Zutara ~ Dawn
Chapter 1- Memories
Zuko lay on a plush couch in an apartment in the earth kingdom palace. Over the past three days Uncle had been captured, the Avatar had been shot full of lightning, he had been reinstated as a fire prince, and he had met a waterbender who could have healed his scar. His scar. The very thing that marked him an outcast, the thing that showed his father's type of love. He could have been free of it if that blasted airbender hadn't blasted through the wall right then. The waterbender, Katara, she had the bluest eyes he had ever seen and she had touched his scar ,without shuddering or even flinching, not even he could do that. And there was something about her eyes when he had said that he had lost his mother too, a softness of understanding but not pity, the want to lift that pain off his shoulders even though she herself had to much herself. But most of all she could heal his scar.
Zuko walked over to a mirror on the wall. He stared at his face. Lifting one hand he covered the disfigured half of his face, looking only at the princely side. He then switched, looking at the banished side. What if that all disappeared? Would Azula treat him like an equal? Not likely. What would Uncle say? What about his father? Would he grant what Zuko craved most? His honor.
Katara floated in the small river that the gang had stopped for the night at. The full moon hung in the sky as if it were floating too. "Hi Yue." she whispered, "Sokka misses you, you know... we all do but mostly him. I know that nights when your fully out he has a hard time sleeping. Once he told me that when he was looking at the moon he saw a beautiful lady in it. It gave him hope." Katara fell silent. Hope. What gave her hope now? Aang was grievously injured, their plan had failed, and Zuko... Zuko had betrayed her! Her eyes hardened. He had seemed so human in the caves, and yet he just turned and followed Azula! He had taken her trust and tore it into tiny pieces.
Katara dove beneath the surface begging the cold water to clear her mind. She didn't want to think about Zuko. He had been a mistake. She turned and rocketed up to the surface drips of water flying off her and hearing herself gasp a lung full of air. The gasp seemed to loud somehow in the silence around her. She quickly bended a sphere of ice around her, making a small room. She touched the smooth walls, they had a slight pearly shimmer that made them beautiful. She was calm in this place, safe. It rested her mind from unwanted thoughts, but she had only recently gotten the idea to make herself this sort of igloo. Katara continued to practice her waterbending. She knelt in the bottom of the sphere holding her arms up, each slightly curved to either side middle fingers just barely touching. She breathed in slowly and opened her arms slowly and gently. The sphere opened with her arms and when she had lowered her arms to the surface of ice, she shot out her fingers quickly to form curved blades of ice raised from where she sat to the end of the still slightly curved ice. She was kneeling in the middle of a giant, ice water lily. Katara was tiered and cold but she couldn't destroy the thing of beauty she had created just yet. She sent a small current of water around to spin the lily so she could look up and see the heavens turn around her. Twinkling stars shown down at the waterbender below them.
Slowly Katara melted the flower till there was only a small patch of ice below her feet. She stepped forward and ice branched out from the patch, making a path across to the shore. Katara bended the water out of her clothes when she had reached land and pulled on her pants and dress. She stumbled wearily to her bed and fell asleep.