Work Text:
For what felt like the millionth time in the past few days, Katara watched Aang stagger around fighting invisible demons inside of his own head. The nightmares were swallowing him again. She’d done her best to comfort him, but all of her efforts seemed futile. And she understood why. The pain that clutched her heart was more than sympathy — it was empathy. It was knowing deep in her bones what he was going through, because she’d been through it herself. Was currently going through it. Well, maybe what she was experiencing wasn’t quite the same thing. But she guessed that it was close enough.
Vivid dreams of the day her mother had been taken away from her had, of course, plagued her almost every night since she was a young girl. But during the travels of the last few months, dreams of her mother’s disappearance and her tribe’s diminishment had been replaced with other dreams that were, in a way, even more frightening: a crazy, completely unhinged Jet, destroying innocent town after innocent town and suddenly perishing after each treacherous act. Sokka vomiting up endless amounts of cactus juice and perishing from dehydration. Aang being captured by giant, masked fire nation soldiers. And — worst of all — that haunty fire nation prince, pinning her with his golden amber stare, begging for his scar to be healed.
Aang was being mentally tortured by dream-Ozai. Katara, meanwhile, was being mentally tortured by his son — dream-Zuko.
Katara. His voice in her dreams was somehow even lower and throatier than it was in real life. It vibrated through her, oozing with heart-wrenching desperation. It killed her that the dream prince knew and used her actual name. (It killed her even more that she liked the way it sounded, falling from his lips.) Please. If you take my scar away, you’ll take away my shame. You’ll save me.
As he begged and begged and begged her, against her will she gradually moved in closer and closer and closer, as though being pulled by an invisible current. (She normally loved currents, but this one wasn’t natural.) She wanted. Oh, how she wanted to save him. Maybe that was just her nature: to save rather than destroy. (She’d really like to think so, but the tumultuous, simmering, rebellious, revengeful anger lingering just underneath her psyche whispered to her otherwise.)
But, unfortunately, in this particular dream, she always moved too slowly, too hesitantly. (Just as she had in real life, when she and him had been trapped together inside the crystal catacombs underneath Ba Sing Se.) With each passing moment, the prince clutched his scar in greater and greater agony. With horror, she noticed the dead skin had turned a vicious red. It glowed and shimmered like lava — and it rapidly unfurled itself across his face like an awakening snake. Hungry, it grew, gobbling up more and more of his porcelain, pale, perfect skin. As it advanced, he screamed. Endless, piercing, unbearable screams. At this point, Katara always froze, transfixed by the horrible sight in front of her: a teenage boy whose face was seemingly being devoured by fire. Eventually the screams stopped, and she stared into the eyes of an alien creature, a monster: the same amber eyes, but skin around it that was charred beyond recognition. The creature stared at her accusingly: you could have saved me, it seemed to be saying. It’s all your fault.
At this point, Katara usually awoke, sobbing breathlessly and (thankfully) tearlessly. However, as soon as she caught her breath, her sorrow switched quickly to anger. How dare he? How dare he invade her mind like that? How dare he provoke her sympathy? How dare he make her feel like she owed him something? Deep down, she knew it was irrational: it was the dream prince who had done these things, and he was only a product of her imagination. Zuko was not to blame. Deep down, her anger wasn’t actually directed at Zuko: it was directed at herself.
How could she have cared about him? How could she still care about him, after his terrible betrayal? How did she permit him to float in and out of her waking thoughts and slumbering dreams, despite her best efforts to block him out? And, most chillingly, how could he possibly be taking the place of her own mother in her dreams?
Why was it, during her daily meditations when she attempted to picture and focus on her mother’s face, Zuko’s face kept making an appearance? What could that possibly mean?
She had no doubt that Zuko had poisoned something deep within her. Because she’d been foolish enough to vulnerably share her childhood trauma with him, he had poisoned her memories of her mother as well. She didn’t know how she could purify herself of his touch, but she swore to herself that she would find a way, even if she spent the rest of her days searching.
Even if she was able to forgive him for the rest of the awful things he’d done to her, Sokka, Suki, Toph, and especially Aang, she knew she’d never be able to forgive him for that.
With careful, measured breaths, she shelved the images of broken, beaten dream-Zuko in the recesses of her mind. It was time to be strong and be present for Aang. He needed her right now. He didn’t need to know what she was going through. She preferred if none of them did. The only person’s peace that mattered right now was Aang’s. If she could help him clear his own mind, then she could redeem herself for the absolute mess raging inside of her own head. (Or, at least that’s what she firmly told herself.)
“You’re ready to face him, Aang,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. But underneath that statement, lay a much more frightening question: was she ready to face Zuko? Would she ever be ready?
She had a feeling that, either way, she didn’t have a choice. She would have to face him again, whether she was ready for it or not.