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When Zuko wakes, he is expecting to open his eyes to green, yet endlessly hoping for red. Much like his homeland, he can taste the metal in his teeth but cannot shut his fist over that dream. No, this is a nightmare, and yet, it cannot be, because if anyone is familiar to nightmares, it would be the scarred exiled prince--and this is beyond it.
“Good morning, Nephew!” He doesn’t have to turn his head to know Uncle is preparing tea in the kitchen to his left. “Hurry, or we will be late for tea with the Earth King!” He wonders if this is a mockery of sorts devised by his very own demons, dragon-faced and cackling. He wonders, but finds himself standing up and slipping his arms inside of robes, the movements familiar, the air of deja vu blocking his lungs, focusing on the hum Uncle echoes, a sound he swears a thousand lives on had already happened.
*
He hates this part.
And he can never bring himself to change the course of his actions. The only notable detail askew is that he no longer stands to shout Azula’s name once she ambushes them in place of the Earth King. Zuko is silent, unsurprised, and always permanently angry. Spirits, is he angry.
*
“Why did they throw you in here? Oh, wait, let me guess. It's a trap. So that when Aang shows up to help me, you can finally have him in your little Fire Nation clutches!”
This is the part he always wishes to wake up from--he closes his eyes and this isn’t real this isn’t real is ringing in his blood--but the waterbender is still yelling, the walls are still glowing green, and he is still angry. Each repeated night seems to sharpen her pain, and he keeps letting her cut him down again and again.
“--spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood!”
The hindsight of his inevitable betrayal dries his mouth of all rebuttal. “You’re right,” he concedes this time.
Zuko does not expect those words to silence her--he expected icicles to his throat and fire from her tongue, more painful reminders of his failures, but instead she tilts her head to gape at him, as if disappointed by his failure to follow the script.
*
“Destiny is a funny thing.” Zuko nods at his Uncle’s words, gritting his teeth at all the other things destiny has proven to be lately. He’s tried everything in his power to change the course of their morning--he’s knocked over the tea kettle, dropped the cups on the way, he’s faked sickness, and yet, without fail, his steps always lead him to the Earth King’s palace. Destiny is funny, the way it brings him here to this empty room each day.
Iroh turns to him. “Maybe the Earth King overslept?”
“No,” Zuko is already turning to the door, waiting for his sister’s entrance, loyal to the routine. He can see the way her eye twitches at his lack of surprise, but unsurprisingly so, it barely phases her.
*
Zuko always lets her yell, for it would seem wrong not to allow this release, or for him to be saved from the penance. Sometimes he rushes his lines, sometimes he speaks too softly, too angry, and she always flashes blue crystals of confusion. As he stares at the catacombs, he wonders if this endless betrayal in its ever transient forms wears its battles on her emotions too--does it puncture deeper each time as well? Does she wake up from the feeling of an invisible weight on her chest? A pattern of bruises that happened but never existed? Does she truly understand the way her eyes lead him to believe?
*
He tries to find loopholes; the moment his uncle and the Avatar crash in, he urges them to leave as fast as they can. He hopes he can convince his uncle to leave with them. He hopes they will find safety before Azula finds them first.
Uncle never leaves him. Katara always looks back.
And the Avatar, always, always dies.
*
When Zuko wakes again, he is expecting to open his eyes to green, yet endlessly hoping for red. Golden eyes flutter open, and he counts Day 10 now. “Good morning, Nephew!” still finds a way to catch him off guard every morning, and as he sits up to face his uncle, he lets his lips form a line.
“Uncle,” he looks down at the ground, while his uncle is preparing the tea, “Why does it feel like destiny is punishing me?”
He expects his question to bounce off confusion, but instead he only hears the soft clatter of the kettle. When he finds the energy to look up, Uncle is walking over to kneel at his face. One soft hand on his hair, the old man shakes his head. It is here, up close, he can see each day--each betrayal--buried on his face, dug deep in his eyes, and still, they reach and reach and hold him tight. His uncle surely must know. Must know that each morning he awakes bleeding from the knife in his back.
“Zuko, my boy, no,” he shakes his head again, “You are not being punished. You are being pushed by destiny.”
Pushed? Pushed where? In Agni’s good name, where could he--
*
“Why? Why would you heal me?”
The waterbender is holding her necklace of healing water, taken aback by his question. He’s been wondering this since the first day of this hell.
“Because I forgive you.”
*
On this day, he wakes up to noise of his uncle in the kitchen. Same green. No red. He says nothing to Iroh, nothing but a single embrace. When he leans into his uncle, he swears he must know by the way he breathes. He must. He must. And he wishes more than anything that he would, because then he would save him the pain and not love him anymore, as he rightfully should.
*
He knows her part. And he is so incredibly tired of hearing her cry, and he is tired of feeling cowardness take over his chest, so he summons his feet to move, so that by the time she says, “The Fire Nation took my mother away from me,” he is already there. Zuko reaches for her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he means it this time. He always has. But he needs her to know it this time, more than ever. He must silence the echo. “That’s something we have in common.”
She is tense under his hand, turning to stone so quickly that the tears stop. The way she grates her stare from his hand to his face keeps him paralyzed. There have been mornings as he walks to the palace with his uncle where he is not thinking about his next line or Azula or tea, but rather, what he will say to her. They are often excuses or justifications. More often than not though, he cannot mutter more than this. He’s never gotten this far.
“K-Katara,” Her name spills out as a question, and she nods back in permission. He’s never said her name aloud before. “Perhaps you look at me and see the face of the enemy...but the Fire Nation took her away from me, too. In fact, it has taken a lot from me...it’s given me this scar. No, my father, gave me this scar.”
He never noticed when her hand had moved to his arm, her eyes brilliantly blue and shining at his, urging him from this corner he had backed himself into.
“I’m sor--” he can’t look at her when he’s trying to pronounce those words pathetically. “Everything I’ve ever done was to get it all back. But I’ve learned--I’m learning, I can determine my own destiny. I can be better than that.”
He could cry when she squeezes his arm and whispers, “I believe you. Let me help you.”
The catacombs crumble. The Avatar and his Uncle burst through the crystal walls. It is with a horrible punch to his gut that he realizes: he’ll awake to be a traitor again. When he hurts her, later, like he always does, he cannot bear to match her eyes.
*
“I thought you had changed!”
Me too, he thinks, bending fire back at the waterbender.
“It’s not too late,” Katara throws back. It’s enough to trip him off his feet.
*
And each and every time he watches this god-like child struck by lightning up in the air, Zuko has to turn away. Nothing changes here, mostly because this is the only moment that has never felt familiar--the tidal wave, his uncle protecting the Avatar, the Dai Li agents arresting him, the old man’s disappointment, the girl’s getaway with the lifeless body--it is always a fresh wound to the chest. He is helpless. He is exhausted. He is always forgetting his lines.
His heart finally decides. This is enough. This is all it can break.
*
On the fourteenth day straight, he kisses her right as she is offering to heal his scar. It is a terrified kiss, but he blames her kindness, her never-failing stupid kindness and after fourteen days, he cannot take it anymore, he cannot handle it anymore, and he is callused by her incomprehensible softness to the point of irritation. He counts the three seconds before he knows the walls will collapse and the Avatar will return to her arms. He steps back, pulling his hands back from her cheeks, and he looks away.
*
He expects green, but instead he sees nothing but blue. An endless, running sky. A rag tag team on the back of a flying bison. This must be the nightmare he has been waiting for. He awakes with a sharp gasp, a quiver that consumes his entire being, and he does not feel his pulse settle until a hand grabs his.
“You’re okay,” Katara whispers.
No, this is real.