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He breathes out.
The bedsheet is on fire.
He had tried to keep it in, tried to control the tempest of emotions within him, but his hold on the reins slipped. And now his bed is on fire.
With a practiced hand, Zuko brings the smoldering fabric to a few simmering embers, mild enough that he can dunk them in his room’s water basin and extinguish them for good.
He hopes that the innkeeper won’t notice the missing sheet, but is prepared to pay a fine in the morning all the same.
As the lingering smoke begins to filter out the open window, Zuko sits carefully on one side of his stripped bed. And then, after a few moments of labored breaths, he slips off the edge and onto the floor, his hands holding his head as it hangs between his bent knees.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there for, but eventually a soft rap on his door calls back his attention.
“Zuko?”
He grits his teeth against the cautious sympathy dripping from her voice.
“I...I could smell the smoke from my room, and I just wanted to check in on you. How—how are you doing?”
Something burns his throat, preventing him from speaking. Something like shame.
“I guess that’s a pretty useless question right now. I’m sorry. I just...” Her defeated sigh is muffled by the heavy wooden door. “I just don’t really know what else to say.”
Her mother is dead, and he’s the one upset. Upset just because his own perfectly healthy mother doesn’t want to come home. Upset because she has a new life with new kids and a new family. Upset because a small, terrible part of him can’t stop whispering that it would have been better if she actually had been dead.
“Zuko, please...” There’s a soft thump as her forehead leans against his door. “Don’t shut me out.”
It’s not until he opens the door and her face is a wet blur that Zuko even realizes that he is crying.
Her arms are strong as they pull him in, strong enough to feel like an anchor amidst the worst storm he’s ever braved. And finally, he surrenders to the waves.
“She doesn’t want me—I—“ he chokes on his own tears, “I tried—I tried so hard, Katara, and none of it—none of it fucking mattered. Why doesn’t it count? It should count—I don’t understand why—“ his fingers grip her hard enough to bruise, and his chin digs into the flesh of her shoulder, but she doesn’t relent.
“It’s not your fault, Zuko. It’s not your fault.” Her voice is watery in his scarred ear.
And he knows she understands what he cannot put into words. Because only another child of a self-sacrificing, martyr-made mother could ever understand the guilt that cuts the life from his veins. It’s a rotten thing, to have equal parts self-righteousness and self-hatred warring in his bones.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She holds his face in her hands and kisses the space between his eyebrows. “I know, Zuko. I know.”
He falls asleep like that—laying on the ruined bed with her strong body curled around his, her lips pressed against the skin of his forehead and his nose tucked into the hollow of her throat. Exhaustion steals the last of his consciousness, but it’s a welcome relief from the raging of the storm.
And when he wakes in the morning, Katara is still there, still wrapped around him like she’s trying to keep him from falling apart. Or perhaps, like she’s putting him back together.
He isn’t okay, not yet. His heart still aches and a bitter taste still stains his tongue. But, as he listens to her hushed snores fill the air around him and her lazy heartbeat tap a rhythm against his ear, Zuko knows that he is not alone.
They are not alone.
He breathes in.