, every time I’ve tried to do something original it’s quickly fizzled out but I’ve already got a rough outline going, so it’s looking good! There’s going to be a bit of everything sprinkled in, kings, love, demons, witches, mages and a whole lot of magic haha. As most of you know I don’t really world build very often but I am loving this newfound freedom it gives me. I can’t wait to share it with you guys ^^
you know i'll tell you why living in brazil sucks major ass. saw you comissions price and they are really amazing and i was like wow i may be able to afford and then i calculated it to reals and it was like R$115 because dolar costs 4 times more here
Oh my gosh what?? That’s so much DX I’m sorry the exchange rate is so steep. If it’s any consolation though, I don’t have a minimum amount of words or anything so if you wanted like a 500 word drabble I could try and compress your idea into something that short so at least it’d be something! Think of it as a writer’s version of a doodle haha! So something smaller like that would only be $5 bucks and maybe more doable if you really wanted?
do you have a prediction to when your comissions will open?
Hello! Thank you for your interest ^^
Yes I was planning either May or June as a summer commissions type of thing. Wanted to give myself a bit of time to get back into the swing of things first since I’ve taken two months off. As always my patrons will have first dibs. If there’s any spots left then I’ll open it up to tumblr, otherwise I’ll get a waiting list going. There will be 3 official slots and 3 waiting list slots :)
Pricing will be the same: I charge $1 per 100 words, up to 1000 words, and $1.50 for every 100 words after that. (e.g. a 2000 word fic would be $25)
Hmmm. I’ve never really considered it. I don’t like the idea of not being credited, but it depends on what the project is I suppose. If you message me we could talk about it more in depth :)
