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“Do you know what I regret the most?”
His voice comes out of the darkness, but she doesn’t startle. She’s felt his heartbeat out there for a few minutes now – and who else would avoid announcing themselves for this long?
“Oh, Zuko.” She tries to keep her voice light, but her hands tighten on the railing. “This isn’t a night for – ”
But it fills her, thumping through her veins with every pulse. That damn play, taking everything they’ve done, everything they’ve suffered, and turning it into a mockery. And soon, too soon, they’ll be going off to war and trying to change the fate of the world. No, it’s no time to be distracted by regrets.
Now that her choices have played out before her eyes and been twisted into something entirely different in someone else’s mouth, she’s wondering What if…?
She’s also wondering how she can change the future. “I guess I have a few myself,” she admits, ruefully. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”
He laughs, softly, and comes to stand beside her, so close. “And what did you say of me that I didn’t deserve?”
She thinks of all the times he tried to help, or appease, or earn her approval. The times she buried her appreciation – her attraction – under anger and mistrust. She sighs. “No. I regret what I didn’t say.”
And she thinks he knows. All the what-ifs, the moments that they never followed through – because, goodness knows, they’ve both made enough mistakes.
She feels him shrug beside her. “I regret what I didn’t do.”
Her heart starts beating faster. “What was that?”
“Well…” he ducks his head, and it’s hard to tell in the moonlight, but she thinks he’s blushing. “In the catacombs…”
She hopes like hell that she’s not wrong about this and wraps her arms around him. “Yes?”
“Oh, good,” he sighs, happily, and bends his head to kiss her. The sweetness of it surges through her, tingling the way that waterbending healing feels, but warmer.
“Katara? Zuko? Where are you guys? Dinner’s ready!” Sokka calls from deep inside the house, and Zuko pulls back and groans.
“Damnit.” He presses his lips to hers again.
“Better now?” She runs her fingers over his face, and steps away. “We’re out on the balcony,” she calls inside, because they do not want to be found like this. Not when Aang’s already so on edge, when it took actors on a stage enacting a lie for them to realise the truth.
“Is that really what you regretted the most?” she asks, softly, leaning in towards him. Light spills out as Sokka opens the doors, and the smell of spicy peanut stew wafts out towards them.
He tugs her to one side before they go in, pressing another clandestine kiss onto her temple. “Well, that – and that I didn’t save you from the pirates.”
She’s laughing so hard when they go back in that Sokka demands to know what the joke is.
“It’s not as funny as yours,” Zuko assures him, and across the table, Katara winks at him.
It’s not fun to sit there with his friends and wonder whether what he wants will tear their band apart. But with that little smile playing about Katara’s mouth and the way it broadens when she looks at him, with the way her eyes are gleaming in the candlelight – well, it’s very hard to feel any regret.