Chapter Text
And a kiss that I kept
Under my vest
Apart from everything
But the heart in my chest
Zuko wakes to a horrible, wounded noise and to darkness and for a moment thinks he must still be there, spasming, electricity threading through him in pain he couldn’t describe if he tried, that ignites his blood, that makes his limbs weak and limp and useless as he lies there, dying on the hard palace grounds, as he tries to reach for—
He clenches his fingers in the silky bedsheets underneath him. Not the ground. The fire sages took Azula into custody, to be tended to in the infirmary and then placed under house arrest on his order. That was after Katara made the first pass at healing him, but before he nearly fainted as he tried to walk on his own, and before Katara held half his body weight against her as a meek-looking serving maid guided them to his old chambers.
Katara saved him.
Katara.
Abruptly, he turns to the right of the bed and doesn’t let the twinges of pain that shoot through his torso deter him. She’d been sitting in a chair she’d pulled by his bedside when he fell asleep, even though he’d told her she should rest, too. At the time, she was insistent that she had to watch him over him for the night, but they’d both been running on fumes for days. He’s not surprised to find she’s crashed.
It can only have been a few hours, though, if the dark sky outside the window is anything to go by. Since then, she’s climbed into the bed beside him, on top of the covers, her chin resting on a flat hand. Even in sleep, her expression is easy to read, the lines of her brow drawn in hurt and fear as she cries out again.
His heart clenches for more than one reason.
“Katara,” he whispers, straining his hand to touch her shoulder. “Katara, wake up.”
It takes a moment before she comes to, but when she does, she shoots up and looks around to take in her environment, wild and scared and determined, before remembering where she is and meeting Zuko’s gaze.
Tears streaming, she gasps out, “You died, you died, I tried to heal you but it was too late, I couldn’t save you, and you…” She chokes on her tears, gasping for breath. “You died for me, Zuko, do you know how that feels?”
He thinks of his mother. He thinks of the years he spent quietly sure she’d died in his stead. The dreams where she screamed for help as the world caved in beneath him. How, even now, he still doesn’t know if Ozai was telling the truth when he said she could be alive, or if it was just one more manipulation meant to keep him there long enough to shoot him down with lightning.
Evidently, it was his family’s preferred method for trying to kill him.
Hesitantly, he reaches out a hand and cups it against her cheek, so slowly she could pull away and pretend she hadn’t noticed. Instead, she leans into the touch, like she’s freezing and it’s her only source of warmth.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “It was just a bad dream.”
She shakes her head. His fingers comb through her hair unconsciously. “No, it wasn’t. It could’ve happened. It almost happened. Zuko, I…” She takes a deep breath. “How could you do that?”
Though their source has halted, tear streams still glitter against her cheeks in the low lighting. He thinks back to the moment. Could it have been mere hours ago? The clay-red burning sky above them, the raw feeling of the sun itself in his bloodstream, and fires set all around them. The palace, the gardens, the home that forged him, the home that burned and shunned him, the last place he ever saw his mother, his sister's crackling blue lightning more erratic than he’d ever before seen it, the panic that gripped him as he glanced sideways and saw Katara behind him. As he knew, for once, what Azula was planning, as he realized what he had to do.
He hadn’t even thought about it. A lifetime of dithering between right and wrong, honor and duty, love and hate, but in the end, in that moment, he’d known only one thing to be true, whatever else may have come in the aftermath:
The lightning couldn’t reach Katara. He wouldn’t let it.
“How could I do anything else?” His voice thickens in a near-whisper as he looks at her half-shadowed. She is the last waterbender of her tribe, because of his family. She is his friend. She saw beyond his scar, his hate, his fear, and looked at him like he was someone worth knowing and threw her arms around him in embrace and that meant something. And when he looked back, he always saw her. Kind, but not weak. Strong, but not cruel. Angry, yet so loving.
Katara—she—
He watches the drag of her eyelashes, fluttering once and then twice as she takes in his words. Before he’s able to process it, she’s leaning down to meet him where he now rests against the pile of pillows and places a kiss against his lips, soft and gentle and searching, as though in question. He doesn’t know what she’s asking, in those brief seconds before time catches up to him, but hasn’t he proven already that he would cut out his own heart, be it by sword or flame, if that’s what she asked of him? If that was what her survival demanded?
How Zuko wants to lean into it, to answer in turn, to kiss her back properly.
Instead, he pulls away. “Katara…”
Biting her lip, she looks at him with fresh tears in her eyes, and his chest pangs again. He feels out of sorts, out of breath, out of his depth. He’s kissed two other girls in his life, and it was nice. But neither Jin nor Mai had looked at him with quite so much raw, terrifying, humbling faith and concern and trust sparkling in their eyes. He doesn’t know what to do with this.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes out, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
He frowns. “Don’t be sorry. It’s just…”
“I get it, okay? You don’t want to kiss me. No need to harp on it,” she asks, eyes cast down.
“I didn’t say—you’re confused,” he tries to reason. Though he’s felt drenched in cool sweat all night, suddenly he feels unbearably, suffocatingly warm. There’s no need to go admitting things he shouldn’t be feeling at all.
A tense beat hangs in the air.
“I’m confused? About what.” Her eyes narrow as her voice edges toward steeliness.
He blinks, heart pounding. He finds himself vaguely glad Toph isn’t around to hear it, and then guilty for the thought. They still haven’t gotten word from the others, and the war isn’t won until they do, until they know for certain that Aang has defeated his father and their friends are safe and the world un-doomed. That’s why they can’t do this, why he can’t let her think that she owes him, somehow, for saving her, when she already saved him back. He can’t let her think that everyone else she holds dear might be gone and so she has to cling to him because he’s not gone.
“It’s been a long day,” he manages. “A lot has happened. And I know it’s easy for all of those feelings to get… mixed up, and I don’t want you to think—that you have to—”
His resolve and any eloquence he might have had waver as she glares down at him, having pulled back and her hands now bunched up in the silken bedsheets.
“Oh, I get it. So, you know what I’m feeling better than I do!”
“That’s not—”
“No, you’re right, Zuko. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m clearly just a helpless little girl,” she says with false sincerity, her eyes now bright and sharp, no tears in sight, “who needs you to tell me what I do and don’t feel. I’m just grateful, or confused, or I pity you. There’s no other possible reason I might want to kiss you.”
It’s strange to have an argument this quiet and in such darkness. She’s not even shouting, but he can feel the anger buzzing under her skin all the same. The basin by the bedside shakes. They are still a breath away from one another.
“Katara. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
He closes his eyes. How did he mess this up? He was trying so hard to do the right thing.
“Katara, I—”
“I’m going to get more water for the basin.” She slips sideways off the bed and stands to her full height, looking angry and sad and guilty all at once.
He doesn’t want her to look like that. She has nothing to feel guilty about. He wants to ask her to stay, but this is her asking for space. He knows that much, at least.
“Okay.”
She nods once, tightly, and is gone in a flash, the door shutting quickly behind her. He knows she won’t go far or be gone for long—until they know for sure the war is won, they can’t know for sure where anyone in the palace truly stands—but part of him is haunted by the sound of that door shutting, by the patter of her feet in the hall.
He tries to wait up so that he can make sure she’s okay and apologize when she gets back, to explain that the words weren’t coming easy and he said it all wrong, that he cares about her. So much. Too much. But with an injury like this and the restless nature of the last few weeks, he falls back into uneasy sleep.
In it, he is two people, in two places. He is Zuko, who made the wrong choice in Ba Sing Se, who helped bring down the city, who betrayed the girl who offered him kindness just moments before, and Zuko, who was trying, always trying, who didn’t even hesitate to jump in front of her, who saved her and destroyed her in the same impulse. In both realities, she screams how could you, and in both, he kisses her in a world aflame. He tastes blood and bruise in one and the salt of her tears and the sea as their lips meet in the other. In both, he’s afraid his kiss tastes like the legacy of ash and fire he was born to.
He’s afraid that it will consume her.