A/N: This is a lil' AU Christmas Zutara-ish story I wrote out of pure boredom. I think this will probably be continued for 2 or 3 more chapters as a sort of mini-fic, but then again, I think it would be just as effective if I were to leave this a one-shot.
I don't own Avatar.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Light
Katara trudged through the slush, kicking little ice bits as she walked in the middle of the unplowed street. It was the first day of the holiday vacation from school, and here she was, four in the afternoon, delivering presents to all the neighbors because Gran-Gran was so obsessed with baking and giving.
"It's the season of giving, Katara," Gran-Gran had chided when Katara protested about delivering the gifts.
Katara rolled her eyes. She loved her grandmother, but sometimes the woman was a little mixed up in the head. And sometimes Katara dreaded having to live with her grandmother. But I'm lucky I'm not in an orphanage, Katara's conscience reminded her.
Kicking a large piece of ice, she looked at the first house: the Katsumos. There were no cars in the driveway. That meant no one was home. Katara's eyes trailed to where she spotted her brother's bike laying on its side in the driveway, even though it had a kickstand. Sokka had a huge crush on the oldest Katsumo girl, Yue, a white-haired girl two years older than Katara. Oh, she realized, Yue's probably the only one home.
She huffed a sigh, and strode to the door. Pounding hardly on the knocker, she stepped back and waited for the door to be answered.
Silently, she stood on the steps to the house for five minutes, and still the door wasn't answered. Turning to the doorbell, she slammed the little button continuously until her brother opened the door, looking rushed.
Her brother spotted Katara. "What?" he spat.
Katara glared at her brother. "Gran-Gran said you should've been home at two-thirty so you could help her make cookies."
Sokka curled his lip, folding his arms. "I have better things to do. As you should as well—don't you have to practice your tai chi or whatever the heck it is?"
Katara thrust the Katsumos' present into Sokka's arms. "Put that on the counter where they'll find it," she ordered.
"Pfft, stupid Gran-Gran and her stupid gifts—"
"And it's Waterbending, not tai chi."
Katara turned around and walked across the lawn to the street.
"Tai chi!" hollered Sokka as he slammed the door shut.
Katara gritted her teeth. Stupid, sexist, uncaring Sokka was the same as always.
She went up to the next house—Aang's house. Aang was a mischievous little twelve-year-old who Katara liked to hang around with when she didn't want to be in the same house as Sokka. Katara rang the doorbell and waited patiently.
Aang's gardian, Gyatso, opened the door.
"Ah, Katara, it is a pleasure to see you," said the old man. Katara looked at his orange and yellow clothing, suppressing a giggle to herself. He was a kind old man, even though his wardrobe was probably from the 60s.
"You too. This is for you," she said, offering him the present. Gyatso took and thanked her. Over Gyatso's shoulder, Aang waved a hello to Katara.
"Hi Aang! See you, Gyatso," she called as she jogged off down the driveway and back to the street. Again.
The next house was the Yahagoshi's, a large family of six kids, the home of her best friend, Suki.
Katara knocked on the door, smiling slightly as the youngest member of the family, eight-year-old Koko, opened the door amid a whirlwind of chaos caused by the other five siblings and the crazy old grandfather, Bumi.
"Hi, Koko," she greeted.
"Katara?" yelled Suki from the kitchen. Suki jumbled her way to the door with her ten-year-old sister Meng in tow.
"Hey, Suki!" Katara called back. "This is for your family." Katara handed Suki a loaf of pumpkin bread and several assorted packages of candy canes and cookies.
"Thanks," she commented. "Haru!" she bellowed, "help me bring these back to the kitchen!"
Haru, Suki's fraternal twin brother, ran through the hallway to the doorway, falling over a partially-wrapped Christmas gift in the process.
"Ow. Oh, hi Katara," he commented as he stood up and took the pumpkin bread from Suki. "Nice to see you again. How're things?"
Katara smiled through a grimace. Haru was so weird, and she didn't really like him, though she put up with him because he was related to Suki.
"Good," she said unenthusiastically.
Haru, however, didn't catch her hint. "Yeah, well, everything's good for me too. I've been helping Jet fill out college applications and also helping Teo make cookies. Busy season."
"Um, yeah."
Haru flashed a smile at Katara. Katara looked to Suki for help.
"Huh? Oh, Haru, go put the stuff away. See ya, Katara!"
"See ya!" Katara responded quickly, only running when the door closed.
Katara had never liked Haru very much. He watched her and always seemed to be around her. He scared her a bit, actually.
She stopped running when she was a reasonable distance away from the Yahagoshi household. Resuming her trudging through the slush, she continued delivering presents to the neighbors.
It was getting dark and she still had gifts to deliver. Her stare bored holes in the road. This was so stupid. She had better things to do.
Growling in frustration, she kicked the slush. A large blast of snow and ice chunks whirled out in front of her, and that only made her feel worse as she spotted a nearby mailbox covered in snow from her small fit.
"Oops," she commented to herself. She bended the ice partially away from the mailbox, hoping no one had seen her.
Katara stepped slowly away from the mailbox and turned to run.
She dropped the bag of presents as she banged into a red something. A person, adorned in red.
"Oh crap."
The tall teenager smirked. "Nice to see you as well, Waterbender."
"Shut up, you—you—," she stuttered. Her voice came out very softly, very weakly. Why, oh why, did she have to be all alone, in the dark, and just happen to run into the worst possible person to run into in such a situation as this?
He still kept smirking. "I have a name, you know." He took a step closer to her, and she could feel his hot breath on her face.
She took a step backward, uncomfortable of how close he was to her. The sun had meanwhile sunk below the horizon, and the only light was the porch of the house across the street.
A sudden flash of light caught her eye. It was fire, and from his hand. It lit up his face, so that she could see his pale skin, gold eyes, and reddened scar.
She drew away from him, hoping that he wouldn't notice, but he did.
He chuckled as he grabbed her wrist and said, "Why are you fleeing, Waterbender? Afraid of me?"
"No," she spat. He still had that ridiculous smirk on his face, and it was starting to scare Katara. "What are you doing out so late?"
"I could ask you the same question," he responded. Katara clenched her teeth. How could he avoid the question so well?
She motioned to the bag lying in the street with the hand he didn't have a ceaseless grip on. "I'm delivering presents to the neighbors."
"How sweet," he hissed.
"Yeah, well, I didn't really want to."
"Waterbender! Where's your sense of giving?" he taunted.
"I hate you," she muttered through gritted teeth. She glared up at his face and immediately regretted it. Who knew how he would react?
But he just smirked. And if anything, that unnerved her even more. She tried to pull away from his grip, but it was useless. He pulled her to stop her from struggling and she realized she was even closer to him than she was before.
"Leave me alone," she said. He shook his head.
"You're the one who ran into me," he retorted. She clenched her free hand into a fist and aimed a punch at him, which he ducked and grabbed with his hand that had previously been providing light for her to see. Now Katara couldn't see anything; his face was completely in shadow.
Katara took a sharp intake of breath, trembling. She looked up at him, knowing fully well that he could see her own face, her own expression of fear. "Let me go," she begged.
She heard a slight chuckle and flinched. Then his dark voice responded. "If I did that then this wouldn't be any fun, would it?" But still, she swore he relaxed his grip on her, just a little bit. Or maybe she was just being hopeful.
"What do you want from me?" she asked warily.
She tried to catch a glimpse of his face, to understand what was going on in his mind. But his face was entirely in shadow. At last, he spoke to her.
"You're beautiful, you know that?"
Katara jolted, blinking profusely. " I'm what?"
"Not too bright, are you?"
She stomped her foot, irritated. "Just leave me alone. I don't even want to be near you, you hideous person."
Katara tried to see his face, but it was still coated in shadow. She was waiting for a reaction, but it never came.
He simply let go her hands, and muttered, "A happy holiday season to you as well."
And before she knew it, the dark night had swallowed him up so that she was alone again.
Huffing irritably, Katara gathered up the contents that had spilled out of the bag and dumped them back into it carelessly. She ran as fast as she could to the next house, genuinely wanting to just go home.
"Oh, hello dear! My, you've grown so much since I've last seen you. So beautiful, child! Almost of marrying age now, I think," greeted the crazy old Yogota, one of the neighbors who lived so far away she wasn't really a neighbor. But Yogota was a friend of Gran-Gran's, so that meant delivering a present to her anyway.
The comment about marriage startled Katara. She blushed ever so slightly, and shook her head. "No, really, Yogota. I've done that sort of thing before and it wasn't pleasant." To say the least, she added in her thoughts.
Yogota smiled toothily at Katara. "You have a boyfriend? Oh, do tell me about him, dear girl!"
Katara bowed her head as her cheeks flushed as red as the bow on Yogota's present. "Here," mumbled Katara, shoving the present into Yogota's arms. She turned around and walked hastily away before Yogota could comment on her sudden shyness.
She jogged down the street, still embarrassed by Yogota's comments. That senile old woman, thought Katara, she's no idea what she's talking about.
The thought comforted Katara, and she picked her head up off the ground, straining her eyes to see. She felt around in the bag of presents, smiling when her hand felt only one. One more to deliver, and then she could go home and get out of this creepy, cold night. And then she'd throw on some lightweight clothing and go out to the dojo to practice her Waterbending. Ah. It would be sheer bliss.
Katara walked up to the final home, but the lights on either side of the driveway weren't on. That meant that no one was home. I'll just leave their present on the porch.
She strode up the driveway, eyes flicking on either side of her into the woods, where anyone could be hiding, where anyone could jump from and grab her within a second.
When she reached the porch, she hurriedly dropped the present and jolted around, sprinting down the driveway. The dark was all-consuming, surrounding her on every side, not letting her find a way out—and the woods, the dark woods, echoed with the sounds of the night.
Still sprinting even after she came to the end of the driveway, she continued to run from her imagined predator. The predator, whoever she thought it was, was evil, dark, determined to hurt her. There was no light. She had to find light.
Wait—there! There was light, a little ways down the street. It was only a small speck, but oh, it was light, and with light came warmth, and safety, and home.
She ran to the light, knowing that whatever she had imagined couldn't haunt her near the light. Because with the light, she could see.
Katara ran faster, and suddenly came to a dead halt.
She could see. She could see where the light was coming from—a human hand, belonging to a scarred teen.
Oh, God.
Katara was in the shadows, still in the darkness, and she could avoid being seen, as she still wasn't in the light—
"You're still out here?" called the voice she so dreaded.
Trembling, she realized she had nowhere to go. She walked forward, pretending to be indifferent.
"So?" she murmured, standing just outside where the light shone.
"It's late," responded the light-provider, as if that statement alone proved why she had no right to be roaming the streets, alone in the darkness.
"Yeah, well, I really don't care." The retort came out of her mouth before she knew she'd spoken, but she went along with it anyone, hoping that her new companion wouldn't catch her lying through her teeth.
"Huh," he responded, a smirk playing at his lips. She flinched, knowing that he knew she was lying and that she was afraid of the dark. "Why are you so afraid?"
She stared at him, and a sharp retort formed in her mind, but it didn't come out of her mouth. Instead, she said simply, "The moon is gone. And when the moon is gone, there is no light."
He raised an eyebrow. "If there's no light, then what do you call this?" he asked her, moving his hand with the flame in it closer to her.
She responded without thinking. "Fire."
The silence between them rang through the cold, dark night, and even the animals that slept could hear it, for it was so silent that it was loud. And the two who made no sound just stared at each other, almost in a contest. How long they stood there, Katara didn't know.
And at last, the light-provider relaxed. "C'mon," he said indifferently, "I'll walk you home."
"What?"
"Do you want light on your way back or do you want to walk home alone in the dark?"
It was a difficult question. But she knew the light was better than the dark. So she nodded, hoping that she'd made the right choice.
They were silent the entire walk. He kept the little fire going in his palm, and she stayed close to him, close to the light, because there was no other light and no other company.
When they reached Katara's home, they stopped. Katara felt rather awkward and uncomfortable, and she could tell her companion felt the same.
"Thank you, Zuko," she whispered quietly before running to the front door.
And when she looked back, the light had gone out.