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The halls were quiet.
A faint flicker of half lit flames cast their shadows against the walls; moonlight pours in through the cracked lidded windows. It was mid-summer within the Fire Nation, one of the hottest nights there had been in a while and yet she knew the sweat beading atop her forehead was not related to the air around her.
“If you’re looking for your room, you’ve already missed it.”
Startled, Katara whips around and heaves a sigh at the voice she’d heard. Zuko was there, a flame in hand as the light pulsed shadows across his face. They danced along his cheeks and illuminate his already glowing eyes.
“I know— I know,” she manages, inhaling deeply before thinking carefully about her next response. “I wasn’t tired,” she lies— though, it wasn’t entirely a lie. She just hadn’t anticipated getting caught up with the one person she’d been trying to avoid.
Zuko’s face falls, and he shifts on his feet uncomfortably. “You’re mad at me.” Suddenly, the flame in his palm waves out and they’re left with the low candlelit hallway and the silence that fills the space between them.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says, but the lump in her throat gets stuck when she tries to swallow. The way he looked right now showed that he hadn’t been sleeping as much as she had. Maybe neither of them were doing as well as they pretended to be.
“I know where you want to go,” he starts, and she raises a brow at him carefully. “Trust me, if I could have my way, I would have you in there with me right now.”
At that, Katara’s breath catches in her throat and she almost chokes.
“Stop,” she says. “Please— just— don’t do that.” Katara tries to keep her voice low, quiet, and only worries if he can hear how it shakes. “You know we can’t do that.”
He did; he knew. She could tell by the way his eyes flickered in the dim lights that he understood. It was why they were here, in this place, to begin with. It was why she wanders these halls aimlessly every night in hopes that somebody might stop her. Somebody— anybody.
“I know.” It’s all he says, and perhaps it was all he could muster. Because in that space between them, the void shudders, and shakes and does anything it can to rattle the both of them down to the bone.
When the silence continues on, when it becomes too aware that it was eating them both alive, Katara is the first to break the barrier. “You know I have to marry him.” It was a statement, not a question. Not anything other than part of the choices she had to make. “You know we can’t keep living like this,” she says, and she means it. She cannot keep living like every single moment of every single day without him did not make her heart grow numb. “I can’t keep living like this.”
In front of her, almost close enough to touch, if she’d dared, Zuko stands with eyes strained. His jaw was tight and the way he breathed seemed to stagger. Katara knew that it would take everything in him not to break as she was breaking.
“I would never ask that of you.” Simply put. He would not go against her. He would not ask anything of her. He would not force her to feel a different way.
“I just want you to be happy, Katara,” he says, hands outstretched like some silent plea. It hadn’t been long since she’d seen him like this, so reverent, so withheld— so quiet in the way that he stands before her.
Softly, honestly, Katara bares herself. “I don’t know if I know how to do that anymore.”
Finally, without pause, Zuko speaks up. “Why would you say that?” He asks, and she can tell by the hurt in his voice that she’d struck something inside of him.
Katara pulls her lip between her teeth and worries it. She lets another few moments of silence pass over them before continuing. “Because… I still want you,” she admits. “And I can’t— I shouldn’t.”
At that, Zuko’s face pales. Even if it should have been her, it was Zuko that ended things between them. It was him that said he could not do that to his best friend. It was him that turned her away, night after night. Even after, perhaps, he’d wanted to break his own rules.
“There comes a point where we have to stop living in a fantasy.” Zuko’s voice was heavy, bearing, and the weight of his words hang on her shoulders.
“This is reality, Katara. Even if we want to, even if we think we’re supposed to— we can’t be together,” he says, voice more wobbly than maybe he’d like to propose. But there was also something stern, something heavy hidden behind his words; something she knew she would not like.
“But I am not the one who did this to us.”
Suddenly, as if being struck in the chest, Katara’s eyes flit to his own. There was a pain in his voice, unsettled, that she understood all too well. With each word, each inflection, she felt each as if they were fresh wounds upon her skin.
“What—?“
“— Don’t you see?” Now, Zuko’s voice raises as he interrupts her, and she can hear the brazenness as he builds up his courage. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you,” he says, and the way that he looks at her sends bolts straight through her heart. “And in the end, it still wasn’t enough.”
Silent, stunned, Katara does not know how to respond, so she says nothing at all. Anything she could possibly contrive could not mend the wounds already open.
“I have loved you with every fiber of my being and it still isn’t enough.” This time, she hears the way he chokes, sees the ways eyes glower in the flames. Whatever she has done to him, she has done so irreparably.
“Zuko…” she tries, but she cannot find the words to say. There was nothing good that could come out of her mouth right now that would change the path that they they were on. Nothing would make these choices any easier.
“You know I love you,” she whispers, voice so low that perhaps he hadn’t heard her. “Zuko— you know that.”
Zuko stands there with pain laced within those amber eyes. “No,” he says, shaking his head. The way he looks at her, now, makes her stomach churn. “You don’t.”
Again, they both just stare. They size each other up, one second after another, until there is no more room for the emptiness. “If you loved me, Katara, you wouldn’t be marrying Aang.”
“Zuko that’s not fair—“
“— It’s more than fair—“
“— No— you don’t understand the position I’m in. I—“
“— I don’t understand your position?” Zuko laughs, he actually laughs, before looking back at her with a sadness she has not seen in a long time. “I understand everything perfectly. I understand the you had no problem fucking me before going back home to Aang. I understand that no matter how much you give, and you give and you give, there is always someone willing to take. And you, Katara— you take.”
Swallowing thickly, Katara tries to blink back the tears that she can feel budding at her lashes. She tries to suck it in, to hold out, but she does not succeed, and the tears fall anyway.
Katara knew that people said stupid things when they were hurt, but this did not sound stupid. This sounded like someone who has been betrayed in a way not even she could describe.
“I know you love him— you’ve always loved him. No matter what, he’s always there. He’s always been there. It was never just me and you.”
Defeated— that’s what he was. That was what was on the edge of his tongue. She could feel it from here, from this scant distance between them, that he had lost. Not in a sad, pathetic sort of way, but in the way that cracked a heart in two.
“I’m sorry I let it get to this. I should have stopped it a long time ago.”
Years, she thinks. He’d have to have stopped it years ago. It’s been almost two that she’s served as Ambassador to her tribes— almost one that she’s been living this lie. Even now, she thinks. Even now.
“I knew something was different when you came back, that first time you left with him.” He keeps going, plowing through as if the words could not come out fast enough. “I knew it because when you looked at me, it wasn’t the same. You’d changed. Just like that, in just a few months, you were not the Katara that I knew anymore.”
“And I’m sorry. Because I should have said something before now, before I hurt you like this,” he says, his voice softening slightly as he notices the flush to her cheeks and the tears that stained them. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he adds. And he takes a step forward, as if the softness of his fingers on her cheeks would ease the throbbing in her soul.
Instead of leaning in, instead of accepting the hands that cradled her face like she so desperately wanted to, Katara takes a step back and shrinks from his embrace. It was evident, written all across his face, that he understands.
“You cannot say those things to me, Zuko,” she grits quietly, trying her hardest not to lose composure. “You cannot stand there and say those things as if you’re not just as guilty.”
“We both decided to hide this— we both decided to keep doing it. Even with Aang gone, you were okay with it. When it was just you, and it was just me, and it was just us— you were okay with it,” she says, heaving a heavier breath. She wipes angrily at the tears staining her cheeks because his eyes seem to be fixated on them.
“Don’t blame me for something that we both did.” Looking at him now, she knows. Knows she has struck something so deep that no words could go back and make better.
“You’re really marrying him, then.”
Katara nods, then, fresh tears blossoming between her already wet lashes. Out of anger, out of pain, she did not know.
There was something about the way that he looked at her now that jars her. His eyes were heavy lidded as if they could speak, telling her that he needed her. But if his mouth thought the same, the words did not come.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she does not know why this feels more painful than it should.
“Don’t be,” he finally says after many silent moments. And when her eyes lift from the floor to his own, she sees it. Sees the way they wobble and waver in the dim light. “Don’t ever be sorry. You love him. I won’t take that away from you.”
For a moment, she just stares at him. Until she isn’t— can’t— and shoves her gaze to the ground below. There were a million different things to say, but the only thing she could was—
“I love you too.” It was bittersweet, yet tasted sour on her tongue. She did— she loved him. More than she thinks that he knows. More than she really would like to admit. “But this isn’t kid stuff. Like you said— this is reality— and in reality, I have to do this. In reality, we can’t play these games anymore.”
“It was never a game to me.” Shifting on his feet, Zuko shoves his hands into his pants pockets, now, lowering his gaze to the new pendant that falls at the hollow of her throat. “I’m sorry I bothered you tonight,” he begins, taking a step back and away from her.
Katara could hear it in his voice that he was finished— that this was finished. That whatever tiny thread that held them together was now a distant memory— cut, severed, burned until there was nothing left of it.
The definite behind his words, the way they sounded so final, so raw. He sounded so tired, and the sadness leached through with every word.
This was the end for them.
“I’m sorry,” she wobbles, and her eyes carry what her voice cannot. That this was devastating— that this was breaking her. That every part of her being was screaming to reach out and touch him one last time— but she does not. Because she cannot.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, because he does not speak as he takes another step back, another step away.
“I know,” he says. And he says it so low, so devastatingly pained that she does not volley dissent as he turns on his heels to walk back towards his room.