AN: This story is AU and post Sozins Comet. Aang did not defeat the firelord. Katara, shattered and broken by the realization of her worst fears, has disappeared in a reality of her own making. This is the story of her re-emergence.

Shell Shock

Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. Yet it is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep.

Prison

I grin widely, lips chapped and cracking as they stretch over my teeth. Back home, at last. I am back home.

A laugh bubbles up inside me and and I shake with silent laughter. My shaking makes a sound, the hollow clunk of metal on metal. I admire the gleam of grey circling my ankle.

The floor is cold and hard beneath my hand and I wonder briefly why there are no furs, why home looks empty and bare. Why is the door flap grey and still? And the small window with bars, there was never bars before... was there?

The thought disturbs and I cast it from my mind easily. For the briefest moment there was something desperate and screaming in me, at me, irrational and crazy and wrong. I focusing instead on this, on being home. I let the knowing soothe my ruffled senses.

I poke at the dried flecks of blood on my ankle with a detached sort of curiosity. My fingernail thunks hollowly against the metal.

PLUNK... PLUNK, PLUNK, PLUNK...