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Zuko gets his first scar when he is thirteen years old. His father burns half of his face before banishing him. It nearly feels like a parting gift from him.
Before it becomes a scar, it is a wound. He never ends up seeing the actual injury. When he looks in the mirror, he only sees the bandages that hide it.
It takes a long time to heal and sometimes the pain is so unbearable he can’t focus on anything else. But Zuko knows pain is temporary, and knows the injury will eventually heal. Although it is kind of obvious, it never crosses his mind the injury will leave a scar behind. Nobody tells him either.
Eventually, the wound heals and a scar remains. Seeing what his father did is now inevitable. Every morning, as he gets ready, he sees it through the mirror in his room.
Even though it is kind of a shock at first, he never avoids it. He has never considered himself vain, but he spends long periods of time looking at it in front of the mirror. It serves as a badge that reminds him of what he’s done, of his shame and disgrace. And it reminds him of the mission he needs to accomplish before he is able to return home.
The scar ends up being part of his identity, for better or for worse, wherever that takes him.
Katara is the first person to ever touch it. That scar, the symbol of his disgrace, becomes his ticket to a new life. Through the scar, she gives him an opportunity to escape of his past, to erase it completely and start anew.
He doesn’t follow her that time. But from that moment on, every time he looks at his scarred cheek, instead of seeing dishonour, Zuko can only think about her and her offer.
--
Zuko receives another serious injury before the war ends. This time it is inflicted by his sister. The wound also leaves behind a scar, a new red lump of dead tissue on the lower part of his chest.
At first Zuko thinks this scar will make him think of his strained relationship with his sister. And it does.
But, above all, this new mark reminds him of Katara.
Every morning, as he gets ready, he looks at it in the mirror of his room. During the first months after the Agni Kai, whenever he sees it, static electricity runs through his heart. He closes his eyes and has no option but to let that moment of the Agni Kai replay on the insides of his eyelids.
The memories he has of it are full of Katara.
He remembers jumping and lightning piercing his heart, but in those moments Katara and her safety was all he could think about.
He remembers pain engulfing all his senses, remembers laying on burnt sand and being sure he’d die but, again, the only thing in his mind was her.
The scar ends up being a reminder that she is still alive, that she hasn’t left his side.
And just like with his first scar, Katara is the one who heals him. Just like the first time, she gives him the opportunity of a new life. This time, Zuko takes it.
--
Years pass. A lot of things change in Zuko’s life, and a lot of things remain the same.
Katara is by his side every day when he wakes up.
The scars never fade.
Zuko looks at both scars fairly often, usually in the mirror as he gets ready, but the past doesn’t haunt him anymore. Instead, the marks are now a permanent reminder of Katara and her caresses.
Katara likes to touch them a lot. She does it constantly, sometimes deliberately, sometimes without realizing. She places her hand on his scarred cheek and grazes the burned flesh there. She rests her head on the lower part of his chest and says she can hear his heartbeat.
He can’t actually feel anything, but even with his eyes closed, he can sense every one of her actions, every one of her strokes on his scars.
The things is that, even when her hands don’t graze the scars, or even when she’s not in the same room as him, Zuko can’t shake the feeling he can feel her there, always there, in the parts he used to consider were the ugliest of himself.
--
Zuko’s life is full of Katara. He feels her everywhere he looks. He feels her in their children, in their bed, in the garden they spend so much time together in, and in every room she has ever set foot in. He even feels her in the warmth of the Sun and in the glow of the Moon.
But Zuko doesn’t need to look anywhere for her.
Because Katara's also in him, settled between the wrinkles of his scars, her name printed on them.