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Zuko was trying to teach Aang how to firebend. Emphasis on trying. The boy just couldn’t seem to get it and the longer it took, the more frustrated he grew. While the other elements were more or less easy to master, fire was the one he was having trouble with.
So for the last couple of weeks the two of them had been training. It was the same routine. Meditate, do the usual stances and then focus on the fire inside him to try to conjure up a flame. Meanwhile, Katara, Sokka and sometimes Toph sat around the space they were training and watched them. Today it was just Katara and Sokka. Aang had been able to conjure a small fire in his hands for a while now, but he had to concentrate a lot to get there. Right now, he was bored and wanted to try something new. That’s what they were fighting about today.
“Zuko please, please fight me with firebending. I can do it right this time!”
“No, Aang. You aren’t there yet. Your flames aren’t even hot enough to burn through my clothes and they’re hardly bigger than your palm.” Zuko was trying to be patient, but he had never been good at that.
“But that doesn’t matter! If you fight me with the full force of your bending, I could learn how to avoid the flames and use my other bending!”
“First of all, if I fight you with the full force of my fire, you would be reduced to ashes in seconds. I am nowhere near a master, but I have been trained by one and I have used my fire as a weapon for a longer time than you have been alive. You can’t escape a proper fight with fire without fire.
Second of all, you need to learn how to firebend properly anyway. You can’t only be able to make a small flame just because you can bend the other elements as well. The Avatar has to be able to firebend.”
Zuko was pretty exasperated by now. Aang was frustrated that he wasn’t making progress that quickly, but it was normal. Firebending took time and you needed to give it space.
“I know. But I’m just saying that using it in a fight against someone might actually help me more than you think.”
“And who do you think you could fight? No one else here is a firebender.”
“It doesn’t have to be a firebender, right? Just someone willing to fight me.” Aang persisted with a mischievous look in his eyes.
Aang looked behind him and Zuko followed his eyes. Sokka. The boy was currently talking with Katara about something and started to laugh. His mouth forming a smile, eyes crinkling at the ends and the melodic sound of his lough formed the joy-filled expression Zuko loved to see on the boy. Zuko felt the heat in his cheeks and tried and failed to ignore the feeling in his stomach. Sokka was too pretty for his own good.
“I’m not sure if this is a good idea, Aang. Sokka doesn’t have a very good history with firebending. He could react badly to an attack with fire,” Zuko said while thinking about said boy. It was true. Zuko didn’t want him to freak out and panic because of the way the Fire Nation had treated his family and home. But he also didn’t want to risk Sokka getting injured on Zuko’s watch.
Aang’s smile flickered, but then he lit up again and turned around to meet Zuko’s eyes. “We won’t know if we just stand around. Let’s go ask him and then we’ll see. Maybe he’ll be fine with it.”
Zuko was skeptical, but he kept it to himself. Once Aang set his mind to something, his opinion couldn’t be changed that easily, he had learned that by now.
The two approached their audience and the smaller boy looked sheepishly at Sokka’s sitting form in front of them.
“Hey- um- Sokka would you mind training with me? You would be with your swords and I would practice my firebending in a fight! I think that’ll actually help me learn bending it more than some boring forms and focusing on my inner fire or whatever,“ Aang said with a convincing smile and no small amount of annoyance in his words meant for Zuko’s teaching tactics so far. His eyes quickly flickered to Katara before settling on Sokka again.
Meanwhile, his companion wasn’t taking his eyes off of Sokka.
Zuko wanted to make sure that the boy knew about his options. “You obviously don’t have to, we know what you’ve been through considering fighting firebending. It could be uncomfortable and we don’t want to put you in that position, it was just an idea and if you don’t like it you don’t have to-“
Sokka laughed. “It’s fine Zuko. I really don’t mind. And if Aang says that it’ll help, we should give it a shot.”
The brown haired boy stood up and went to get his swords. Meanwhile Zuko took the previously occupied seat next to Katara and watched as the pair started to fight.
They watched the ongoing dance between metal and fire wordlessly until Katara spoke up.
“So. You like Sokka.”
Zuko whipped his head around to look at her and spluttered. “What? No. No, I don’t- I have- what are you talking about? I don’t like Sokka.”
“You’re an awful liar.” Katara has known now for a while. Even if she hadn’t watched Zuko like a hawk ever since his arrival to their camp, neither of the two was very secretive about it.
“Even Toph knows. You’re not very good at hiding it, if you’ve even tried doing that,” the girl continued.
Zuko’s shoulders slumped as he realised that he had lost this fight and there was no getting out of this. “I haven’t been hiding it, but I haven’t been going around and yelling it around either. I’ve tried to send him some hints or something, but he either doesn’t feel the same for boys, for me or is simply blind.”
“Yeah, Sokka’s never been the best at knowing when someone likes him. He has always needed someone to spell it out for him,” Katara said while sighing. She didn’t know what it was with boys and not understanding the obvious signs of someone loving them, but it happened too damn often. Her looks at Aang never did seem to be reciprocated.
“… What does it say about me if that only makes me like him even more?” Zuko tentavily asked while not looking at Katara’s eyes.
Said girl laughed out and replied without hesitation “That you’re head over heels in love with him.”
Zuko slightly smiled at that. The thought of that didn’t seem so bad. Sokka was funny, smart and sweet to be around. There were certainly worse people to have affection for. “Yeah. I guess that’s true.”
“And to answer your question, yes, he does like boys. Boys and girls.” Katara had noticed that Sokka was as flustered around a pretty boy as he was around a pretty girl. Ususally she wouldn’t go and just tell that to someone, but this was Zuko. He had earned her trust and admitted to loving her brother 5 minutes ago.
Zuko seemed to be happy about that at first (at least for his standards), but then his expression turned mournful again. “Even if he does, he probably still wouldn’t return the same feelings for me. Our past is just too complicated and he doesn’t think of me that way.”
(Meanwhile Sokka was trying his best to impress Zuko. That was the whole reason why he had signed up for this and was giving his all to win this fight. He just hadn’t expected for Aang to be so vicious with his fire.)
Katara had known Sokka’s reasoning behind his acceptance of the offer to fight Aang right away and just smiled at Zuko. They were such idiots. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
Zuko looked at her unbelievingly and thought about it for a moment. He didn’t know if Katara was simply trying to soothe him or if she was serious. Looking at Sokka’s fighting form again, taking notice of his strong arms wielding his sword like it weighed nothing and his fierce expression, the same as that of a brave soldier, Zuko couldn’t believe someone like that would ever spare a thought about him. It was sweet of Katar to say stuff like that, but Zuko wouldn’t lie to himself.
“Enough about me and my affections. Let’s talk about you and yours,” he said with a teasing smile, hoping the distraction would work.
Katara’s cheeks reddened a little before she replied.“He’s like a small ball of sunshine. I can’t help but want to protect him from all the evils in this world, while they always manage to find him.”
Zuko understood her worry. “It’s pretty frustrating, isn’t it? You want to protect him, while he doesn’t care about his safety, he just wants to help people.”
Katara nodded.“It’s endearing, how optimistic and hopeful he is. How he hopes to find kindness everywhere he goes while being disappointed again and again. But his optimism is nothing compared to his stubbornness.”
That reminded Zuko of what had happened earlier.
“Yeah, tell me about it. That boy never gives up. Maybe it’s good for us to have people in our lives that show us that the world can be kind and fun when we’re so convinced of the opposite.”
Katara looked at him in bewilderment and let out a small smile. Aang did bring a smile out of her even on her worst days. “Yeah, I guess they balance us out pretty well.”
They sat in silence for a while, until Sokka tripped over a root and almost fell to the ground. While everyone was snickering, Zuko realized something. Something that didn’t seem so important at first, but he still needed to talk to someone else about it.
“I don’t think there’s anything he could do to make me hate him.”
Katara looked at him in disbelief. “Really? Not even his stupid jokes that nobody but you laughs at?”
The boy grinned while saying. “Not even them. I love everything he does, even if I can’t always get behind his reasoning for it. It’s…weird. Loving someone so unconditionally that not even their flaws matter.”
Katara laughed at his inability to form his thoughts into words. “Yeah. You’ll get used to it after a while. But I still can’t believe that the crown prince of the fire nation didn’t experience any love from his family with the exception of his mother and uncle. It used to be hard to feel any kind of compassion towards you, before I got to know you. It’s easier now, after finding out what you’ve been through. You deserved better.”
Zuko couldn’t believe her. How could she say that? Especially since what she had experienced was by far worse in his opinion. This girl truly only thought of the people around her. It was rare to see such a pure soul.
Zuko looked at her incredulously. “Says the literal personification of ‘deserved better’. You didn’t deserve anything that has happened to you. You deserve a happy life with your family. With your mother. And with that airhead over there, if that’s who you want to spend your life with.” The two teenagers looked at the smaller figure trying to conjure some fire into his hand while avoiding the sharp edge of his sparring partner’s sword.
Katara thought about that for a moment, but she came to a sudden realization that that wasn’t the kind of life she wanted. It had been, once, but her dreams and passions had changed a lot in the last year. Gone was the young girl who only knew the village life she had had all her life. All the people she met, the stories she heard and lessons she learned taught her that there was much more to lofe than she had ever expected.
“I would have wanted that kind of life before knowing what the world is like. Now, I just want to help people as much as I can. I have abilities that I can and should use for more than transporting water from one pan into the other. There are so many people who could use my healing or places, which need some waterbending to be fixed up and improve the lives of the people there. It would be selfish of me not to help where I can.”
Katara felt more and more confident that that was what she wanted to do with every word that came out of her mouth. Maybe Aang was right and some people really were destined to do certain things in their life. And maybe this was her destiny.
Zuko didn’t even look surprised at that. He thought over his response, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “That’s true. You’re capable of a lot of good, but your happiness should come first. Don’t go around forcing yourself to do anything you feel obligated to do, just because you can. You can’t help everyone.”
Katara pulled her face into a grimace, like the sentence hurt to even hear. “Do your best for the people in need of help while still not neglecting your own needs.”
“When did you become so wise?” Katara was surprised that the boy next to her could actually give some good advice. He wasn’t known for making the best decisions, after all.
There was a far-away look in Zuko’s eyes. It seemed that he was lost in the past and it took a moment before he came back to the present and spoke. “My uncle used to tell me a lot of stories when we drank tea together and they always seemed to have some cryptic message behind them that he would explain to me at the end. I guess I picked up on what some of them actually meant.”
“Well now I feel like I have to meet this man that turned you into a wise old man,” Katara quipped and smiled at him.
Zuko smiled back at her and was quiet for a moment. “I think we can actually arrange that.”
Katara blinked at him in surprise, but soon she found herself in a conversation involving discussing possible areas to land Appa on, which teashops Zuko’s uncle could be visiting right now and if a surprise visit was really a good idea. They were also still discussing if they would even do it, but they were leaning more and more towards the answer ‘yes’.
Both of them didn’t notice that the two boys they were previously talking about had finished their ‘fight’ and had now switched roles with them.
Seems like stealing glances at each other and trying not to stare too hard at one another would be common for the foreseeable future of the two couples.