Chapter Text
Zuko
It’s hard to be alone with your own thoughts.
Especially when you’re watching the reunion of a clearly-happy-and-loving family after your father and sister tried to kill you. Several times.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Sokka and Katara and their father, but it still feels a little… desolated to see these kind of scenes when I…
Oh, forget it! I’m really not good at talking about this sort of things. And, besides, it’s not like all of this “sentimentalism” is keeping me from staring creepily at their exultant reencounter.
While all the others are waiting for dinner around the bonfire, chatting amicably and laughing at Toph’s complaints about being “forced” to eat one of Aang’s vegetarian meals because of our “unsubstantial” meat, I’m sitting in the fountain next to Appa and Momo. Like the outcast that I am. The fire is illuminating the group’s silhouettes with bright orange and yellow tones, creating grandiosely huge shadows across the antique walls of the Western Air Temple; the sound of bubbly laughter fills the space with a sense of liveliness that wasn’t here the first time that I arrived three years ago.
Of course, back at that moment I had… other things in mind, and one of my eyes was incapacitated so I couldn’t properly take in my surroundings.
My left eye never quite completely regained its vision after the Agni Kai with my father, but now I can fairly distinguish shadows and colors with it. It’s not difficult for me to see Aang and Toph’s tamely arguing between each other, or Katara and Sokka looking at their father as if he was the sun rising after the storm.
Katara has been clung to Hakoda in a tender embrace since we arrived. She’s euphoric; ecstatic, even. Her face is glowing, her blinding smile highlights her rounded cheeks and eyes, the contrast between her perfectly white teeth and her dark skin is rather fascinating. Now more than ever she resembles a naïve little girl, excited about everything and nothing at the same time.
It’s adorable.
Relief washes over me upon seeing her this happy, I contributed to bring that smile to her face.
I did something good for her for a change, didn’t I? Maybe if Katara can see that way, she will stop frowning and sneering every time she looks at me.
Anyway… it looks like this just become a “dinner and show” night. Sokka is doing a poor performance of the events that happened today, along with some more of his own creativeness. Like the epic sword fight he’s reenacting now in which, obviously, Sokka had gotten out victoriously. Katara every now and then shoots some comments that make her brother frown in her way but that doesn’t stop him from “reminisce” his heroic accomplishments, Hakoda’s eyes travel from one of them to the other, looking at his children like they were his heart.
I turn away. Hard.
Hakoda seems like a good man. I have barely spoken to him since this morning, but he hadn’t given me a hard time because of my past faults – not beyond the wary glares he shoots my way whenever he thinks I’m not looking – and he clearly cares a great deal for Sokka and Katara. The three of them are so affectionate and close to each other, it’s a bit unsettling and odd to see. They’re the perfect picture of love, family and union.
It feels… nice to see them together. It truly does.
I turn towards the group trying to get this sentimental funk out of my head… and I happen to lock eyes with Katara at the same time she finishes serving the rest their dinner.
Predictably, her dazzling smile banishes when she catches sight of me, her expression is disgusted and stern in equal levels.
Right.
I’m the first to look away. This is a special night for Katara, I don’t want to ruin her fun.
But, then again, Katara might consider her fun already ruined due to the sole fact that I’m here!
With his typical subtleness, Appa approaches me and gives me a long, wet lick.
His bison-breathe smells like old hay, and his sticky slobber just trashed the clothes that I changed into from the Boiling Rock’s inmate uniform. “Thanks, Appa,” I say, a little bit bewildered by the sincerity in my own words, “That makes me feel much better.”
Momo comes to join us, and as he climbs to my bended knee, Appa makes a soft roaring sound that I decide to interpret as a “what’s wrong?”.
“She’s mad at me,” I say, quietly.
Momo croaks out something that sounds pretty much like a “who?”.
“Katara. She has been mad at me for ages now.”
Two pair of big, clueless eyes look at me, requiring and encouraging me to explain further.
“I…,” I trail off, unsure about how to voice my thoughts, “I did something to her... Well, I didn’t do anything to her – I mean, I did do something to her, but she’s mad at me for something that I didn’t do. But I also did something, but not to her – I mean, yes to her, but not to her – I mean, not specifically to her – I mean… Never mind. Anyways, it was the wrong thing to do, and I should have done other thing, the right thing, but she’s mad at me because I didn’t do the right thing but instead did the wrong thing.”
Appa and Momo both blink at me, dumbfounded. I sigh, I should have told my father that the speech lessons he enrolled me as a kid had been a waste of time.
“I betrayed her, alright?,” I admit, “I disappointed her, I let her down.”
In more ways than one, I want to add. She trusted me with something and I used it against her. Against all of you.
The water from the spirit oasis. If Katara had never told me about it, I would have never guessed she used it for healing Aang after Azula’s lightning; and I would have never hired that assassin to exterminate them all! It was all her fault! Didn’t she know better than to trust someone like me?
Should I tell her the real reason about why I wanted them all dead? That would cause a whole new rift, right? It would feel like I betrayed her twice.
I growl and pull at my hair, taking in the pain. I really am a horrible person. (Or was a horrible person; I don’t even know any more!) How did my life become so complicated? How could I betray all the people that ever cared for me? Whose fault is it?
Mine. All of this is on me. I gave my loyalty to the people that would rather roast me alive, and I back-stabbed the ones that once protected and looked after me. All the fault is my own, I deserve Katara’s anger. I deserve everybody’s anger.
As if sensing my inner turmoil, Momo squirms his way into my lap and nuzzles at my chest at the same time Appa presses his warm, furry giant head against me.
I’m still not used to this cheesy, soft-y displays of affection… yet, I guess they aren’t that bad.
“Thanks, guys,” I say, petting each of them. Albeit hesitantly. I’m still new at displaying affection myself. “I wish Katara was a little more forgiving like you two. Do you have any ideas about how can I get to her good side?”
Appa and Momo exchange a silent look with each other before turning to me, Momo is the one to give me a low, punching squawk.
“So, no, huh?” My hand keeps distractedly patting Momo’s tiny head, “Don’t worry, girls are hard to understand. I know that from experience.”
“Oh, you do?”
That makes me freeze.
Slowly – very slowly – I raise my gaze to see Katara standing just a few short feet away from me, next to one of the temple’s columns covered in vegetation.
It is too dark for me to read her expression properly but, surprisingly enough, her posture isn’t confrontational or even defensive. Her two arms hang loosely at her sides in a fashion that would seem casual if it wasn’t for the subtle tension in the straightness of her stance.
There’s something odd with her, I can tell for the way she’s looking back at me. Her gaze is slightly softer than what it has been since I joined her and her friends; for once she isn’t frowning, or grimacing, or mocking at me. Her face is particularly neutral – save for the eyebrow she’s raising at me questioningly. “Am I interrupting something?”
That unfreezes me, and the sudden awareness about how the scene I’m into must seem makes me blink. Me, talking to a pair of animals? Katara must think I’m a freak for more reasons than one now!
“Katara!” I say, belatedly surprised. I carefully take Momo away from my knee and get to my feet, “Hey! No… I mean, yeah. I mean, hi! I mean… yeah, hi.”
A freak for more reasons than one.
Katara doesn’t seem weirded out by my catastrophe of a salute, (she’s probably already used to my awkwardness), but instead her eyes are cold as the ice in the South Pole itself. They almost make me wish she was weirded out.
I smile. Sheepishly and possibly still awkwardly. “Hey, what’s up?”
She remains silent, her gaze falls to the floor. I wait patiently for her to talk. Katara isn’t too shorter than me, I think while I observe her. Maybe just by a few inches. Nonetheless, I do have the bad habit of hunching my back a little bit from time to time. (My father used to hit me with a pole for me to stand straight.)
I wonder how much taller than her I would be if I stood at my full height.
“Sokka and Dad told me about what you did in the Boiling Rock…” Katara finally whispers. She still won’t look at me. “I appreciate what you did for them. Thanks.”
I back off a step in shock, and I stare at Katara – at the girl that couldn’t have been clearer about her resentment towards me for weeks now.
She’s still looking at the ground, but her bearing is as firm as when she first approached. Her hands are balled into fists, she bites her bottom lip in a way that looks almost painful; it’s evident that she isn’t appreciating putting herself in such a vulnerable position in front of the boy that she still holds a grudge to. However, she’s humble enough to do so notwithstanding her pride or her fury.
True honor, I think.
“There’s no need to thank me,” I say softly, “It was a pleasure and an honor to help your father.”
Katara gives a stiff, curt nod; her eyes still pinned to the floor.
The silence that follows is crushing, the air around us suddenly tight and suffocating. Katara doesn’t show any signs of discomfort, though. She looks like she isn’t even aware of the situation, her mind so distanced from the moment that her body might as well not be here. Her stance continues the same, immobile as a statue. The only movements are the ones of her long, dark-brown hair, which seems almost black in the night. Loose strands wave with the wind, pronouncedly and graciously, at the sides of her round-shaped face.
“I’ll make sure to tell him you said that,” she says, impersonally. “I’ve said my part. Good night.”
“Katara, wait!”
I catch her wrist as she turns to exit. Her skin is warm against the cold night air.
“Don’t touch me!” She nearly shouts at the mere touch. She pulls her hand away as if mine had some sort of infectious virus.
I take a step back. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”
She glares at me but says nothing, she doesn’t wait long before leaving this time.
I follow.
“Katara, wait!”
She turns around so brusquely that I slither a little bit in order to not crash with her, her blue eyes are so narrowed at me they are hardly open. A clipped, terse, stabbing “what?” comes out of her lips. I gulp.
“Listen, I get that we haven’t been on good terms since I joined the group,” – the understatement is almost laughable – “But I was hoping that we could solve it out. I mean, I… you know… I was hoping that we could be friends.”
I smile again, shattered and awry. The aura that Katara is emanating is one of pure hostility, it’s making me nervous.
I mean… I’m used to that kind of bitterness from a lifetime living alongside Azula, but this feels different somehow. Azula has always been cruel, it is her nature, she has some sort of innate inner darkness. Katara doesn’t, Katara is light. In the past, every time I saw her she looked like she was so pure and innocent that it infuriated me. (Nobody could be that blameless.) Seeing her this much tainted with resentment feels… wrong.
I would like for us to go back to how we were when we were trapped at Ba Sing Se.
“Friends,” she deadpans, pronouncing the word strangely. Hideously. An obnoxious snort, very improper of her, comes out of her mouth then. “Yeah. No, thanks.”
Next thing I know, she’s walking away, this time much quicker than before. She has already reached a couple of feet away from me, I actually have to jog to catch her.
“Wait! Katara, I mean it. I want us to be friends.”
“And I mean it, too,” she says over her shoulder without stopping or even looking at me. “I really don’t want to be your friend.”
“Why?”
Katara stops dead in her tracks. It’s so unexpected that I can’t avoid crashing lightly with her but she doesn’t even flinch.
“Why?,” she repeats incredulously. She gives another brusque turnaround to face me, hands placed on her hips. “Because I don’t trust you.”
She snorts again. “It’s not even that, it’s just that I don’t like you.” Her shoulders raise in a carefree shrug, “Never have, but it’s not like that is a secret. Right?”
Katara’s face is trickily calm, opaque to any sort of emotion, locking a noticeable satisfaction underneath. Her eyes have a softly vicious glow and the corner of her lip is twitching upwards in a discrete smirk. I frown.
“I get what you’re doing.”
“Doing what?” She takes advantage of her naturally wide eyes to pull out an innocent expression. “I’m just telling the truth. I don’t like you, never have liked you. It’s not like you have many likable qualities, you know.”
“You’re being mean.”
She laughs. “Well, aren’t you the expert in meanness here.”
A muscle pulses in my jaw. “Katara…”
“You know what?” Katara’s mask of indifference falls, her eyes are now ice daggers aimed my way. She steps towards me. “I already thanked you – which is much more than what you deserve, by the way – so I have zero reasons to talk to you at all, and you can’t even begin to imagine how grateful I am for that. Now, let’s do each other a favor and stay as far away from one another as we can. Shall we?”
I can feel my stomach twisting in tight knots and I swallow through an uncomfortably closed throat.
“I was thinking that we could…”
“You thought wrong.” She nearly growls that last word. “This conversation is over.”
“Katara, I want…”
She laughs again. Dry and high-pitched. “You want? I don’t care about what you want. What I want is for you to stay as far away from me as possible. I’ll take whatever measures are needed for that to come true.”
She takes another step closer to me, entering my personal space; her breathe feels hot as steam on my chin, almost brushing the tip of my bottom lip.
Her skinny finger jabs at my chest. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want you talking to me, I want you to stay at two arms’ length from me. We are never going to be friends, Zuko. There’s nothing in this world that will change that. Now read my lips.” She points at her sneering mouth. “Leave. Me. Alone.”
Her thick hair slaps me across the face when she spins around. I watch her practically run back into the darkness of the temple, where the others are now sleeping; I don’t try to follow this time. Katara’s fists are still clenched, she looks like she could punch someone. Preferably me, if I had to guess who.
I just stand in my spot, feeling hollow, sad, disappointed and annoyed.
What the Agni is Katara’s problem?
I admit it, I was a jerk, perhaps for too long, and maybe not all of my wrongdoings deserve to be forgiven, but I have done good things these past days… I rescued her father, for Spirit’s sake! That counts for something, right?
Right?
I resignedly run a hand down my face. Who am I kidding? I already admitted that I deserve all of her anger. Not even I can convince myself that I deserve to be forgiven, how could I expect Katara to think otherwise?
But does she really has to be that much of a…
No, no, no. Uncle taught me better manners than to insult a girl.
I lean back against the closest column, listening to Katara’s words over and over again.
I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want you talking to me; I want you to stay at two arms’ length from me.
I can do that. I can maintain as much distance from Katara that she wants. It’s not like friendship and companionship is going to defeat the Firelord anyways, Katara and I aren’t forced to like each other. Katara isn’t forced to like me.
We are never going to be friends.
I growl and pinch the bridge of my nose, my head is pounding. Why in the world am I giving so much importance to Katara’s opinion?
I almost have to restrain myself from going after her again and talk her into solving our differences, or whatever. We could talk it out, Uncle used to say that talking was the best way of understanding. Or at least that’s what I could pick up from his nonsense of a discourse.
On the other hand, Katara made herself clear. She doesn’t want anything to do with me. Not now, not after the war, not ever.
The memory of her voice, sharpened with pain and resentment makes my stomach revolve. I am responsible for somebody so pure to be so broken on the inside. The very least I can do is respect her wishes. I owe her that much.
I slide down against the hard column. My eyes are closed but, instead of darkness, I only see Katara’s full lips moving scornfully.
Leave me alone.
Yeah.
I embrace myself, suddenly feeling cold on the inside. A very distasteful feeling for a firebender.