A/N - If you'd like a mental picture of where this scene is happening, Google for Badarbunga volcanic eruption or see this - rack. media/ZgkyMDE0LzA5LzExLzI1L0ljZWxhbmRWb2xjLjBhNTlhLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTE0NDB4MTAwMD4KZQlqcGc/afcf9e46/2d7/Iceland%20Volcano%20Lava%20Flow%
The characters in this story are not mine, and I make no profit out of this.
PROLOGUE
PRESENT DAY: Bardarbunga, Iceland
Zuko held the jet injector to Katara's neck and growled, "stop moving, you know what this is. There is nowhere to run anymore". He shifted her wrists to one hand and forced her to kneel down facing the barren snowfield, her back to him. He struggled to catch his breath after the weeks spent tracking her through wilderness and snow drifts, and the half-day chase before he had finally caught up with her. She had not given up without a fight. She was bleeding in a dozen places and her hair had come loose of its braid. Her face was smudged with mud and snow, and her sunken cheeks and haunted cerulean eyes bore witness to the toll his relentless pursuit of six months had taken. She looked close to death. She was close to death. Zuko realized he was staring, realized that her hold on him was as strong as ever if not more, and that she still took his breath away. He steeled himself visibly and tightened his hold on the jet injector.
Unbidden, his father Ozai's voice rang in his head and he remembered the words that had turned his world upside down. She has betrayed everything we stand for. Many have died because of her and more will. She must be stopped. You are our best tracker. Find her and finish her. When the time comes, and you weaken, remember that your cousin Lu Ten is dead at her hands. Remember that she killed your mother in cold blood. Remember this and do what must be done.
Katara had finally stopped struggling and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to die. She had known it was going to end this way when she made her choices six months back. When she had first reached deep down into herself and pulled out half-desperate, half-terrified courage to do what needed to be done. She thought she was ready. She had spent so much time going over this inevitable clash again and again in her mind, practicing what she would say, how she would explain. She knew she was never very good words. That was always Zuko's strength, never hers. The practiced words had fled her moment his dao blades sliced her arms and then her legs. Now, she just silently looked out at the the lava spewing from Bardarbunga about half a mile from where she knelt in the snow, taking in the beautiful violence with which fire and ice met. The sun had set on Zuko and her as they battled, and the band of lava reflected warm shades of orange on the snow and onto the steam that rose above. It looked like like it would be comforting to touch, warm to hold, safe to sink into. So deceptive. Fire was always so deceptive.
She sensed more than felt Zuko let go of her wrists and shift behind her. Her arms hung leaden, she frowned and tried to move to them but then realized the dao blades had cut too deeply into her muscles than she had thought. "It's the extensor carpi radialis longus", her mind was throwing up useless definitions and details and information from her pre-med books. The scientist in her made detached observations about too much blood loss leading to loss of concentration. Well, she never could focus around him anyway, she thought wryly - not since the first time she had met him. She closed her eyes and sighed, relaxing her shoulders. In a way she was relieved it was finally ending. She opened her eyes again with an effort, and found that he was standing in front of her, a carefully blank expression on his face and the jet injector still unerringly pointed at her jugular.
Zuko looked at Katara kneeling in the snow and remembered his father's rage and Lu Ten's lifeless eyes. For a moment, he was back in the mountains, cradling his dying mother and begging her to hold on, to stay with him. Her dying whispers washed over him again, just as they had every waking and sleeping hour for the past six months, "Katara... you must stop her... go after her... promise me you will go after her...". That promise had led him here, with a steady hand holding death to the throat of the woman he once thought was the love of his life. She had stilled her struggling once she felt the jet injector; he ran his eyes over her shoulders and back slumped in defeat - looking for signs of what had gone so irrevocably wrong between them. She seemed to be staring out at the lava in front of them now. He looked up at the stark beauty of snowfield around them. So white, so pure, so soft and yet so resilient where it put out the fires of the lava in a poetry of flares and steam. So deceptive. Water was always so deceptive.
He knew what needed to be done - he had always taken the road duty demanded he take. He let go of her wrists to move in front of her to deliver the death blow he had promised his mother, belatedly realizing he had left her hands free and she could bend now. He frowned when she did not - and looked down at her hands to see that they had dyed the snow around them a dull red. Something broke inside him then and he moved to end the nightmare quickly. Standing in front of her, he moved the dials on the injector to 'kill' setting and brought it closer to her neck till it touched her skin. His hands shook and fought to control them, fought to control the pounding ache in his heart. He froze when she leaned forward and into the injector, looked up at him and said, "Do it Zuko", in a small but calm voice. He looked into her eyes, committing to memory their deep and clear blue color once again. The blue had fascinated him since the first time their eyes met. He had once told her that he hadn't truly seen blue before he had looked into her eyes.
Now as those eyes looked at him, too open, too trusting, he threw his mind back forcefully to his mother's funeral and was almost relieved to find the familiar rage fill in the emptiness inside him. He started to speak the traditional death sentence, the words taking a life of their own as they escaped him - "Katara you have been condemned to death for the murders of Prince Lu Ten and Queen Ursa, and of thirty seven Earth Benders of the Naivasha Clan. For these unforgivable sins against your own kind, your life is forfeit". As he finished the Sentence and injected her with a lethal dose of a general anesthetic, Zuko, Heir Apparent to a forgotten race, master firebender, son to a dead mother, and beloved of the woman dying in front of him - knew without an iota of a doubt that his own life was forfeit as well. He was going to die by the side of an erupting volcano with a woman who had betrayed him because he knew that when he walked away from the blood-stained snowfield he would leave his soul behind.
"Zuko"
Softly spoken words pulled his eyes back to her again. "Zuko, do you remember what I said to you that night when we.." she stopped, hunching over and coughing before collapsing on her side in the snow.
".. that night we walked in the rain for hours. The first time we kissed and you asked me if it was right. I told you that..."
She couldn't finish the sentence as another fit of coughing overtook her and Zuko watched her cough blood into the snow. Something nagged at the back of his mind - why was this happening? Was it an allergic reaction? He had been told the chemical was painless. His attention snapped back to her when he saw she was struggling to speak again, and he instinctively knelt down, bent close and helped her up, supporting her weight against him.
"I told you... I told you that... Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field... and that I'll meet you there..."
Against his will, stinging tears filled Zuko's eyes, but he held them in - he had that much honor left. He would not cry over his mother's killer. He owed Ursa that much.
"Zuko"
She would not stop talking. Agni, why would she not stop talking? He looked away at the destructive meeting of the lava and snow, distracting and distancing himself from her.
"Zuko, I forgive you", she whispered in a hoarse and broken voice. He closed his eyes and battled the storm raging inside him; tried to recall his mother's lifeless body again but to his horror found that the image of Katara bleeding in the snow had replaced it.
"Zuko. I forgive you but you must leave me now. I will not let you watch me die."
He forced open his eyes to look down at her a question forming in his eyes, and was shocked to see that she was bleeding from her eyes and her nose. As he looked at her he saw that her hands had started twitching and it did not look voluntary. His hands tightened on her shoulders when he realized he must have injected with something that was anything but painless. He shook his head from side to side and tried to find his voice to tell her that he never wanted this for her. He had spent days brewing the right chemical that would kill painlessly - it was the very reason he had come after her himself. How had this happened? Where had he gone wrong?
A scream twisted out of Katara as she felt her body light on fire from the inside. Not like this she whimpered to herself, not like this.
Reaching into that half-desperate, half-scared well of courage again, she found the strength to look him in the eye and say, "Leave me to die. This is my last wish. You cannot deny me this; unless you have no honor".
He thought her scream had ripped through him, but when Zuko heard her pained words asking him to leave, he realized that was what it truly felt like to be ripped into pieces. He could not deny this. She was right; he was honor-bound. He gently lay her back on the snow and force of habit had him half-tucking in a wayward strand behind her ear before he caught himself. He nodded to her once, and stood up in a smooth motion.
He looked down at her in the snow for what felt like an eternity, and then turned away and started the long walk to his helicarrier and his men. He had put at least half a mile between the dying woman and him when he heard the second scream. He turned back then and saw the glow of the lava in the distance. He clenched his jaw, determined to do his duty right this one time, and turned away from the orange glow in the sky.
He started to walk towards a world made grey in the absence of her laughter, her touch, her presence - and though his heart broke every time he heard it - he did not stop when she screamed a third time, and then a fourth, and then again and again till distance muffled her voice.
A/N - My first fanfic! This is not a one-shot, I have a epic planned here with 35-40 chapters. I will be updating soon. So what's the verdict? Good, bad, ugly - shall I continue?
Also who spotted the reference to Rumi and to Kenya? High-five if you did. There's going to be lot of Rumi and Sufism in this story, and a lot of my favorite places in the world as I build it out :)
Until next time then!
