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i.
They are not what he expected, the Avatar and his friends. Aang, he reminds himself; Aang and his friends. They are a rowdy bunch. Roughhousing and shouting and making mischief at each other’s expense.
So young, and they all act like it. All of them, except for the waterbender, who has sharp, clear eyes and stares at him like a hawk, like she can see through him if she tries hard enough. And she is trying hard, he can tell; she follows his every move like a shadow.
Katara looks at him like he is some kind of animal, a threat that must be kept at bay. It is familiar, her harsh gaze. In some ways, it reminds him of home.
In court, he had hundreds of eyes on him, some friendly but many judging; it was a rat-vipers nest of schemes and treacheries, nearly everyone waiting to pounce on any slight imperfection, any slip-up. His family was even worse, his sister watching him with insincere smiles and drawing him in with false kindness, while his father treated him with the same detachment he treated their people as if they were merely sire and subject instead of father and son.
Battered, scarred, and bruised, he survived them. Barely, perhaps, but he did.
So he will remain here, teaching Aang to the best of his abilities, dedicating all of himself to this strange and unfamiliar endeavor. He has changed and continues to change into something new and better with every passing day, and no one can take that away from him.
No one, save for himself.
ii.
His firebending weakens as if some force pulls on it, keeping it suppressed and restrained. The others laugh and poke fun at him, Katara especially, declaring any explanation of his for what he is experiencing to be nonsense.
They are not firebenders. None save for Aang, and even then, Zuko wonders to himself if Aang is truly a firebender or someone who can just bend fire without the essence and spirit of it in his blood. They do not understand him, nor does he exactly understand them, so how could they possibly know the weight of what he is feeling? To feel cut off from what you have always been—to look inside yourself and know that your inner flame is dimming…
He needs to be away from the group, to be apart from them, for a while, if only long enough that he can gather his thoughts.
There is an intense urge inside of him to scream at Agni, to order his god to bring back what he has lost so easily. But words die in his throat as he knows he has no right to demand such things, no power to command Agni and the great spirits of the universe to bend their will toward his own desires.
If his fire is ever to return, he must search for it from a place of appreciation and gratitude for the universe and the role he is allowed to play within it.
Cleaning himself with salt, Zuko rubs his hands over his arms and face, letting go of everything else: his thoughts, confusion, and doubts.
iii.
The dragons are alive; their scales glimmer as brightly as jewels, and in the flames they produce, Zuko sees the entire world, and finally, at long last, he understands.
His family destroyed so much of the world, so much of themselves, that he doesn’t understand why the dragons allowed him to live, let alone understand the truth of firebending, of the great and powerful ability they possess.
After everything in his past, all he has done, he does not deserve this honor, but Zuko is working to be more than what his father meant for him to be, and that comes with learning how to accept precious things given to him freely and unconditionally—kindness, knowledge, trust, respect, and friendship—even when he believes himself to be unworthy of them.
iv.
Aang grumbles and groans about being woken up that early, moving slower than a snail sloth, dragging his feet across the stone floors of the temple until they reach the courtyard.
Zuko eases him into it, starting with meditation and stretching until he is awake and alert enough to move into the fundamental forms.
Katara is there; Katara is always there, watching him and watching Aang, watching them train, day after day, her eyes bright and fierce and never wavering. Agni knows why someone who does not feel the call of the sun in their veins would want to be up so early, to watch and listen without participating, but Zuko supposes that it cannot be helped. She does not trust him, not even to do the one thing that they all agreed to allow him to do.
Katara is protective of Aang, of her friends, so much so that she seems more like a guardian than a peer, her eyes older than her age might indicate. Different than her friends, as if she has seen many things that the others can’t even imagine. (A distance in the eyes, as if one is seeing further than other people, as if one is seeing further than what is truly there. He has it, too; he sees it when he looks at himself in mirrors or in clear, cool water.)
As each day passes, her presence feels less intrusive until she seems to fit in with the background to him, with the stone pillars and the ancient temple itself.
v.
“Do you know any stories?” Aang asks him one night by the fire, and even after a long day of training, he has so much energy his body seems to be buzzing.
Zuko blinks. “Sorry, what did you just say?”
Katara snorts, her nose wrinkling in derision.
Aang ignores her and repeats his question.
Zuko thinks of his mother, and how he would sit next to her under a large maple tree in the gardens, her voice was as gentle as silk as she told him of their people’s great legends and myths. He remembers the warmth of her embrace and how he misses her like an old wound in the gut. Zuko hopes that if she ever were to see him again, she would not look at him like a stranger. “I know some.”
“Well, will you tell us one? Do you know any about dragons?” Aang asks, his gray eyes large and curious.
There are expectant eyes on him, and Zuko feels that he cannot refuse, that maybe he owes them this after the pain and distress he has caused them. So he nods. “Yeah, I know a lot of stories about dragons. There is one tale about the dragon that guards the western sea...”
vi.
She seems to accept that he must help with the chores, if only for the sake of an equal distribution of work. But Katara does not make it easy for him; she does not make anything easy for him.
It is rare for her to speak to him, and often, it is only to make a disapproving noise or glare at him if he takes longer than what she deems necessary to complete a particular task, whether that be fetching fresh water or mending clothes.
His stitching is much neater than hers, and there are just some old habits that he will not shake. (The sages always told him to give his best effort to every task, even if that meant being slower than others, slower than his sister, so that Agni would look down upon him with favor.)
The others try to create harmony between them, a truce for Aang’s sake, but every step forward between him and the others seems to take him further back from her. He knows that he was their enemy, a fierce and stubborn enemy, and such a thing cannot be undone.
Still, a part of him wishes that he was able to speak to Katara in the same way that he can speak to the others. It is a silly wish, but one he clings to all the same.
Perhaps it is because of what happened in the catacombs, how she had touched his scar, so gentle and kind. He had wanted to hold onto that feeling, keep it safe and hidden, but then his uncle came with the Avatar. Then Azula was there, promising him things that he had prayed to Agni about—a future where he would be happy, free from the shame that seemed to follow him everywhere he went, free to return to his beloved homeland and begin anew. Zuko knew he shouldn’t have trusted Azula, but she was his sister, and he knew her, and he didn’t know the future that his uncle spoke of; he couldn’t even imagine it.
The choice was his to make; he made it, and now he must deal with the consequences.
vii.
Katara kisses him, and it is nothing like any kiss he has ever had. Not with Mai, not with Jin, either. There is hatred in it and anger, but more than that, there is a strange sort of curiosity, as if she is unsure if he is truly here, and this kiss is the only way she can know for sure.
Zuko doesn’t know how to respond.
No one has ever kissed him like they wanted to hurt him, like they wanted so many things from him all at once, things that contradicted each other, so desperate to feel something they were okay with feeling anything. Katara has a tempest inside her, a whirlwind, and he thinks that perhaps returning her kiss, in a soft and careful way, would do something to ease the storm, like the way her touch and her words and her compassionate eyes soothed the roaring within him in Ba Sing Se, if only for a few brief moments.
But then, he doesn’t return her kiss. He hears Aang calling her name, and he moves to stop her because she hates him, and she likely hates this, and she would hate being seen here, like this, with him even more.
After she turns away from him, without a second glance, without a word, Zuko stays near the clearing, and brings his fingers to touch his bruised lips, wondering what that all meant, wondering if it meant anything at all.
viii.
Mai and Ty Lee had been at the Boiling Rock, and he left them. (Mai has loved him for so long, and he left her and Ty Lee to face whatever terrible and torturous sentence that Azula has devised for them.)
He left his uncle, too. His uncle, the one person who loved and supported him when he was in so much pain that all he could bear to say were words of anger and resentment towards everyone around him.
Zuko is stronger than he has ever been, but he can still not be there for everyone that he cares for, not when they need him most.
ix.
Chief Hakoda is there, freed from his prison, and nothing changes between him and Katara, nothing at all.
She still watches him with those same angry and distrustful eyes, and it is as if whatever happened in the clearing that day never happened. He would think that he imagined it, but how could it have been his imagination when Zuko hardly felt like he had been there all it? It is something he should forget, but the kiss, if he could even call it a kiss, was so strange and sudden that he finds it impossible to do so.
Now, he spends much of his time in his room; it has become a sanctuary for when he cannot bring himself to go out into the loud and bright temple. Not when he finds his insides twisting with envy when he sees Chief Hakoda interact with his children. The last time his own father looked at him with love was when he was a child; the last time Ozai touched him was to burn and humiliate him, to cut him off from nearly everyone he had ever known, from his home and future and—
He hears The Duke and Toph laughing outside his door; Zuko lights a meditation candle and closes his eyes.
x.
It is in the clearing where she speaks to him again, angry and bitter and cold, and it is like looking in a mirror at who he is in those dark moments alone, and it hurts and shocks him in equal measure. (This is not the person she was in the catacombs. This is not the person he thought her to be. She is like him, more like him than he thought possible.)
It is an odd conversation, not much of a conversation, really, she is mocking him, and he is getting angrier and angrier. He doesn’t know what to make of this, what to make of her; she wants to push him towards something he is trying very hard to no longer be, to fight him, it seems, but then for a brief moment, she looks like she may even kiss him again.
When she leaves, a shadow of her own darkness follows behind her, and it is then that Zuko realizes that he has something she does not have. Certainty in his path, in his choices. Confidence in who he is and the person he is becoming.
Kneeling before the altar, Zuko starts to say a prayer for her to find peace within herself. Agni is silent, but Zuko continues anyway.