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In the end, it all happened too quickly, and yet too slowly.
The taunt behind his words ‘ No lighting today? What’s the matter, afraid I’d redirect it? ’, and the venom in his sister’s counterpart ‘I’ll show you lighting! ’. The impossibly blinding blue light coming at her, bluer than the seas she grew on, bluer than the skies she’d traveled through during the last couple of years with the Avatar and the rest of her friends; and scarier than the tides had ever been. The shouted ‘ No! ’ that barely registered her ears and the flying body across her line of vision that hit the tiles like a ragdoll. Immobile, frozen, dead .
It all came too soon, too quickly; and suddenly Katara was aware of all the things that could be but wouldn’t be. All the things they’ve left unsaid .
Those little three words became a mantra for her during her own battle, followed by a single thought ‘ You can’t die on me, not without knowing. ’
In the end, it always came to that moment.
It didn’t matter how the fight ended up, or how she had stocked his wounds closed —how she patched the veins and arteries of his heart back one by one; slowly, painfully slowly —.
In the end, in her dreams; that scene was all that mattered.
Sometimes it ended fine , they had won and he had survived. But most of the times, it didn’t.
Sometimes the battle ended differently; she didn’t make it on time and he had died in her arms, or he was the one that was too slow and the lighting hit her, torching every single one of her body’s nerves.
Sometimes, in the worst of her nightmares, he was the one shooting lighting at her, laughing maniacally as he did —just as his sister did, the sound forever saved in Katara’s memory.
He was alive, she knew it. She had spent whole nights and days patching, and cleaning, and dressing his wounds. She knew it. She was there, day and night; just in case his heart gave up and decided to stop again , just in case his breaths became more labored.
But she wasn’t there the morning he woke up. She couldn’t.
Suddenly all the unsaid hit her like a brick, like if some earthbending had thrown a whole wall against her chest. And she was afraid .
She wasn’t afraid of his own feelings, of the rejection . No. What she saw in his eyes once they opened was crystal clear, it left no room for hesitation . She knew he felt the same. And that terrified her. Because he had felt the same, he had jumped in front of a bolt of lighting, to save her. Because he does feel the same, he said he would do it again, another thousand times, if it meant she could make it.
And just because it terrified her, because he would do it again ; she knew she couldn’t bite the words back off her tongue for any longer. In case he fulfilled his promises. In case she fulfilled her own.
Next day, she’d say, next day I’d tell him how I feel.
And that had become her favorite lie .
But just as Katara always found a reason —an excuse— to cheat destiny; destiny has its own funny ways of being completed.
That night proved it right.
She was lying in bed, over the silk sheets she had grown to love and she knew would miss dearly once she returned back to the pole; wide awake with her gaze over the tapestry of her ceiling.
She was lying wide awake, waiting for sleep to kick in and slowly, progressively convert into one of her usual dreams.
Another night, another nightmare, another scream.
* * *
Zuko woke up with a jump.
His bangs had plastered against his forehead drenched in sweat. In fact, his whole body was drenched and covered by a slim coat of glimmering liquid.
He sat up, slightly, against the headboard of his bed, prompting himself up clumsily against the pillows.
His left hand moved to the star shaped scar carved in his chest on instinct, trying to soothe the pain that ran through his body. Then he remembered .
“ Katara. ” he murmured, barely a whisper reverberating in the walls of the lounge. His eyes searched the room, terrified of what they may found —may not find—, and without any more waiting, he sat up out of bed and stumbled into to the door.
She is okay , he told no one but himself. She is okay, she is alive, she healed you ; his own personal mantra in the dark hours of the night.
But his mantra wasn’t enough to calm his nerves, to shut the fire cursing through his veins that threatened to escape and burn that whole room —that whole palace, even—, not caring who or what he might burn in the process.
She is okay, she is alive, she healed you ; he repeated once more, for good measure; his feet already carrying, as fast as they could carry them, through the long and narrow corridors of the building he once dared to call home (and was supposed to be his for now on).
It didn’t matter how many times he told himself ( she is okay ), the anxiety that has made a home between his ribcage didn’t seem to seize its action.
It didn’t matter how many times he reminded him he had just seen her ( she is alive ), merely hours before.
It didn’t matter he was alive, and that this was enough proof she was too ( she healed you ).
He barely registered the looks some of his guards threw his way, nor that they dared to stop him or nor that he truly dared.
After what it seemed like hours, he managed to arrive at her door. Sweating, panting, and the scar tissue of his chest slightly burning, as if he had been shot all over again.
As stealthy as he could be in his condition, he opened the door of Katara’s room and peered inside.
* * *
With a bolt, she startled awake.
As every other night, she couldn’t remember when she fell asleep (or she even did at all, due to the heaviness of her muscles and the puffiness of her eyes), and as every other night she was alone with her fast beating heart and her terrors.
Or so she thought; because after calming her breathing as well as she could she realized the nightmares weren’t the cause of her awareness, but the figure that was lurking in the dark over her doorframe.
In an instant, she called the water from her surroundings and froze it in a thousand iced needles, pointing and shooting them at the stranger. She wasn’t going to miss, she never missed . She knew her spires would hit her mark, but then she heard that voice—
“ Katara! ” he screamed.
“ Zuko? ” she asked, concerned (and fear for what she had just almost done), jumping from her bed.
But she didn’t get far from the mattress, he crossed the distance for her, stumbling on his feet, nearly collapsing against her.
“ I’m sorry .” he muttered, his voice broken, his hands clinging at the fabric of her robes at her shoulders.
“ Zuko, what happened? What are you doing here? ” she tried to pull him from her, slightly, to get a good look at the boy in front of her. The boy who held her heart in his hands. But he wasn’t letting her, instead he clinched to her with more force, nearly crushing her in his embrace. He held her with all the force he could manage, as close as he could without engraving his wounds. “ I could have hurt you, Zuko. ” she whispered, mimicking his embrace. I could have killed you , she thought, again realizing how they were living on borrowed time, how every second of their lives counted.
“ I’m sorry .” he repeated, this time a little louder. “ I’m sorry for waking up. I— I needed to see you. ” he was trembling, Katara noticed, and. . . was he crying? Her shoulder felt more humid, that was for sure, but given their position she couldn’t really get a proper look.
She took a step back, until the back of her knees hit the mattress behind them; she took a sit, gently guiding him to do the same beside her, their limbs and bodies still tangled with each other’s.
“ Zuko, what’s the matter? ” she asked, softly.
“ I saw the lighting. ” Oh , she thought, subconsciously hardening her grip. “ I saw it again, Katara. And… ” he gulped, the muscles of his neck and throat moving against where he was pressed against her shoulder. “ And I couldn’t save you, Katara. I couldn’t save you and then you were dead. You were dead in my arms and I couldn’t do anything. You. . . you were there and the next second you were gone. ” his shaking only worsened with his words, the tears now dropping freely down his neck and bare chest. Katara’s eyes flooding with liquid all the same.
“ It’s okay, Zuko. . . ”
“ No, it’s not, Katara! You almost died! ” he cried, his arms holding at her waist like it was a lifeline. She moved one of her hands up to his neck and started caressing the little creases there, trying to soothe him as best as she could. She even started to rock slightly, back and forth, as she remembered her mother doing when Sokka and her were little and distressed. “ She. . . “
“ I’m here, Zuko. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere .” At least for the time being , she thought, the tears now running freely over her face too.
“ I was too close, Katara. . . ” he shrieked, leaning back to face her. And now that she could get a proper good at her face she almost wished she couldn’t; because the way the tears fell through his face, the pain reflected in his amberine eyes. It was the final straw to break her completely. But before she could say anything, his hands had come to cup her face. “ I was too close to losing you, Katara. . . ”
He wiped her tears with his thumb, and all she could was bit her trembling lip to stop herself from whaling.
“ It’s okay, Zuko. ” she repeated once again, as if she told enough times it would become completely true. “ Azula’s not here, she can’t hurt us anymore. . . ” she said, loosening her wrap around his torso; her hand lightly caressing his bandages, over the place she knew his new scar lied covered, to finally place her hands over his on her face. “ We’re okay. ”
“ No, we’re not. ”
“ Zuko. . . ”
“ No, Katara. ” he cut her. “ What she did. . ., it’s not okay. None of this is and it’s all my fault. ” with his words, he released his face and his gaze went down to his laps; her hands following his and intertwining her fingers with his. “ If I hadn’t brought you. . . I underestimated her! I thought I could take it, I thought you’d be safe on the sidelines but she looked right through me! ”
“ Zuko she is crazy! Nothing, it's your fault! ” she said, also raising his voice, her hand itching to slap some sense on the boy in front of her.
“ It is! If I wouldn’t love you, then you’d be okay! ” he screamed back, his amber eyes piercing against her cerulean ones. It seemed he didn’t realize what he had just said, at first. Then, it hit him and his mouth closed so fast his teeth clashed together, his entire posture tensed.
It was suddenly all too much, and at the same time not enough.
This time, she didn’t hesitate. She launched herself onto him, the force of her tackle surely knocking the air out of his lungs, momentarily forgetting the hole in his chest.
“ Oh, Zuko .” she said while she surrounded his middle with her arms, her chin resting in his shoulder. “ I love you too, you jerk. ”
“ You do? ” he muttered in her ear, not quite believing what he just heard.
She separated from his chest, slightly, resting her forehead against his and taking his cheek —the scarred one— on her palm. “ Of course I do. I’ve done for a while now .” she smiled despite the tears; at his surprised face, at the grin that formed in his face afterwards. It was like staring at the same sun, but she didn’t care if her eyes would burn. She couldn’t stop looking.
And then, in a blink of an eye; his hands were back on her cheeks, his lips merely a hairspace from hers.
“ Stay. ” he whispered. “ Not forever, if you don’t want to. Not right now, either. But please. . . ” he was begging, and the sound of his plea broke her heart a little more. Just to stitch it back again. “ Stay with me. ”
“ Not right now. . . ” she continued, but against the tone of her words, the smile on her face said otherwise. “ And. . . forever? ” she added, biting her lower lip. “ Let’s just start at the present, and go from there; shall we? ”
His own smile mimicked hers, and one of his hands wasted no time in burying his way in her hair, pulling lightly at her scalp.
And not a second later, his lips were on hers. Gently, asking for permission. And not a second later, permission granted; hungrily, desperately .
And Katara met him in the middle of his hunger, of his desperation.
This time they had time, they had all the time in the world.
But it didn’t mean they had any second to waste.
Story inspired by this beautiful piece of art;
by https://te-al-latte.tumblr.com/ :
