A/N
Heya! So, Zutara Month 2015 is upon us! It'll be my first time participating. I'll be posting it here on my fanfic account as well as my tumblr, pasadisu. I hope ya'll enjoy, and if you participate, why, the more the merrier, friends!
If not, I'm sure ya'll can follow the tag and read the lovely stories being submitted.
Um, all of these stories will probably be unnamed. Ohs, wells. Enjoy, and please review, loves!
Prompt 01: Secret Lovers
This time Katara goes to him. There is no particular pattern, but he had stepped into her dream every night last week, and now it looks to be her turn. She has almost forgotten how painted the mountains in the distance look, so much like black ink against a paper sky. With familiar steps, she walks the path and enters a clearing.
Zuko sits in front of a gray fire. Beside him are two red cups of tea. When she walks forward, she makes no sound, but it is his domain and so he turns his head.
"Hey," he greets. She sees the half smile on his face, the one he gives her every time they see each other here, but it still manages to make her heart twitch.
"Hey," she repeats, and takes a seat beside him.
It is quiet, but this is normal.
There is a faint red hue at the base of the flames, right above the surface of the logs. Katara almost leans forward curiously, but then she sees Zuko shift out of the corner of her eye. He places his hands on the ground behind him, using them as support as he looks up at the sky. She tilts her head and looks upwards, but there are no stars, only a foggy blackness that shifts like smoke. Then, as nonchalantly as possible, she leans back on her hands in the same position.
Not a second later she feels the tips of his fingers. Neither turn to look at each other, even as his hand, rougher and larger, eclipses her own. They know how the dance goes.
Abruptly, there is sound in the hidden branches and leaves around them; cicadas chirp softly to the tune of grasshoppers, and above them, the smoke fades to show small orange circles, curved and bent in odd ways as if there were folds and creases in their paper sky.
"This is different," she says.
"Is that bad?"
Katara hears the hesitance in his voice and wonders where this part of him was hidden when he had landed in her village all those months ago. Or was it right in front of her but she had never bothered to see?
"No," she answers. She gives him a small smile from under shy lashes because they are both timid and clumsy in their steps, in the movements of the dance, though they have already shared breaths and touched skin. But this is a song that is played bit by bit, with many pauses waiting for the right note, the right vibrato in the echo, and so she has no problems slipping and stepping on his toes in the process. Tui and La knows that he has already done so, so many times, and that was way before the dance — Katara thinks this with a snicker.
The cups disappear as gold particles with a passing wind, and suddenly Zuko is holding onto her hand and pulling her toward him until they are shoulder to shoulder, her foot over his, his fingers over hers.
She looks into the fire, now blooming with colors, and thinks of the dragons he had met — the dragons he and Aang had met. Her stomach sinks, a motion that reminds her of the outside world, of how Aang is sleeping only a room away but Zuko is on the second floor, closer than he's ever been.
Katara feels his lips brush against her cheek and she grounds herself back into the dream.
Zuko smiles against her shoulder. He extends his body and lays on the ground; she remains sitting, looking at him curiously. He is still holding her hand.
"This is weird," he announces. "Still weird, I mean."
"I guess so," she admits, crossing her legs.
He reaches out and twists his fingers into her hair thoughtfully. "It feels like thread," he says.
"Feels like my hair to me."
Zuko pushes himself onto his elbows. She knows the next move, feels it down to her toes, but she instead flicks him on the nose and he scrunches his face in response. He lays back down, rolling his eyes.
Katara turns his hand over to look at his palm, wondering which line led to where and to what meaning. Did they match up with other people's lines? Would they match up with hers? Or…
"Aang kissed me."
"What?"
His hand is pulling away from her, but she holds on tightly. He manages a half-laying, half-sitting position to better show his expression, surprised and confused and panicked; she sees this all in his scarred side.
"During the intermission," she explains quietly. "He…asked me about me and him."
"…And?"
"And I said I didn't know." Katara shrugs. "I said we're in the middle of a war and it's hard to think about things like that."
"And then he kissed you?"
The progression of events didn't make sense even spoken aloud, and it is all she can do to nod in response.
"Oh," Zuko says, and then for some reason he says it again.
The silence that settles this time is one they are used to, but not one she thought she would have to sit through again. It is awkward and stifling. The sound of the insects are gone. She sees the shadows creep up through the sky once more, hiding the orange lights. The mountains look menacing from where she is sitting.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks finally.
He is upright now, and she has let get of his hand. Zuko looks at her and then looks at the fire; it is gray and smaller than what she remembers.
"Aang," he replies.
She understands. It always comes back to him. She feels like a running river, trying to break from the etched-out curve to the ocean. Maybe it is inevitable, and that all paths, all rivers, lead to Aang. Maybe it is already written, carved into her palm.
"Sorry," Katara says. "I didn't mean to bring down the mood or anything."
She feels the smirk before she sees it.
"Always raining on the parade, Katara."
"Wow, like I haven't heard that before."
Katara punches him in the chest and he grabs her hands when she tries to continue her onslaught; they both laugh, momentarily forgetting their duties, their obligations to their futures, the marks on their hands. Then, in the distance is the sound of crinkling paper. They turn and see the mountains crumbling.
Katara turns back to Zuko, suddenly anxious. She feels like there is something she is supposed to say, something to further erase the mood from before, something significant or worthy of being her last words of his dreams — "Zuko, I…" — but she comes up with nothing. For some reason, her heart aches.
Zuko presses the back of her hand to his lips. "I'll see you in the next one," he says.
He flips her hand over and kisses her palm, kisses the shortest line on her skin, and then Katara wakes up to sunlight and Aang's laughter and the smell of burning wood.