Chapter Text
From the moment Zuko first saw her, Katara had always been the Avatar’s girl. To the banished prince he’d once been, she’d been a mere obstacle in the path to capture the Avatar, just a little Water Tribe peasant. He cringes to think of it now, how quickly he underestimated her.
He didn’t notice she was pretty until the run-in with the pirates.
“I’ll save you from the pirates.”
He’d had her small wrists in his hands, watching her big blue eyes fill with fear. And it struck him in that moment that she was beautiful, and that he didn’t like to see her afraid. Suddenly, Prince Zuko, with his hardened heart, felt guilty.
Once she was tied up, the fear diminished, replaced by a glare of pure hatred. It wasn’t that Zuko was unaccustomed to hate—Ozai made sure of that—only that he seemed to actually care what she thought of him.
Maybe that’s why his heart thumped out of his chest when he caught a glimpse of her standing in his doorway. The blue figure slumps against the wall pseudo-casually, but Zuko knows better. Katara may be full of the passion of a firebender, yet she could be as cool and calculated as ice. The look in her eyes is familiar. It’s how she looked at him all that time ago. Gone is the vulnerability of the catacombs. This Katara is stone cold.
Stone cold and terribly beautiful.
For a split second Zuko allows himself to believe that she is here to press her hand against his scar and say she forgives him. He’s felt the phantom of her touch since the catacombs.
“You might have everyone else here buying your, transformation.”
Zuko’s heart sinks to his stomach.
“But you and I both know you’ve struggled with doing the right thing in the past.”
She steps forward, and Zuko wants to fall to the floor and beg for forgiveness. Plead and cry and do anything to show her that for Agni’s sake he’s trying. But he stays frozen, eyes locked on her beautiful, angry face.
When they’re eye to eye, he feels a stirring in his gut. She’s threatening him—and she has every right too—yet Zuko is painfully aware of the closeness of her body. She’s still a girl, still Katara, and he has always had a weakness for pretty girls who could kill him.
“You make one step backward, one slip up, give me one reason to think you might hurt Aang, and you won’t have to worry about your destiny anymore, because I’ll make sure your destiny ends right then and there. Permanently.”
Oh right, the Avatar’s girl.
Then she’s gone, leaving Zuko staring dumbly at the empty doorway.
He falls onto his bed.
“Uncle, what should I do?” he sighs to himself.
But Iroh isn’t there to give tea and advice. No, he’s a fugitive.
All because of me.
What hurts the most is that Katara’s got every right to mistrust him, to even hate him. Prince Zuko’s a fuckup, scorned by everyone on the face of the Earth, except for that sky bison. He hurt her. His people hurt her.
Katara hates him, and will forever hate him.
Such a simple fact hurts more than it should. Still, his mind still wanders to the brush of her skin, or her once kind eyes in every spare moment. A mere few months ago, his solution to this problem would have simply been to hate her back. Now, he finds it hard to find a single flaw in Katara of the Water Tribe.
I am a boy, and she’s a girl with more charm than most movie stars.
Fitting in with Team Avatar (a silly name Sokka insisted upon) isn’t quite as difficult as Zuko had imagined it to be. Aang is a true air nomad with his quick forgiveness and cheerful nature, even if his attention span in training is shorter than that of the lemur’s. Sokka decided that they were “bros” very early on, much to Katara’s disliking. Toph is scary. Upon meeting her, Zuko realized why the war had been going on for a hundred years. Earth Kingdom people were as solid and tough as the element they bend.
At meals, Zuko always ended up between Sokka and Toph, as Aang always took the seat next to Katara. At first, he’d been mildly disturbed by the lack of manners both showed. Sokka tended to rip into possum chicken legs with reckless abandon, and made a game out of spitting the bones. Toph was just all around unmannered. Zuko may have spent months on the road, but his blood was royal.
“Sokka, you are beyond disgusting,” Katara scolds at breakfast one day. Zuko can’t help but notice how her nose scrunched up when she was annoyed. “I can’t even eat my eggs with you over there eating like Appa.” She gestures to the sky bison, who is currently occupied by a mountain of cabbages.
“Hey!” Sokka protests with a mouth full of food. “I am a gentleman!”
His sister scoffs.
“It could be worse, Katara,” Aang begins, looking up at her with pure infatuation. “At least he stopped having burping contests with Toph.”
“Don’t act all high and mighty, Twinkletoes!” Toph exclaims. “You were the referee!”
Aang turns so red that Zuko has to hold in a laugh.
“You are all complete barbarians,” Katara declares.
“Really,” Zuko agrees, though he dare not glance at Katara. “It’s like no one ever taught any of you basic table manners.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sokka whines, but his eyes have a playful glint.
“Well, I’m sorry that not everyone got to grow up in a palace!” Katara snaps out of the blue. “Some of us had actual problems to worry about instead of what fork goes where! Problems you people caused!”
“Katara!” Aang, always the pacifist, exclaims in shock. A piece of possum chicken drops out of Sokka’s mouth.
Leaving her eggs and a very stunned Zuko, Katara storms off towards the river, steam practically rising from her skin. He doesn’t know what to do but stare into his meager breakfast and wish he could disappear.
“What the fuck got into Sugar Queen?” Toph asks.
“Yeah Zuko, we’re sorry she blew up at you like that,” Aang adds. “It’s just that after all that happened, she’s having a hard time trust-“
“No, I understand,” Zuko cuts him off. “The Fire Nation has done horrible things. You don’t need to apologize for her.”
“She’ll come around, Zuko,” Sokka says. “She’s just stubborn.”
He was beginning to very much doubt that.
For some masochistic reason, Zuko continues to try.
Toph, who has for some reason taken a liking to him, suggests he start helping with the chores.
“Sugar Queen fucking hates how little the rest of us do around here,” she says, throughly absorbed in picking her toes. “She’s right, of course, but there’s no way I’m doing it.”
“You might actually have a point,” Zuko says.
“Don’t sound so surprised, Sparky.”
In between bending practice with Aang, Zuko makes a point to clean up around the temple. His own room is just as tidy as it was in the Fire Nation, though much less opulent. Sokka and the others quickly grant him permission to go into their rooms to pick up laundry and other unsightly things, which makes him wish that he hadn’t taken Toph’s advice. He never dares step foot in Katara’s room, for a plethora of different reasons.
If Katara notices her lighter work load, she doesn’t say anything. She regards him with the same cool air as always. Zuko won’t deny that it hurts to see her dote over Aang with almost motherly affection then turn around and treat him with such distain.
One evening he is desperate enough to ask to help with dinner. He waits anxiously in the old kitchen, tossing a ball of fire between his hands to occupy his mind.
Finally, Katara enters the room, sweaty and tired from waterbending. Zuko flushes at the sight of her only in her bindings with her thick hair cascading around her shoulders. Uncle always told him it was rude to stare, especially at beautiful, scantily clad girls, but he just can’t help it.
It takes her a moment to notice him standing in the corner, his fire long extinguished.
“Zuko!” she shouts in surprise, arms flung up as if to defend herself.
“I’m sorry I scared you, I just wanted to help with din-“ he stammers, and throws his hands up in surrender.
“Tui and La, what in the spirits are you doing lurking around like that?” Katara exclaims, folding her arms over her stomach self-consciously.
“I wasn’t lurking.” No doubt his face is tomato red. “I just wanted to help out with dinner.”
Katara furrows her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Just because…uh, you do all the work around here and Uncle always said that I, um, should pull my own weight.”
Apparently, invoking Uncle was a good move, because Katara softened slightly at the mention of Iroh. The old man had that effect on women, which evidentially was not a family trait.
“Fine,” she sighs begrudgingly.
She tossed him a sack of potatoes. “Chop these.”
“Where are the knives?” he asks.
Her head whips up. “What do you need a knife for?”
“…To chop the potatoes…like you asked me to.”
She scowled. “Ugh fine, they’re in that drawer.” Still, she kept a close eye on him, not even allowing him to lit the stove with firebending. He didn’t argue, just let her order him around.
When they were finished, she nodded at him.
The “thank you,” was so quiet Zuko wasn’t sure he really heard it.
After the Boiling Rock, any apprehensions the other members of Team Avatar may have had about him disappeared. Even the Kyoshi Warrior, Suki, seemed to warm to him. She and Sokka’s relationship was strange at first, but the longer Zuko watched them, he realized how well suited they were for each other. Nothing like him in Mai.
Mai.
Seeing her brought back a lot of mixed emotions. He hurt her, but in the end he knew they’d be better off separate. Hopefully they could be friends, or at least friendly, one day, if Azula didn’t ship her off to prison for eternity.
But of course, Azula couldn’t let him be happy for longer than a few days. She somehow managed to find them at the Western Air Temple and nearly destroy the entire place. Worst of all, she separated Katara and Sokka from their father.
In their separation he felt the loss of his mother like a wound that would never truly heal.
When Team Avatar raised a toast to him, something in his heart swelled. Something like…belonging.
“I’m touched,” he says. “I don’t deserve this.”
And there is Katara, with her cup stubbornly on left on the ground.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Zuko’s face crumbles as he watches the blue figure stomp away.
“What’s with her?” Sokka asks.
“I wish I knew.”
For the first time in a long time, Zuko is angry. So, he follows her.
She’s standing at the edge of a cliff, hair blowing in the wind, and he realizes that it wasn’t anger he was feeling, but confusion and desperation.
Why do I care?
“This isn’t fair,” Zuko says, finally voicing his frustration. “Everyone else seems to trust me now. What is it with you?”
Katara whips around, her face contorted in anger. “Oh, everyone trusts you now? I was the first person to trust you, remember? Back in Ba Sing Sae? And you turned around and betrayed me, all of us.”
Zuko drops his head in shame at the mention of the catacombs.
So she does remember.
“How can I make it up to you?”
“You really wanna know?” She stalks towards him, her fists curled in barely controlled rage. “Hmm, maybe you could reconquer Ba Sing Sae in the name of the Earth King!”
They’re face to face now. Why is she only close to him when she wants to kill him?
“Or, I know, you could bring my mother back!”
With that, she’s gone again.
After a very uncomfortable talk with Sokka, Zuko has a plan.
It feels rude to barge into Katara’s tent in the middle of night, so he sits outside until morning. When she emerges, he says what he has to.
“I know who killed your mother. And I’m going to help you find him.”