Can we talk about how adorable Zuko and Katara would be together. Like seriously. My heart can't take their cuteness. I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP (even if it makes me guilty to Aang and Mai – UGH conflicted feelings why must I still somewhat ship Kataang and Maiko too this hurts me).
Inspiration song was "Kiss me Slowly" by Parachute. I was listening to it in the car when I got the idea for this story. The plot follows nothing of the song though.
Disclaimer: All characters used within the story are the property of the owner and creator. I do not own any of them.
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Title: for when war strikes you dead (or love, whichever you prefer)
Summary: teashop balconies, and the streets of Ba Sing Se below. –– Zutara. Post-canon, with mild canon divergence.
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They had kissed amongst the burning wreckage of what had been Zuko's childhood history, and Zuko had found it only just a little bit magical.
–
In the days following after the war, Zuko and the gAang found them selves left behind to pick up the world by its pieces, and try to put it back together again.
War was never easy to recover from. Zuko knew that better than anyone.
And mankind would be suffering the loss from this war for many years to come.
So Zuko sits his way through documents, through politics, through traditions, and through long-standing-feuds-between-nations-not-yet-expired. He sighs and massages his temples and wonders how he got himself into this mess, but he deals with each and every single one, and if he doesn't know how, he learns. Because he is the new soon-to-be Firelord, and it is his duty, and it is his honour, and in the face of the aftermath of a hundred years' war his nation had started, it was the only thing he could do.
Through this all, he does not think of Katara.
(He does not think of the kiss they had shared after his Agni Kai with his sister in chains and half the palace in flames. Zuko does not think, of Katara.)
There were other things to worry about. He was busy with being about to be crowned the next Firelord; Katara was busy with trying to stitch the world back together, along with the Avatar who had saved it. The Hundred Years' War had left everybody scarred and unpretending – it was celebrations and grief and relief and pain all at once, and it was up to them to pick up where the world had left itself off since the War.
So Zuko was busy, and Katara was busy, and there was no time left in between for Zuko to think about kisses-after-an-Agni-Kai.
Zuko grits his teeth, and concentrates on his Fire Nation work, and does not think about a waterbender almost-woman with brown hair and blue eyes.
–
They were at Uncle's teashop, some time after Zuko's coronation, and Zuko does not look at Katara.
Everyone he loves were gathered together, the gAang, his Uncle, Mai, and Zuko thinks the quiet perfection of the moment was almost serendipitous, in its own right. He pours tea for his Uncle, sets it to one side, and feels content.
Zuko still does not look at Katara.
But Zuko feels her blow past him to walk to the balcony outside, and he glimpses brown curls fluttering in the wind. Zuko does not look, but he sees, and so Zuko sets down the teapot and walks outside to the balcony to stand next to Katara, hands resting against the railings.
She hums, and all is calm.
Zuko doesn't know what to say.
"Ba Sing Se looks pretty peaceful, huh? It's nice." Katara spoke first. Her blue eyes were trained up and over the balcony, down down to the scene of the streets of Ba Sing Se below. Ba Sing Se, in its whole, had been left mostly physically intact, and now with the war over it had quickly started rebuilding itself back up from the war.
They were lucky. Some other parts of the world hadn't been. Zuko looks down at the streets of Ba Sing Se too, and murmurs a yes.
"It's quite overwhelming, honestly," he admits, and says no more. He does not look Katara in the eye, and they both do not turn to look each other in the eye. Zuko leans forward to rest his arms against the balcony's railings, and feels the wind on his face.
The gentle sunlight on their backs felt almost like closure.
"Thank you for saving my life from the lightning attack."
Katara half-smiled. "You're welcome." She drew herself back, a little, and her blue eyes were far, far away. "You know, seeing you jump in front of that lightning bolt in front of me like that, and then collapsing on the ground, lightning crackling around your body as you convulsed, was one of the most terrifying scenes I had ever seen in my life." Katara closes her eyes. Zuko watches her hair and dress flow in the wind, and he does not say anything. But then her eyes open, bright and startlingly blue, and Zuko tries to remember how to breathe. "Failing to save you wasn't even an option." She said, softly.
For once, today, Zuko looks Katara in the eye.
Katara steps forward, and her hand reaches up to cup Zuko's cheek, around his scar. Zuko does not move.
"Where does this leave us, now?" He asks, quiet, because Zuko was still Zuko and he was still the new Firelord in the face of a ravaged humanity and Katara was still Katara in all her waterbending glory and promised to the Avatar.
There was no room for love, here.
Katara smiles, and does not reply, and Zuko knew his answer.
He steps back. Katara's bending-calloused fingers brushes against his scar before her hand falls limply back to her side. He smiles at Katara, and his smile was warm, and Katara only hesitates a little before returning it. "I should return to the shop now," Zuko said gently, and he bows, and he walks away.
Zuko does not look back.
–
Before Zuko had been crowned Firelord, he and Mai had kissed in his bedroom chambers, and they had cleared up any miscommunications they had had between them and they had made up and they were now back together.
Zuko still loves Mai.
And thus Zuko watches Aang and Katara kiss on the balcony at his Uncle's teashop at Ba Sing Se, and does not regret.
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(Ten years fly by, and this is how the story goes.)
–
It had been in the middle of a perfectly ordinary marketplace, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary day, when it had happened.
Katara snapped.
The vegetable vendor had simply smiled while he weighed the vegetables Katara was ordering for (it was to be tonight's dinner), and had said, "These are the finest vegetables my stall has to offer; I hope the Avatar's wife would be pleased with them,"
And Katara's blood had thrummed through her ears and she had frozen him up against the side of his cart with her waterbending in five seconds flat.
Katara wanted to scream.
Pleas from the man to unfreeze him from his cart fell on deaf ears; the sun was hot, and the ice would melt soon enough, anyway. As Katara stalked away from the terrified vendor with all eyes in the marketplace on her, Katara couldn't help but wonder.
She'd married Aang, married him for five years now, and Aang was kind and sweet and loving and the best husband any woman could ask for, and he gives her anything she wants, and Katara knows she should be happy. She should be happy.
But ever since the war ended she had been nothing more than "the Avatar's wife" and it was always "the Avatar's wife this" and "the Avatar's wife that" and Tui and La, even Sokka calls her that now!
She had defeated Azula, and she had helped to save the world from a century of war; didn't that count for something?
She hadn't expected to end up like this. Not like this. To be known only as the Avatar's goddamn wife. She was more than this, Katara was sure.
Katara sighed, and then she snarled, and she felt like breaking someone's bones in half.
–
A few months later Katara breaks up with Aang, ruining five years' worth of what Aang had thought was a happy marriage, and Katara doesn't know what to think.
("But, why, Katara, why? I thought you were happy with me!"
"Yeah, I thought so, too."
It would be a long time before she could look Aang in the eye again.)
–
It is two years later that Katara hears that Firelord Zuko has broken up with Firelady Mai.
Katara takes a deep breath, sighs, and decides to try.
–
The gAang decided to meet up again, ten years after the war had ended, and Katara shows up alone and with nobody at her side.
They were all gathered in the teashop, again, but it has been ten years and ten years were long and a lot could happen in ten years and with everybody in the teashop, Katara could see that better than anyone.
Everyone looked to have upped and rebuilt themselves after the war; somewhere in between reconstructing the world and restoring peace, they had gotten back on their feet, and Katara had never felt so left behind.
It would take a while longer for her to ever feel normal, again.
So Katara helps serve tea and listens to Toph laugh loud and watches her brother Sokka sling his arm around his wife Suki's shoulders, and Uncle Iroh looks indulgent because everyone seems so happy so Katara wears a small smile and does not look in Aang's direction. It was easier, that way.
Out of everyone in the gAang, the only person who hadn't yet shown up was Zuko. "He'll come later, at night," Uncle Iroh had said, his voice deep and slow, and still as sage-like as Katara remembered. He looked so calm and serene sitting there that Katara had to remind herself that he was still the Dragon of the West, even if he now owns a teashop and spends the better part of his days blowing his tsungi horn. "Being Firelord doesn't do much for one's free time, after all," he chuckled.
Katara smiles, and sits beside him, and does not reply.
–
At night, when everybody was asleep and the air was quiet and the moon hung full in the sky, Katara met Zuko out on the balcony of Uncle Iroh's teashop, and together they looked out over the streets of Ba Sing Se.
They folded their hands together on the railings, and Katara looks at Zuko under the moonlight as she had for the past three years (because Zuko got it, Zuko always got it, Zuko understood her and her urge to have to break things), and breathes in. Two war veterans, one not quite healed from the war yet, but that was okay.
They understood each other, and that was enough.
There would be room for love maybe, much later.
But for now, they stand over the railings in the dark, and gaze at the streets of Ba Sing Se.
–
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(And this is how the story ends.)
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Characterisation, ugh.
The ending was… nothing like I had planned. I was trying to write the last part for forever, guys, but it kept sounding wrong, so I ended up changing it and it went a completely different way than I expected. For better, or for worse? /shrugs/ Who knows.
I don't know why I bother planning my stories they never go the way I plan them, anyway. Hmph.
Please rate and review! :)