Notes Edited 1/2012
Title: Kismet
Author: Sangi
Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Prompt: Zutara100 at livejournal – 058 Time
Characters: Zuko/Katara
Genre: Romance, Friendship
Word Count: 1477
Rating: T
Author's Notes: Originally posted in 2008.
1.the things that have passed
"So," she says, quietly, into the night. Her voice travels over the small distance between them as quick as anything, and the mist from it hangs in the air for a long moment before dissipating. "It's been awhile."
The man's smile is fleeting, barely there for a moment, disappearing into the gilding of the dim light of his cheeks. Katara can see it, and she presses back into the shadows and on the temptation to laugh at his show of emotion. The smile that comes as a result is lopsided and slightly forlorn as she waits for the heir apparent to answer her.
"I guess you could say that," he finally muses, leaning against the column behind his back. "Since… well, it's been years since we've seen each other." Your hair is longer, he observes silently, and it isn't an analytical as it sounds. Zuko smiles honestly this time, and familiarly gestures for her to hold out her hand.
Katara hesitantly holds her hand out, and the prince in front of her takes it into his own and kisses it lightly. "Welcome to the Fire Nation, Katara," he says softly. She still eyes him warily.
2. falling into place
"I don't believe," he says quite seriously, "in fate."
Katara's eyes, for a moment, are as wide as the moon and incredulous. Then they narrow as her brows quickly furrow. "I don't understand," she retorts, "how you can say that, after all we've gone through before." The blue-eyed girl snorts delicately and shakes her head slowly, lightly, her shadow on the ground moving in sync with her. "Not believing in fate…" he can hear her mutter, bemused.
Zuko shrugs, neither angry nor surprised at her reaction; its typical Katara. "I do believe in destiny."
Puzzled face, uplifted corners of the mouth: "Aren't they the same?"
Another shrug, a different shrug, a lighter shrug; softer. "It depends on who you ask," Zuko replies, whispering words into the wind, not facing her, and she strains her ears to hear him.
"I'm asking you," she says, quickly, startlingly, eyes intense and fierce, and so his eyes widen slightly, though she can't see them, and they fill with the kind of ponderous predictability.
A moment, a quick flash of gold and red and everything in between, and he's facing her now, eyes dangerously unlike him. "Fate tells you cruelly that everything you do is preordained, that you can't make a difference, and you'll die anyways, and for nothing. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." A crooked, mocking smirk. "And destiny whispers to you that you can change your future, because the things you do align, and just like that," he snaps his fingers, "your destiny is born. Everything falls into place."
3. kismet
"You've got me all confused," she admits to him one day. He turns to her, tea in hand, eyebrows raised with all the implications of unanswered complications. The waterbender continues. "I used to think that fate and destiny were the same, but then you went off and explained something to me that I had taken for granted." Katara sighs agitatedly. "And now I really don't know what to think."
There is a long moment of silence as her words, her breath, hangs in the air before falling lightly down, like a feather swishing gently to the ground. The heir isn't looking at her anymore, but looking away, out at the green, green grass and the turtle ducks and memories of someone Katara reminds him of.
She can see he's thinking, and turns away quickly, looking the other way, the steam from the tea warming her face (deep sighs and uninterrupted ponderous sessions with the unpredictable).
"You'll have to figure it out on your own, Katara," he says, and suddenly almost – almost – regrets it, because she's obviously deducted that, at least. But when the fluid blue eyes meet his, they're almost grateful, because what he said was just that, just so him. It was the perfect answer.
"I have to go," she suddenly speaks, and gets up and rushes across the yard, back into the sliding doors and columns and dark red walls.
When Zuko looks into her teacup, all that's left is the leaves.
4. ashes to ashes
Katara gently blows the dust off the top of the old chest, wondering how it could have gotten dusty this fast when she had only been here for so few months - all the while with her mouth shaped like a round 'o'. Softly, when most of the dust has been blown into the air, where it twirls and wisps in the twilight, she brushes the rest off with a spare towel.
Looking at the dark wood and gleaming silver gilding of the chest, Katara's eyes blink slowly, drinking in the picturesque sight. She takes a moment, and then tentatively opens the chest, only to reveal two ancient, still-gleaming swords (memories, memories). These will need polishing, she thinks while looking critically at the dull edges and a couple spots of rust. Her face flushes. For what? What am I honestly going to do with these?
Taking a deep breath, she begins.
The next day, Zuko is sitting in the garden again, in the same spot, remembering the shape of the tealeaves: two crescents, blurring movements of something of the past, and an almost forgotten emblem. He smiles lightly, but lets it drop when he hears the soft rustling of the grass behind him.
The heir turns around; it's Katara, as expected. But nestled in her arm is a bundle, precariously wrapped in deep red silk. Without saying a word, Katara hands it to him, and sits down in front of him as he holds it and stares, knees folded carefully underneath her body.
Zuko opens the package slowly, letting the red silk fall onto the green grass as he unwraps it from around her gift.
He reaches her memory-filled present, and he closes his eyes before opening them again (is this an illusion?); she breathes in deep, deep, deep and can taste the steel and the grass, and the sunlight and everything behind and after.
"Oh," he says, nodding slowly in understanding.
5. the things that will come
"I won't pretend to see the future, like Madam Wu," Katara says. "But I won't pretend not to see it either."
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean,he wants to say, but holds back, settling for raised eyebrows. Her delicate mouth softens as she smiles benevolently at Zuko. Her hair is down and longer than he had ever really remembered it being – had it only been so few years ago when she had cut it all off?
"Is the future not something projected by our actions? Action and reaction?" She holds a porcelain teacup in her hands, running over it quickly with her deft fingers, before looking back up to golden eyes. "If I threw this cup at you, wouldn't you be angry?"
He shrugs, blinking, and Zuko is Zuko yet again. "This is true," with a hint of mocking.
Katara now shrugs, setting the teacup back down. "I believe that I can change my life." Blue eyes clash with gold and there's the kind of meeting that you can barely remember – but you want to, because it brings about something that will eventual grow, cultivate, live, breathe, and maybe (just maybe) wither and die, but then again, maybe not. "Because then," Katara continues, after a long moment, "I couldn't have changed my life the way I did." She takes a deep breath.
"I think I believe in destiny, yes," she says. "Because without destiny, I wouldn't be here, right next to you." When he incredulously turns his head to look at her, she's smiling, and he relaxes and laughs; a deep laugh that resonates throughout his entire being, and Katara is laughing too (servants scurry by and wonder, wonder, wonder).
"Destiny," he says ponderously.
"Destiny," a still-laughing waterbender repeats, already lying down in the green grass. "Not fate, not anything else."
"Ah," he says, and falls back onto the ground, no longer caring about his robes.
"Destiny," Katara begins, "is just this: remembering, absolution, forgetting, remembering again, and polishing swords." Her face turns serious. "And moving on. Most definitely moving on."
His lopsided is more personal than any other smile with her could ever be. "I'll side with you on that."
A long moment hangs pregnant in the air as a breeze blows through the garden, ruffling the medium-long grass, making leaves fall off of the trees, making the two shiver in their clothes as the chill seeps deep, to the bone – no, farther, to the essence.
Quietly, somberly: "Do you think, that maybe, we could start over?"
Quickly, suddenly: "You can always begin again."
A hidden, fleeting smile and a crooked one, firmly planted. "Destiny it is."