Title: Vanilla Twilight
Author: sierra
Fandom: Avatar
Characters/Pairings: Zuko/Katara
Genre: romance, angst
Summary: I'll watch the night turn light blue/But it's not the same without you/Because it takes two to whisper quietly
Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or Owl City's song Vanilla Twilight
Author's Note: I wrote this awhile ago and I'm not really sure if I like anymore but whatever. I don't read a lot of Avatar stuff so I hope I got this right. Thanks for reading and tell me what you think if you want!
I'll watch the night turn light blue
But it's not the same without you
Because it takes two to whisper quietly
The silence isn't so bad
Till I look at my hands and feel sad
Cause the spaces between my fingers
Are right where yours fit perfectly
The bed feels empty and makes sleep impossible. He sighs and sits up, lighting a candle with his firebending.
(She always used to put it out with her waterbending just to annoy him. But tonight, just like every night for the past few months, it stays lit.)
He gets up and decides to sit on their (it really is just his now, he thinks) balcony. It's where he always goes when he can't sleep.
(She used to come out and sit with him and they would just talk until the sky was lit. It wasn't uncommon for someone to find the Fire Lord and his wife asleep on a chair on the balcony.)
He gazes up at the stars and finds her favorite constellations. The stars seem particularly bright tonight and he wonders if it's her making that happen.
(When they were still kids traveling with the Avatar, there was a night where they stayed up, all night just looking at the stars, just the two of them.)
He sits and looks at the stars for a long time before he hears tiny footsteps. He turns and sees his four year old daughter standing in the doorway.
(The first time he cries since the war is when he sees his wife holding his newborn daughter, and this time the tears are of joy.)
Kya walks in and stands next to her father's chair. "Daddy? Are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
(She yells for her husband when their baby girl takes her first steps and he doesn't care that he's in the middle of a meeting with the Avatar, he runs off to see.)
"The stars remind you of mommy," Kya says.
"Yes, they do." Everything reminds him of his wife.
"I miss her. A lot."
"I miss her, too," he says, picking up Kya and putting her in his lap.
The little girl hugs her father and says, "She still her, though. In here." She pokes his chest where his heart is.
He smiles at his daughter. "And she'll always be there, no matter what."
(As she lays in bed sick with a disease that has no cure, she calls for her husband. He lies down in bed next to her and she whispers to him that she'll always love him. She never speaks again.)
After he puts Kya to bed he goes back out to stand on the balcony for a moment.
"I miss you, Katara," he says softly.
As he turns to go back to bed, he hears the wind whisper softly, "I miss you too, Zuko."