Freedom

Chapter 5: The War They Sacrificed For

Katara chose to stay behind with the other crew. Some men needed to be healed. They didn't have the luxury of healers on the battlefield, since the men refused to learn.

Some injuries were simple cuts and bruises, a few sprained ankles that they had been walking on for far too long. But two men were far beyond her control. The first came to her with a patch covering his eye. When she pulled back the patch, his mangled socket appeared. The eye ball threatened to pop out and was being supported by flimsy tissue.

She didn't need to say he would never see out of that side again. He already knew.

She asked him how it happened and it didn't surprise her when he said he took an arrow to his eyelid. He was lucky to be alive at all.

The second man unwrapped a cloth around his fingers. They were raw and crushed. The skin was so bruised and swollen that the hand was unrecognizable. She hoped he would regain some function back, and there was a possibility he would if he was healed everyday for the next four weeks. But she couldn't stay that long, so the injury would go unchecked for who knew how long.

Every bone was broken, every nerve was damaged. She healed what she could but only spirit water would heal it that quickly.

She suggested to both men that they return home. But they both refused, saying something like one eye or one hand was good enough to fight. She just hoped that maybe they would make it home one day.

They would be casualties of war, even if they did make it until the end. Neither would live the same life they did before. They both would live with constant reminders of the war they fought in, the war they sacrificed for.

But she guessed that was inherently the point of war. It takes and takes from all sides, until some one has nothing left to give anymore. That's when they surrender.

She never realized it before. She always thought the Fire Nation was one of prosperity, at least that's the way they made it seem. But Zuko had lost everything, his home, his mother. He has given most of his life to the Fire Nation, but what have they given him back? Every ounce of it has gone to the war.

They take and take and take.

The Fire Nation had to have soldiers like those two men. They had to have men who lost an eye or a hand, or even worse. Would those men be treated like heroes? Giving up everything for the good of their country? Or would they be normal peasants when they returned home to poverty and filth? If the injury didn't kill them, the infection would.

When she left the only home she had ever known to go learn to waterbend, everything seemed so simple. There was a war but she was beneath it. She never was in the center of it. Most of the world didn't know the Avatar had returned and they were just waiting for a miracle, just like she had been before Aang arrived.

But they were riding Elephant Koi.

And sleeping under the stars every night.

War didn't seem so bad.

But this was the center of it. She was lucky to have seen only a badly injured eye and a crushed hand. Somewhere out there, some one is fighting the hard fight and the casualties are much worse.

She was scared to find out what that was like.

Would Zuko be a casualty of the war? Just like his mother and her mother before that.

She shuddered at the thought as she bending water over a sliced forearm. Would they be wandering through a Fire Nation village and see a picture of his body hanging limp from a post? Or would she hear whispers of how he screamed as he died? Is that how she would find out if he didn't make it?