Pride and Shame (And the Lack Thereof)
Pride is the ground they stand on, because they have both been wounded on weaker ground and refuse to bear their hearts to consequence.
Zuko has no turmoil and his road is clear, but still he doesn't attempt to create lightning - deep down, he knows if he tries, he'll fail.
Katara won't let another person down, ever - the guilt she feigns she doesn't bear is too much to take, and at every chance she has, she makes it her time to handle this.
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Sometimes when she says she loves him her sincerity slips, and Aang's heart breaks another fraction. But their hearts are all delicate after war has torn its way through them and he doesn't leave, not for him, anymore, but because their miscommunication spells that they need each other.
Aang offers her freedom and wind through her hair and joy singing through her, but right now Katara just wants to ground herself in ice and rebuild.
Pakku has done most of the work for her. His unknowing one-up makes her resent the necklace on her grandmother's neck.
Peace is killing her; the longer she stays still, the more frequently water trembles in her wake. When Aang suggests they travel, she lashes out, because she needs this.
(The moon pulls.)
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The longer Zuko lives, the less he believes he ever had a childhood to miss, but that doesn't explain why he feels so ancient. Tearing down a hundred years of oppression and hate is easy on the outside, but then he visits his citizens' homes and finds paintings with his face hanging in their living rooms, and he aches for a way to break down people's history.
He hates his forefathers the most when he catches himself indignant at men who don't bow deep enough, when children forget his title. The Fire Nation scars are so deep, and Zuko is so terrible with people. It's easy to feel lost, and no matter how much of the past is ripped away, it follows on his heels in motionless dance halls and filtered courtrooms, and the polite backhanded comments about the other, cultureless nations that he almost agrees with.
By the time he's signing his marriage document, Zuko hates the smell of parchment. Mai's nobility is so clear so often and she's like a mirror for the chill in him. She understands him better than anyone, which might be the worst, and the things that held them are now a love that he almost fears (perhaps it's his sister's last wound, perhaps she doesn't -).
He sees his mother in her, and he's so tired of losing the people he loves (and the longer he lives, the more often he sees his father in the mirror).
It's hard not to find little excuses to leave, to call on his friends and drink tea and pretend that years after his father was locked away, he's at peace.
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It is just going to be a short visit, because Zuko is having a hard time and Aang has somehow become a surrogate Uncle to him when the miles between the Capital's shore and Ba Sing Se are too long. And that's all it is, until Katara is the only person left in the room and her eyes are more like fire than anything he's created.
It's so easy.
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The antidote to shame is true humility, but shame isn't something Zuko feels he had the right to conquer, anymore. Without it (he knows), he will let his father win.
He refuses to allow Ozai that victory.
