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Zuko rubbed his arms as fast as he could. How in the name of Agni can the Fire Nation be this cold? Sure, this prison was in the middle of the ocean, and it was always colder on the water. But still. He could swear even his scalp had goosebumps.
He tried to use his breath of fire, but it wasn't coming. Maybe it was the cold, or the sun's dying power as it set. Or maybe it was because, through the sheer incompetence of the people on this Koh-damned rig, the Avatar had gotten away from him. Fucking again. He scowled at the horizon, watching the sunset flood across the sea like blood.
It was almost enough to make him not want to go home. Sometimes.
Zuko closed his eyes, breathing in the fresh tang of salt water under the coal. Banishment was a curse. But even he’d admit there were some things that weren’t that bad. Like the ocean. He'd come to appreciate the constant shifts of currents and winds, how it was never the same twice. How damn good everything tasted, with the cook’s fresh-harvested sea salt. And how the waves’ lapping put him to sleep when nothing else could –
Plink. His boot hit something that wasn't a piece of coal or iron. A blue stone glittered in the sun's last rays, and he swiped it up immediately. He'd know that necklace anywhere: it was the Waterbender’s.
Katara. He'd heard someone shout it during a fight, somewhere.
He studied the necklace for a moment. Three delicate waves curled over under his thumb. The stone was highly polished and smooth, too. I never knew the Water Tribes could craft things like this. He'd always heard they were savages, literally too stupid to come in out of the cold.
Zuko tied the necklace around his wrist, for safekeeping. The stone was surprisingly heavy, and he wondered how Katara – the Waterbender could wear it every day. She had to be upset over losing it…
But none of that mattered. All he cared about was that it could lead him to the Avatar. And that her bending was improving, from the signs on the rig. She was another one he couldn't underestimate anymore.
____________
Katara stared. Zuko lay facedown in the snow, near Appa's foot. She hadn't meant to knock him out. The full moon really is no joke.
Sokka wanted to leave him there. Aang was hesitating. She and Yue hadn't offered opinions. But the pale skin of his scalp looked almost bluish in the snow. And she’d already frozen him twice, back at the oasis…
Aang leapt lightly down. “If we leave him here, he'll die,” he said. Grunting, he hefted Zuko across his back and jumped back up. He laid him carefully in the saddle and, without thinking, Katara held him in place as they took off.
She nearly pulled her hand back in surprise: he was warm. Like there was a little pile of embers burning inside him. (Which, there probably was.) Still, his hand was clammy, and that blue tinge worried her. She pulled the melted snow out of his clothes and covered him with an extra blanket.
“What are you doing?” Sokka asked sharply.
“What does it look like?”
“Katara, did you hit your head fighting him? That's Prince Zuko.”
“Does that mean he deserves to die?”
Neither Sokka nor Aang answered. Katara put a pair of Sokka’s extra gloves onto Zuko’s hands. Hot soup or tea would've been next, but they didn't have any and he wasn’t awake anyway. So this would have to do. When they landed, they put him inside an evacuated house. Just in time, too: he was coming around, groaning a little.
“Let's go,” Sokka ordered.
Katara only listened after one last check. The clamminess was gone from Zuko’s hand, and his skin had gone back to its normal color. She ran out just as his head turned toward the door.
Habit. I just helped him out of habit.
____________
Think, idiot, THINK! But Zuko couldn't. All he could focus on was the smoking burn wound in Uncle’s side. Panic whined in his brain as he hid his face from the sight. It's my fault, my fault, it's all my fault –
Footsteps crunched behind him. The others were coming closer. The fucking Avatar and his fucking friends, the reason this had happened!
Zuko whipped around. “Get away from us!” he ordered. They fell back, the Water Tribe boy and the Avatar and the new one, the Earthbender girl who seemed to be crying.
All except for one person. Katara – the Waterbender had deep shadows under her blue eyes. But she still took another step forward, her face determined. He turned his back.
“Zuko, I can help,” she said.
He paused. Her voice, saying his name, had made him able to breathe for just a second. It was calming. Soothing, like the waves he missed hearing every night.
But how can she help? What can she do about burns? What does she know about anything?
The rage that had burned unchecked in him for three years now exploded. A wild, uncontrolled fire stream shot from his hand and nearly hit them all. “LEAVE!” he roared, the scream ripping his throat.
They obeyed, most of them running. But Katara did not. As he bent over Uncle, to drag him someplace safe, she turned away slowly. She was crying too.
____________
Katara’s head spun with everything she'd just heard. My mother did something bad, I know it, but I don't know what. She did…whatever it was to protect me. I don't even know if she's still alive.
My father gave me this scar.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said lamely. “It's just for so long, whenever I’d imagine the face of the enemy…it was your face.”
“My face. I see,” Zuko said, touching his scar.
“No! No, that's not what I – !”
“It's okay,” he shrugged. He spoke again, but Katara's mind was whirring too much for her to listen. Before she fully knew what she was doing, she showed him the vial Master Pakku had given her.
“This is water from the Spirit Oasis,” she said. Where we fought. “It has special properties, so I've been saving it for something important. I don't know if it would work, but…”
Zuko stared at her. She'd never noticed before, but his left eye – his scarred one – couldn't widen like his right. Her throat tightened.
He shook his head and backed away. “No,” he said. His voice breaking, he stammered, “I don't deserve – not from you. I'm…not good enough for that.”
“Yes you are.” Was it really her who said that? Sure sounded like it, from the don't argue with me tone.
Zuko was like a statue as she came forward. Studying the mark, harder to see now that his hair had grown. It made his face softer, younger. What Aang had said, before the battle in the North, came back to her: I can’t do this. I'm just one kid.
Does he feel that too?
Very carefully, Katara put her hand on Zuko’s scar. He tensed only for a second, before leaning into her touch. The old energy, tangled around his eye, still crackled under her fingertips. A knot of pain, firmly stuck inside him. Trapped deeper than skin and muscle, deeper even than bone.
It was horribly familiar. She and Master Yagoda had helped an old man grieving for his dead wife, once. His heart had felt like this...exactly like this.
She wanted to cry.
Her thumb rested lightly on Zuko’s lips. She’d never been this close to him before. Close enough to see the long, dark eyelashes on his unscarred side. If it worked, maybe…just maybe…close enough to get him to come with them. He could find home in them, this lost, wounded boy before her.
Just another kid, forced to fight a war that shouldn't have been theirs.
Later, Katara decided that was what really hurt most. Not the turn that nearly got Aang killed, or that made the Earth Kingdom fall. Not the manipulation she suspected. Not even being made to feel stupid.
It was that she’d offered Zuko love, of some sort, and he'd refused.
____________
Zuko carefully set the miniature portrait next to his new bed, in the Western Air Temple. He hadn't brought much; only the crucial things. He smiled a little at the picture. Wherever you are, Uncle, I hope I'll make you proud someday.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Katara leaned against his doorframe, her arms folded, refusing to look at him. His heart fluttered a little. She hadn't exactly been thrilled to let him into the group, with reason. But maybe she wanted to talk, alone?
He gambled. “Katara…thank you,” he said, bowing respectfully to her as he had to the Avatar – to Aang. “And I want you to know, I'm – ”
The word didn't get a chance to come out. One second he was near his bed. The next, he was pinned by his shirt to the wall, the icicles still wiggling. Then his hands were frozen too. And – his heart went from flutters to hammering – another strip of ice shot across his mouth. He was completely stuck to the stone as she marched forward.
He could've melted the ice, easy. But he didn't dare. Not with the fury blazing in her eyes.
“You might have everyone else buying your little transformation,” Karara said coldly. She was so close, her breath moved the ends of his hair. “But you and I both know you've struggled with doing the right thing in the past. So let me make something very fucking clear to you, Zuko.”
Spirits. The way she said his name, despite the danger, was…something. She was powerful, dominant, in a way he'd never seen her be. Lightning shot through his blood. But it turned very quickly back to fear when she pointed a glittering ice dagger at his throat.
“Give me one reason to think you’re slipping,” she snarled. “Give me one reason to think you might hurt Aang, and you won't have to worry about your destiny any more.”
The knife pressed into his neck. A tiny hiss of steam rose from the contact with his skin. “Because I’ll make sure your destiny ends, right then and there. Permanently.”
Katara released him. Something red dripped from her dagger’s end. Sweet Agni, she’d cut him a little. Zuko couldn't help shuddering, and she scowled. Then she glanced down at the dagger, at the blood on it. For a split second, she looked almost guilty.
Then she transformed it back into water and flung it (and his blood) out the window. Sparing him one last glare, she turned on her heel and stalked out.
____________
The Western Air Temple rocked with the Firebenders’ blasts. Even as she ducked and weaved and made water shields, Katara’s throat burned. Is nothing sacred to them?
She scrambled into Appa's saddle just as a flash of dark red zipped past. “Zuko! Get on!” Sokka yelled over the noise.
“Go!” he yelled back. “I’ll hold them off!”
“How, dumbass?!” screamed Toph. But he’d already dashed off, and with no choice – they couldn’t leave without Zuko – Aang sent Appa flying. Bright flashes of multicolored fire curled and swiped off one of the airships attacking them.
The bottom of Katara’s stomach dropped out. Zuko and his sister were sparring, on top of the airship. Chunks of the Western Air Temple rained down all around them, forcing Aang to duck and weave wildly. But even with all the chaos, Katara couldn’t take her eyes off him.
His Firebending looked different. No shouting or posturing. Steady stances and holding ground, like Toph. Circle-stepping his opponent to confuse her, like Aang. Quick jabs and stabs and hurling, like Sokka using weapons. Long, fluid streams and whips, stealing the blue flame and swirling it back toward Azula. Not just Waterbending techniques, her preferred moves –
BOOM. Orange and blue crashed together in a great wall and exploded. Two figures slid off opposite sides of the airship into a free-fall. Several voices yelled, all at once, “Zuko!”
Why was hers one of them?
They plunged dizzyingly down, after him. Seeing them, he turned himself in the air. Brilliant golden eyes looked down into hers, and even now, there was doubt in them, hiding behind the terror –
Katara seized his forearm. Tightening her gut, she flung herself onto her back and pulled, letting gravity and Zuko’s weight do the rest. He tumbled into the saddle and landed on top of her, knocking all her breath out of her. Then he went limp, trembling violently, the shock catching up to him.
It was getting to her too. Katara squeezed her arms around him, one hand in his hair. Out of habit, she spoke soothingly: “It's okay. You're okay, we’re okay…” They lay like that for a few seconds.
Then reason returned to her. “Get off,” she grumbled, though there wasn't any real force behind it. Zuko rolled away from her and sat up. His face was starkly white, as they watched Azula fall and then catch herself on the cliffside.
Eventually, his face still pale, Zuko turned to her. “Thanks,” he said weakly.
Katara shrugged and turned her back to him. Nobody spoke again until they made camp, though Sokka and even Toph were giving them both weird looks. Understandably so. The annoying little voice in her head kept reminding her, That’s twice in as many hours you’ve had him lying on top of you. The thought made both her head and her stomach feel funny.
But the next time she put her arms around Zuko – on the dock, after Yon Rha, when he'd helped her find the closure she thought she'd never have – she did it with all her heart.
____________
Frozen in the ice, Katara stared down at Azula. She closed her eyes and, as Zuko had taught her, breathed warmth through her nose. Though her lungs burned, she held her breath until the princess was firmly chained to the grate. Only then did she fully release the ice, leaving them both coughing and gasping.
She ran across the arena. He was alive when she reached him. But barely: his moans of pain were weakening, his breathing labored. The water came to her hands, shimmering silver-blue, as she closed her eyes. Her thoughts pounded in her brain, driving her healing.
Don't die, Zuko. Don't you dare die on me. Not before I can… A fiery pulse glowed from her hands, brighter than ever, though she couldn't finish the thought.
Zuko groaned. There was still pain, a deep ache in his abdomen. But the crackling, the inferno that had been burning his body from the inside, had faded. Her face, glowing with joy and relief, swam into his vision. Spirits, her eyes were so beautiful.
As the tears ran down her cheeks, he whispered, “Thank you, Katara.”
“I think I'm the one who should be thanking you,” she gulped.
She helped him sit up, holding him steady with both hands. As the comet’s tail disappeared over the caldera’s rim, they just looked at each other. Then, both Zuko and Katara leaned in, and their lips met under the blood-red sky.