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The Ambassador to the Southern Water Tribe and the Fire Lord shared a comfortable silence as they sorted through various documents relevant to their respective stations.
Sometimes Katara preferred the companionship of a childhood friend when working. And it was much easier to discuss pertinent issues with the Fire Lord, who – fortunately, happened to be said friend.
This gave Zuko the chance to sometimes admire Katara, who was otherwise occupied. He’d try to be discreet, of course, and he still had his own responsibility to tend to. Though she did try to hold him accountable, he had to admit his productivity dwindled in these sessions. But it was worth it – just to look at her at least somewhat unbidden.
Her hair was loose, relaxed from her usual tight braid, long waves falling down her shoulder. Her round, brown cheek glowed in the torchlight, topped by darkened blue eyes framed by a furrowed, concentrated brow.
Tonight they’d indulged in firelily rice wine to ease the efforts, and a rare blush dusted Katara’s dusky skin.
Zuko, for all his paleness allowing all sorts of flushes, was easily readable. He always envied how Katara – even in the throes of passionate speech – never showed her cards in a blush. It was only under certain… influences. She was always beautiful, but particularly so with warm ocher cheeks.
“Katara.”
She looked up, quill stilled, lashes fanning. “Hm.”
He almost loathed to break her focus. “Have you…. Have you ever blood bent since that time we, um, hunted Yon Rha?”
She blinked rapidly, taken a bit aback, placing her quill down.
“Sorry I know it’s random I just. I didn’t mean to pry- uh, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“Oh… no it’s okay. I um….” She looked up, contemplating – as if she didn’t want to reveal the truth and risk it sullying his image of her.
“I…I won’t think less of you. I mean, not that that’s your concern.” He was being presumptuous. “I was only…curious.”
She tilted her head, dark waves following, eyeing the rivers of grain in the wooden table. “I… no. Not on anything really alive. I sometimes try to work with plants – at most – feel the water in them. It requires a precision that I think is a good to maintain. But- well, I certainly wouldn’t do it to an animal. Or a person.” Katara sipped a bit more of the wine.
Zuko nodded, considering. He stared at the mounted torch over her shoulder, meditating on the flame, letting it pulsate to his deep breathing. He feigned a neutral, almost academic tone. “I’m curious. About how it feels.”
She coughed, sputtering golden liquid.
“Sorry.” Was he?
“How it feels to bend blood?”
“I meant- to be blood bent.”
“…Um. It’s not great.”
“Do you- have you tried it on yourself, then?”
“Yes but- not exactly- I mean… An old woman from the Southern Water Tribe taught me how to blood bend. When she was young, she had been taken in a Fire Nation raid, imprisoned, and taught herself to blood bend to escape. She’d been living in the Fire Nation her whole life and. Well, we had a disagreement. And so she’d used it on me.”
“Oh."
“Yeah.”
“That must have been… violating.”
“It was terrifying.”
“What… um, what happened to her?”
“She was… traumatized. And she blamed the Fire Nation for her suffering. But she took it out on innocent people, and – I was a naïve child then. I saw the world in black and white. We called the authorities on her because we thought she was crazy and dangerous. But all they did was lock her up again.”
She paused, but Zuko stayed silent, allowing her to continue.
“I told myself blood bending was- it was a darkness inside me. Something I could never unleash again. When I used it on that Southern Raider, I was so angry and scared from losing my mother. I needed some control. I couldn’t do it again: take someone’s agency from them. But the thing is… it felt good. That’s really what scared me. What kind of person am I that I… enjoyed it. But as I got older, I realized- Our shadows don’t make us evil. They need to be illuminated and worked through, not shut out.”
She dropped her head into her heads. “And whatever happened to Hama…It haunts me. Nothing she did was crueler than her being put back in an imperial prison after everything she’d been through. She deserved peace.”
Zuko put his hand on her knee. “We can find her. I can pardon her.”
She looked up at him. “She’d hate you, you know.”
“I’ve been hated by worse people.”
“I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
Zuko leaned back in his chair, resolute. “We’ll find out.”
Katara gave him a small, tender smile – the kind that made his heart break. “You’re really sweet, you know that.”
Zuko rolled his eyes, easing the tension. He huffed, “No I’m intimidating.”
She shoved him playfully. “Underneath that scowl is a baby turtleduck.”
Zuko clutched his chest. “You wound my ego.”
“The Fire Lord needs his ego wounded sometimes.” Still smiling, Katara picked up the quill again and eyed her documents. But Zuko wasn’t finished.
“Hey, but- still, I am curious. About what it feels like.”
Blue eyes looked back up at him. Hesitant, “How do you mean?”
“I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with but… will you… try it. On me?”
An ocean enveloped him, her stare could’ve flooded the entire palace. He thought maybe blue was the last color he’d ever see.
“Why?”
“I told you. I’m curious.”
“Right, but why are you curious?” Her tone wasn’t accusatory – just neutral, that of a healer taking an intake.
“I don’t…. It seems…”
The ocean waited. The ocean waits for no one.
Would she think him weird? Well, she probably already did, anyways. What’s another reason? Tipsy from wine, he dove in, hoping for smooth waters.
“I control so much, Katara. I always have to be in control of – the council, my people, the government, my breath, my anger, my sadness, even my joy. No one – nothing – is above the Fire Lord. They’re all under my rule. I just… want to feel out of control for once. In someone else’s control. I don’t know. It’s stupid. I just remember being in such awe of you when you- I am in such awe of you. But um, I get it- if that’s like… too weird. I’m sorry.”
After a moment of contemplation, she finally responded. “No, I understand.”
La took mercy on him. “You do?”
“I may not rule a nation, but you and I have always had our share of obligation. I mean we were basically the parents of the whole group. I was always responsible for everything, and yet it was all at the mercy of someone else. The Avatar for saving the world. You, Zuko, for saving the Fire Nation. All the work and none of the power. Not that I needed power, but.”
“You do have power, though.”
Katara picked at a fingernail. “It’s not lost on me that the Avatar keeps world peace. You rule the Fire Nation. My brother oversees both the Southern Water Tribe and Republic City. I’m just an Ambassador.”
“You do so much.”
“I’m always doing so much for everyone else.”
He watched the tight line of her tense shoulders, the stress compounded from too many years of carrying the hope and future of the world. Katara may not have a country, but she had the future. And she had him.
“Do you think…. I won’t judge you. Do you think blood bending me would help?”
She laughed gently. “What good will that do?”
Zuko shrugged. “Nothing practically but… I don’t know. Maybe it’ll help you feel a little more power and maybe it’ll help me feel a little less. For now. For a moment.”
The ocean contemplated whether to swallow him whole or let him wade. When she decided, his vision was blue with the current.
“Yes. Okay, yes. Let’s try it. But please tell me to stop at any moment.”
Zuko nodded.
“Stand for me?”
He got out of his chair, and Katara followed, across from him, awash in the bright moonlight from the open doors to the balcony. She took a deep breath of the warm summer night breeze and held out her hands in a gesture from long ago. It felt almost like another life.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, please.” He sounded desperate to the point of inappropriateness. He hoped she didn’t notice, but it was Katara. She probably did.
Her fingers twitched and he could feel her inside him. It was a closeness he’d never experienced before.
The ocean slipped under his skin and moved him. Push and pull. He was a puppet in the opera of the gods and Katara – La – plucked his strings. All-consuming destruction, merciless, but gentle, soothing, safe until death. Their eyes were locked – the sun touching the ocean. And Zuko lamented how the two could never meet – an eternal dance, an illusion of proximity. Sun and Moon. Fire and Water.
Fire thought itself unbridled Destruction. But the Ocean would always win. After all, she ruled most of the planet.
Katara was never without power. Power over him.
He gasped as she let him go.
Reflexively, she apologized. “Sorry. How... um. How was that?”
Zuko didn’t want her to think he was weird. But the word spilled out of him, as if she still had a hold on his blood. “Amazing.”
He liked to pretend the wine and bending-induced flush on her face was from something else. For once he wished he could read her and find something he was longing for.
“Oh.”
He shook it off. “It’s so…”
“Intimate.”
“Exactly.”
Though she’d let go of him, something remained charged between them, magnetic. Like they were still connected. Two electrons in a constant chase. A closed circuit.
“Katara-” “Zuko-”
Oh.
“You go first.”
She smoothed down her deep blue skirt and shook her head. “I’m glad that was… fine.”
What if the sun could feel the ocean? What if he could kiss the shadows of its depths. What if Zuko could-
Lightning was his element. He took it for her, once. This time, he found it in her eyes. It brought him closer, slowly. She could reject him, if she wanted. But now was the time to defy the laws of physics.
The ocean's gravity held on - Zuko could’ve sworn she was still blood bending him.
He cupped her face, and she looked up – eyes blown black in the low light, lips glistening red. He leaned down. “Stop me.”
She didn’t.