Chapter Text
It was a few months after the Fire Nation invasion attempt, while they were still in the North trying to finish Aang’s training and helping the city to recover, when everything very suddenly began to suck for Katara in a whole new way.
She woke up one morning sweating and plagued by strange scents. People who had been perfectly tolerable the day before now stank like fish or mold or too-sweet flowers. But that was bearable. She could have held her breath or breathed through her mouth and gotten used to it.
She couldn’t get used to the staring. All day, wherever she went, people - mostly men but a couple of women too - would see her, perhaps even smile and wave in recognition, but then do a sharp double-take and fix her with a hard stare. Like they were wolf-bats scenting a cat-rabbit. Katara carried on the same as before, stood tall and walked at the same steady speed. She spent training hitting the other students extra hard to drive them back, beyond some extended personal-space boundary that hadn’t been there yesterday. Only one of them gave her the look, but she had a weird feeling that they all needed to be driven back.
None of them were good enough.
Sokka was the first to finally say something. He came in after his day in training with the other warriors, smelling like his usual foul smells, but today he also had a particularly strong sock stink. He came through the apartment door, drew a breath to greet them, but just stared at Katara in horror instead.
“Oh no.”
He had finished his patchy presentation last year, shortly after their run-in with Jet. Before that, Katara hadn’t known anything about alphas. Then, suddenly, her brother had bulked up a little and started being even more obnoxious. He played it all off as kind of a joke - “See? Clearly, I was meant to be the leader. You two beta normies can sit back and relax now because ole Sokka’s got it all under control.” After which they almost immediately had to save him from drowning in that storm.
For all Sokka’s jokes, though, it clearly stressed him out. He ended up in more conflicts with other alphas and seemed to draw attention more frequently. He’d been in at least three pretty nasty fights since they got to the North Pole. Sokka didn’t usually get in fights at all. And while a part of Katara wanted to chastise him for acting like a child, she didn’t, because she could see how hard he was struggling.
Yugoda had been such a blessing. She explained a great deal about alphas, including that they had to deal with unusually intense emotions, especially early in their presentation and, of course, should they encounter an omega.
“What’s an omega?” Katara had asked. But Yugoda only smiled and shook her head.
“Your chances of ever encountering one are terribly slim - even as much as you young people travel. There hasn’t been an omega presentation here in over twenty years. So there’s really no reason to worry about it.”
But now, a few months later, it seemed there very much was a reason to worry about it.
“You’re an omega?” Sokka shouted through his shirt where he had pulled it up over his nose. He pointed at her, a little wild-eyed. “Katara, as your big brother, I demand you stop right now and suck that weird girly smell back inside your eternally childlike body!”
Katara had thrown up her arms and argued with him for a time while Aang sat watching and occasionally chipping in, so calm and reasonable and reassuring and infuriating and self-righteous...
The next day, she had gone to Yugoda and received a very different lesson.
“You must wash all of your clothes and bedding - wash it all very thoroughly. Most especially, the ribbon of your necklace. You might consider replacing the ribbon. Against your neck that way, for years, it will be heavily loaded with your scent. Maybe that wasn’t a problem before you presented, but now... Better to be safe.”
She stood over her work table in the store room of the healing hut, tamping bitter-smelling herbs into a jar and avoiding eye-contact. Katara watched her with a doubtful moue, not liking the idea of trading out the ribbon that had touched her mother’s throat and deciding in advance that a wash would be perfectly sufficient...
“Scent is extremely provocative to alphas and you must do everything you can to avoid notice. Use this suppressant twice a day, every day,” Yugoda said, twisting the cap down hard and clacking the jar down on the edge of the table nearest Katara. She still didn’t look up, reaching down a different jar from a high shelf and measuring out more herbs into a paper packet. “Suppressing will not stop your presentation, but it will slow it so that... no major changes will come on too suddenly. Most alphas won’t be able to pick up your scent when you’re fully dosed - but there is always a chance... accidents can happen.”
She sealed the envelope and jotted hasty instructions on the back, then placed it gingerly atop the jar of suppressants. Katara would only realize much later that it was a contraceptive. Yugoda settled her warm hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. Her eyes, finally meeting Katara’s, were sad. But Katara was picking up a peculiar scent from her, an acrid smell that subtly suggested distaste.
“Girls must be mindful. Omegas must be ready.”
What she meant had swiftly become evident when, before her suppressant dosage could fully muffle her scent, a couple of warriors followed her from the market and tried to stop her on her way home. Of course, Katara was a master waterbender in a city made of water. She sank them in the walkway up to their shoulders, then stood over them with her basket, telling them how disgusted she was by their behavior until the guards came.
“What were we supposed to do?” one of them asked, red-faced more out of anger than embarrassment. “You smell like a dinner bell sounds. I’ve never known a woman who smelled so good.”
“I am a sixteen-year-old girl,” Katara snipped. “Not a meal somebody laid out on a table for you.”
“More like a caribou-yak doe with her tail up,” the other warrior growled as he watched her steadily, “driving every buck around her into rut. You’re the one doing this. Not us.”
The next day, she was informed that those warriors had been released - because they had only been following their instincts and alphas could be that way sometimes. She had been encouraged to try just talking alphas down in the future because “there’s really no need to turn a misunderstanding into a fight.”
The only misunderstanding so far as Katara could see was the expectation that she should be accommodating and permit people who did not even know her to intrude on her sense of safety in order to liken her to food or an animal. And that was less of a misunderstanding and more of an offensive erosion of her humanity by a tribe that struggled to even allow her a chance to learn in the first place.
And the fact that Yugoda had wordlessly given her a contraceptive - a thing, she had eventually realized, usually reserved for married women - as if expecting it was a foregone conclusion that Katara was going to need it... As if it was just a matter of time. As if it was expected that some alpha was eventually going to rape her and Katara just needed to be ready for that to happen.
Sokka had insisted on accompanying her everywhere after that and they had shortly made ready to depart the North Pole. There had been some weird pressure to stay. Yugoda showed up on their doorstep the night before and, sitting by Katara at the fire, she had whispered so the boys wouldn’t overhear... from their room where they had retired - and shut the door...
“It won’t be better in the Earth Kingdom,” she said with painful gentleness. “Alphas are everywhere, visible and forceful in a way that omegas usually aren’t. An omega who stumbles into the wrong hands at the wrong time can become little more than a slave to her own body’s rhythm - and few understand or believe that it is not her choice to do so.”
And that was when - hours before Katara’s departure, almost too late - she finally explained the thing about omegas that was arguably most important for her to know; they went into heat. Katara listened in ever-increasing horror, certain this couldn’t be real. It had to be some kind of myth. Only, this was exactly what those two warriors had been referring to. A doe with her tail up. An animal invitation delivered through scents and postures. Mating season.
“Do... alphas really go into rut, too?” she asked, wide-eyed and quiet.
Yugoda nodded, face tight with grim warning. “The scent of an unpaired omega in heat... changes alphas. It doesn’t matter what kind of man he is starting out, once he slips into rut, that man no longer has control over what he does - the alpha takes over. And the alpha’s only goal is to... breed successfully with the omega. There are some... physiological changes as well...” Her face reddened and she pressed on, “but the important thing is the threat of violence. Alphas have killed other alphas over omegas in heat.”
Katara pressed a numb hand over her mouth.
“Your safest option,” Yugoda finished with her now-familiar sad urgency, “is to find a compatible alpha as soon as possible and let him mate you permanently. Once he bites your gland, your scent will change again and your body will no longer send out the call. You will still go into heat twice a year and experience much the same... desperation... but you will only be drawn to your mate after that, and his-”
Katara opened her mouth to deny this insane new twist, but something else came out. “How long do I have? Before I... go into heat.”
Yugoda shrugged. “My texts suggest it varies widely between omegas. Since you’ve only just presented and are taking your suppressants, it... shouldn’t happen for at least a few months. Perhaps as long as a year. The suppressants will slow the process, but eventually you will run out... and your body may very well find a way to work around it. Some say your first heat can even be triggered by encountering an especially compatible alpha - so there is a chance it could happen at any time. It would be so very dangerous to wait until you are on the cusp of heat before making a choice. You must be proactive in this. You cannot wait.”
Yugoda looked at her hands, folded in her lap, then into the fire, struggling for words.
“I cannot stress enough that your mind will not be your own. Omegas have been known to beg anyone around them, even family members, for relief. Katara, you must think of your brother, too.”
“Ugh! Sokka? Setting aside for a second how crazy that is, he smells more like feet than ever. There’s just no way.”
“Understand me when I tell you then, heat will completely alter your perspective. Even if you manage to avoid... that, you could easily emerge from the frenzy to find yourself trapped with a complete stranger who will treat you cruelly or take advantage. And then, there will be no fighting your connection to him; he will be the only one who can... give you what your body needs.” She shook her head woefully. “Designation is a deeply rooted and powerful part of how your body and mind work. I can’t claim to fully understand it, but as a healer I can tell you that trying to fight what your body is is difficult as swimming upriver.”
Katara pressed her cold hands over her hot face and just breathed for a long moment. “This is just... so terrible and embarrassing and frustrating. How am I going to help Aang and deal with this at the same time?”
“Perhaps,” Yugoda ventured softly, “there are ways in which it will make you an even stronger ally. Omegas and alphas are two parts of a whole, like Yin and Yang or healing and waterbending.”
“Great,” she spat back, her heart choked with bitterness. “So somehow I’m going to be a stronger ally when I lose my mind and can’t do anything but beg some random guy to... to get me pregnant?”
“Heat only comes twice a year, assuming you do not become pregnant... Again, if you choose a mate now, you could avoid so much difficulty later. You could have your pick of the alphas in the city, you know. There is not a one who would not jump at the chance to claim the only Water Tribe omega.”
Katara thought about it, folding her arms. “How many of these alphas would be supportive of me being a waterbender? How many would be willing to go on this journey with me?”
Yugoda would not meet her eye. “It is difficult to say... Perhaps if you stay a while longer-”
“Aang needs to find an earthbending teacher and I am not staying behind here to start my new life as a helpless, mindless baby-factory. I spent years fighting to become a waterbender. I’m not about to give up being the thing I worked so hard to become.”
And she had not. She had taken her suppressants religiously every morning and evening for almost another two years, sticking to the dosage Yugoda had said would work. When she ran low, she consulted with a deeply flustered healer in the Earth Kingdom and got something slightly different that seemed to work just as well. Sometimes she would catch an especially enticing scent in a town or an alpha would cast her a searching look, but it never came to anything. In the mean time, she trained Aang, every day putting a finer polish on his waterbending. They found Toph and Aang started his earthbending training and they were working on establishing some kind of balance in the group when disaster struck.
That tank full of scary girls started chasing them and, after a couple of nights without sleep, Katara’s suppressants began to fail. Worse, one of the girls in that tank - that firebender - was an alpha. And even though she hadn’t caught much of her scent since that night in Omashu, Katara remembered the particularly vicious burned-house smell of her and knew this was probably the last alpha she wanted catching her in heat.
The pursuit was relentless and Katara’s existence narrowed to keen suffering. Her skin felt hypersensitive, too hot even at night when she iced herself down. All clothing, including her underclothes, chafed terribly, but she couldn’t just hang around naked. She was endlessly irritable - although that could have been the lack of sleep. It hardly mattered. She was miserable and making everyone around her miserable too.
And throbbing like a pulse under all of it was an ever-swelling need. She could never find enough time or privacy to even try to sate it.
Sokka decided to stay behind and set a trap on the second day. “Katara, I love you and want to protect you more than anything, but this is getting too weird. Your smell is changing from sour stewed seaprunes to savory stewed seaprunes - and I can’t have that. It’s. Too. Weird. Stay with Aang and Toph, give Appa a bath, and I’ll meet back up with you guys in a week at the place with the thing.”
Toph dug him a massive trench with a few stomps and, as they flew off, Sokka waved and set about arranging sticks and turf over it to make it look like a regular expanse of ground. Katara watched him until she couldn’t see him anymore, dread twisting her stomach.
Because he was right. His sock-stink had actually started to smell not entirely bad that morning and that was... really too weird. Still, it made her terribly anxious to leave him behind. Mostly because he was her brother and she loved him and he was in danger on his own...
But there was also that little voice in the back of her head - a voice that had been growing steadily louder for the past few days - that scented Sokka and thought safe alpha.
In that way, it was a relief to part from him. Katara held onto that and reminded herself constantly that they would meet up in a week at the place with the thing. Sokka could take care of himself until then. She had her own problems to deal with.
Whatever Sokka did, it must have worked, because they were able to wash Appa and catch a nap in the afternoon sun. Except Katara. Every time Katara started to drift off, she needed to adjust her hips, flex her back. Toph eventually felt the distant patter of racing lizard feet, so they flew low and fast and used every trick they could to stay out of sight.
But losing their pursuers didn’t solve the other problem.
Toph left them the next morning. “I haven't even presented yet and you’re driving me nuts, Katara. Like in a bad way. Your nagging has reached previously unseen levels. And having the time to sleep doesn’t do us any good when you’re up all night wiggling like a freak. I’ll take care of myself. You should try it sometime. Maybe I’ll see you at the place with the thing. Maybe not. Bye.”
After that, it was just her and Aang.
That should have been alright. Aang was her friend, and seemed to be a beta so most of the smells Katara was generating flew right over his head. He was the Avatar, destined to become a hero and do what no one else could possibly do and save the world. He was funny and sweet and playful and...
...and sometimes he looked at her with a tender hopefulness that Katara wasn’t sure what to do with. She knew it was a crush, and a pretty serious one; he’d had a crush on her for years now. And yet, it never seemed to be a conversation she could take part in. There wasn’t really a moment to voice her own feelings - well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had often had chances to express her love for Aang, her admiration for all he was doing and could do, and her trust and belief in his abilities. It was just her total lack of romantic attraction to him that never had a proper moment to be discussed. Because Aang’s feelings weren’t subject to conversation at all. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, just... wait for her to come around.
Which was fine when he was a little kid - but he wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was sixteen, starting to look less like a boy and more like the man he was becoming... and he sometimes... especially lately... smelled... kind of interesting.
Which was about as unsettling as Sokka’s sock-stink becoming not-unpleasant. Worse, the voice in the back of Katara’s head seemed to be growing louder by the hour and now, as she rode in the saddle with Aang just upwind, it started chiming in constantly.
Not an alpha. Not right. But better than nothing at all. Nothing will hurt most.
Katara silenced the voice every time, but the seed was planted and the root was stubborn. She was beginning to understand that, while Aang loved her and would do his best to help her, she couldn’t spend her heat alone with him. It would be too confusing. Because she might tell him every moment she was lucid that he needed to just ignore the things she did and said and begged for, but she knew in her heart that he couldn’t watch her suffer when he very much wanted to give her the thing she was asking for.
And if it happened during her heat, when she had no control and wasn’t really making conscious choices, there would never be a conversation at all about how she really felt. Aang would feel like she’d given him something - even though she hadn’t had a choice in the matter at all - and then, once her heat ended, taken it away. He wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t want to understand, why she might not want to continue in the same way afterward. Their friendship would be strained, maybe fractured...
...or Katara would set aside her misgivings and just accept that a relationship with Aang was her inevitable future. She would buckle down and commit, even though it didn’t feel quite right, because that was what was needed from her to keep their little family afloat.
All day, Katara stole furtive glances at Aang as they put more distance between themselves and the scary girls - who were probably still chasing them somehow but, without Toph, they couldn’t be sure without risking being spotted. Every hour, Katara’s thread of unease only grew. It didn’t matter how friendly and upbeat Aang was, she couldn’t stop imagining what was going to happen when she got desperate. And the little shivers of pleasure and disgust and dread and despair she got thinking about it just kept coming - but building steadily the whole time was Katara’s resolve.
They made camp in a cave near a stream and Katara acted as normal as possible. She made dinner and laughed at his jokes and stories and then washed their dishes and settled into her blankets. And once Aang was breathing the deep rhythm of full slumber, she packed a bag and her bedroll, hushed Mom, and sneaked away.
She walked all night, being careful not to leave any obvious signs of her passage, and shortly after sunrise she came upon the dusty ruins of a town. At first, she skirted wide around it. But as she passed, she realized no one was stirring there. It was abandoned.
That was how she ended up hunkered down in a dilapidated building - one of the few with an intact roof and working doors and shutters she could close against the heat and light. All through the baking hours of the day, she slept fitfully, frequently waking to freeze some of her drinking water and run the ice over her skin, wet her clothes. It seemed almost to steam off her but, for an increasingly short time, it was enough to alleviate the misery.
And then she realized she was alone and didn’t have to restrain herself anymore. She stripped naked. Her hands skated over her skin almost constantly after that, offering a different sort of comfort. It was difficult to reach orgasm, and when she did the relief was short lived. It didn’t make the unsettled hunger go away, but rolling her nipples and sliding a finger or two through her slippery labia at least distracted her from the unrelenting heat.
She wasn’t even trying to come when she hit upon the thing she was missing. Her mind had slipped to one of the alphas she had scented in the last village they stopped in some weeks ago. She hadn’t even seen him, had just smelled something like leather and animal sweat that zinged along her senses. He would be rugged, big and strong as alphas often were, with wide, callused hands and a questing tongue and a cock that could reach the maddening itch deep inside her that she needed scratched. She imagined following that scent to a stable or an alley where he would find her and snatch her clothes off and take her roughly, fill her up, spill his hot seed inside her-
Katara gasped through the orgasm, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling as she clenched and pulsed around her three slender fingers. They weren’t enough - she felt a painful twinge as her muscles squeezed tight and forced them out. But the tension broke at last and, finally, she was able to sleep a couple exhausted hours. As she drifted off, she entertained the faintest regret; if it was so easy to gain relief with just the memory of a complete stranger’s scent, maybe she had been a little short-sighted. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so awful to find an alpha before things got so dire...
She woke near sunset to the darkening house around her and sweat dotting her skin and heat itching every inch of her like crawling insects. Her fingers had returned to tugging at her nipples when she heard careful footsteps on the low front porch.
Katara threw on her dress in silence and had already crept a few steps toward the door when it hit her. His scent, like some arid landscape she had once visited but didn’t quite remember. He smelled of sweat and thirst and distance and determination. And an electric kind of promise - the way the air smells before a storm. His scent on her tongue had her mouth watering, lips parting to draw in more, to invite him even though he could not see her.
The voice inside her keened her jubilation.
Alpha is here! He found us! He is a good and relentless hunter and-!
Katara bared her teeth and readied herself to fight for her freedom, her autonomy, her humanity.