Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. That right belongs to somebody else.
Dedication: To Persephone's flower for being such a dear! (Psst... if you leave me nice reviews and PM me occasionally, and I like you, I tend to write stories for you. That's also a hint, people!)
A/N: This was really fun to write, even if it is being a bit cliche. Of course I've never read a story with Zuko/Katara and Blue Spirt/Painted Lady, but evidently this is very popular. And for good reason. The idea is an intriguing one. I've tried not to be cliche, but this might be. I have no idea, remember, I've never read a fic like this before. If you guys have any suggestions for good ones just tell me the title and who it's written by. And let's pretend Zuko talks in his mask. Because I think he would have kept it or would have gotten a new one made because it's BA. (Oh, and I officially fail at titles. Don't act surprised.)
These Masks We Wear
The moonlight trickles through the tree branches brightly, which makes it easy for the Painted Lady to see the dirt path as she glides through the forest. She can hear the river flowing gently a few feet from her, but she continues on the road, stopping at the first hut on the right.
Inaudibly she slips into the home and crept past the two sleeping figures on the mat and then crouched down to the small bundle on the corner of the room. The bundle coughs harshly, Katara cringes when she hears the labored breathing and the harsh sound, and then rolls over, revealing that it is not a bundle after all but a small little boy.
Katara takes a deep breath and places her hands gently on the boy's chest, and her hands glow blue. She watches as the boy's face grows uncomfortable to serene, like a child who is having a pleasant dream.
Katara smiles. This is the best part of acting as the Painted Lady once again, seeing the relief of people when they find out that they are healed, or that there is once again food in their pantries.
She had been watching this situation for a while now (young parents with barely enough money to feed themselves, let alone get their son to a doctor) and was relieved that she had finally gotten time to get out and help these people tonight.
When she was pleased with her work, and the relaxed face of her patient, Katara got up and walked out of the home again. She frowned when she was back under the moon's light, wondering where her partner could be.
He was supposed to meet her here by now, but there was no sign of him anywhere, not even a disturbance in the leaves, other than the ones that she had made herself. But then again he never leaves a trail. He is a spirt, after all.
Hands clamp down on her shoulders and Katara whipped around, her ever present water at the ready. But when her eyes fell on the dark mask and dark clothes with a bag over his shoulder she relaxed her stance and beamed.
"Where were you?" Katara asks as they walk down the trail, hand in hand now, going off to deliver food now. Katara had done all of her healing before now and they generally spent the night in each others company.
"Ostrich-horse thieves," Zuko's slightly muffled voice replies, looking at how their skin almost seem to be the same tone underneath the moon.
"Yes, because that's not hypocritical at all," Katara says with a grin, and she can tell that underneath Zuko's mask he's smirking.
"Hey, it's all in job description. I never said that I agreed with everything that I do."
"Right." Katara rolls her eyes and Zuko squeezes her hand.
"Well there is one, thing that I really like about this job."
"Oh yeah? What is it?"
Katara looks up at him as he takes off his mask and her hat at the same time. "The fact that I can do this all that I want to," he whispers and then leans in to kiss her. The kiss is slow and long and deep, and Katara's fingers somehow make their way up to his hair. His face is slightly sweaty from being underneath his mask, but for some reason that makes everything seem that much better.
When she's with him underneath the light of the moon everything seems as though it's in sharper clarity. There is no equal to this feeling. She has never felt it with anyone else, and she doubts that she ever will.
Katara breaks away after a while, because she isn't able to bear it, because she knows that it's all going to end, and tells him halfheartedly, "Put it back on before someone sees you!" She quickly rearranges her hat and veil so that there is a thin wall between her face and the world.
Zuko smiles slightly before he obliges. "So paranoid," he says, his voice muffled once again by the mask.
"You should be. What if someone was to recognize you?"
"I'm the Fire Lord, remember. I can do whatever I want."
"I think that all of that power has gotten to your head."
"What power? Katara, I haven't even made on decision yet because all of my advisors are arguing about what to do with the ruin and the remains that the war has left on the Fire Nation." Zuko says this vehemently, with a bit of frustration coloring his tone.
This has been plaguing his mind, and Katara knows this. This was part of the reason that he had begun masquerading as the Blue Spirt again, because it helped calm his frustration to know that he was helping someone somewhere in the country that he so loved, despite its many flaws and shortcomings, even though his country still did not entirely trust him.
Even though the world still did not trust him.
Katara lays a soothing hand on his arm. "It's going to be okay, eventually, okay? You just have to have patience. And hope."
"You and your hope."
"You have to have some, Zuko, or else there isn't anything worth living for."
Zuko looks at her and he sees, even through all of her face paint, that she is saying this earnestly and that she means every word. And she is right, partly. Zuko has never much been one for hoping, he had experienced what he felt was too much, but he had seen also what hope had done in the Earth Kingdom, and many of the places that he had been since the war ended.
And here the two of them were, Zuko and Katara, the Blue Spirt and the Painted Lady, giving hope, or at least trying to, to the people in the valley that have never truly had a reason for having any.
The people here were dirt poor, but they survived, and after the war had ended they were worse off than ever before. But they still had hope, and whether that was because of Zuko and Katara, or something else entirely, he would never know.
"You're right," he sighs, taking her hand again as they continue walking down the path. "I'm sorry for getting so upset, but damn it! Sometimes I feel like they listen to Aang more than me, even though he's leaving."
"Well he is the all powerful Avatar," Katara says this and the sentence runs between the two of them, slippery like the yolk of an egg. Aang has never been a pleasant topic of conversation between the two of them, and he wasn't ever going to be. The words had just come out without her thinking about them, because they both knew that they were true.
"Yes, he is," Zuko agrees and there is an awkward silence before they come to another hut that belongs to a family that needs their assistance. This family has more children than they can afford, but their oldest daughter is to be married soon and they need more food for the wedding to tide them over.
Silently the two of them, working as though they had been doing this together all of their lives instead of a few short months, and they eased in and out of the house silently and their offerings placed where the family would be sure to see them and use them.
As soon as they were far enough away Katara sighs and Zuko puts an arm around her shoulder. They are almost to the end of the path and they know that when they get there their time together will be to its end as well and they will have to part, to wash of their pant or hide their mask, and pretend that nothing had happened, as though they were just Fire Lord Zuko and Friend of the Avatar Katara.
Soon their play acting will end and they will be faced with the real world once again. Their fairy tale, told only at night and underneath the moon with the stars as their audience, will crumble, but it would soon be reborn.
Until it wasn't. Until it couldn't be reborn or retold anymore. Though neither of them knew it at the time the people of that valley would forever talk of the two spirits that haunted them and brought them joy in times of despair and ruination at the end of a war caused by their own people.
But all stories have to come to an end. Because thats all this love between Zuko and Katara was, a story that was never told.
Legends, on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. And that's what the love of the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady was, after all.
Too quickly, as many good things do, the path ended and left standing at the end were two people who wanted nothing more for it to go on eternally.
Katara knew this would happen. She knew that this night would end, but she had been prepared for this. She had prepared herself all week because she knew that if she did not tell him now he would never know, and this had gone on long enough already.
She had to hold back tears as she took a deep breath, and she could feel Zuko watching her even through his mask.
Zuko saw the tears in her eyes and he was alarmed. Things never ended like this, because they knew that they would soon be together once again. But his stomach still clenched with a sense of foreboding and he knew something was going to be said, something that he didn't want to hear.
"Zuko, I have something to tell you."
He wanted to scream that he did not wish to hear it, ever, but he knew that his shouting would be fruitless. He could see the steady resolve in her eyes. She was going to tell him, whether or not he listened.
"Okay." Zuko unties his mask and lets it fall carelessly to the ground and Katara takes off her hat in one graceful swoop, her face paint being the only thing that stands in the way of them being their true selves. They are both grateful that its there, because if it wasn't neither of them would have the strength to be together like this. It is only here, in their masquerade, that they can be their true selves.
"I'm, I'm leaving Zuko." Her words make his stomach drop, but it is the next three that feel like a piece of rock that is earthbended straight to his brain. "With Aang. Tomorrow."
"What?" he gasps, the word leaving his mouth without his consent. The shock is enough to break him, but then the anger comes next, boiling hot and fast, and it overtakes the shock with pleasure. "How could you-" but Zuko stops there.
The words How could you do this to me? float in the air between them, but both of them refuse to acknowledge their presence.
"I have to."
At this Zuko explodes. "No, you don't! You could stay here, with me. Aang doesn't need you as much as I do, Katara."
"Yes, he does. Zuko, he does, and I've already promised him that I would with him. I'm sorry."
"Why didn't you tell me before now? Why do I only get a few hours warning before you leave?"
"I didn't want to hurt you." Katara knows, as she says this, that she deserves every word that he will ever call her, because she is a coward, and she knows it.
Her heart has never broken. Throughout her life her heart has been torn, bruised, and it has flown and swollen to the point of it being painful, but it has never been ripped in two, and especially not by herself. The pain is almost bewildering, but she knows that her promise to Aang, and to her brother, are more important than her pains of the heart.
Zuko laughs mirthlessly at her. "You didn't want to hurt me? Please. You just didn't want to hurt yourself."
Katara knows this is true, but her pride gets the best of her. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I knew that you were going to over react."
"Over react? Katara, I love you. And you're leaving me, as though you don't care, like I mean nothing."
It was the first time that he had ever told her that without the benefit of a mask. The words are spoken so rawly that it hurts the both of them, and Katara leaps to deny this. "No, no! That's not true, I love you too, but you know that we can't ever be together. Not really."
"And why not?"
"There are so many reason, Zuko. Aang, for one thing. I owe him so much and I can't just leave him out to dry. And then there's the fact that I'm nothing but a mere Water Tribe Peasant and you're the Fire Lord. You think their council would respect you more if you married me? No, they wouldn't, and you know it. Besides, we both knew this would end, that this would have to end."
To this Zuko has no argument, because he knows it's true. They both do, and that's enough to bring them up short.
Sometimes there are no words that can be spoken, because sometimes the only thing left is action alone. This is one of those times.
"Kiss me," Zuko says, knowing that if things were different he'd feel silly for being so dramatic, but the gesture seems to fit. "Just one more time."
And then she is in his arms and his hands are on her body and it was as if there was nothing that could wrench them apart. Nothing, that is, except each other.
But breathing is inevitable and as the two of them part to do this they know that this is going to be their real good bye. The one that they will have in several hours will be polite and proper, for they will really be Zuko and Katara again and they will be expected to behave accordingly.
When they finally pull away, Katara can see startling streaks of red all over his face, her face paint, she knows from prior experience, and it is as if they are wearing identical marks of pain all over their bodies.
This is the end.
"I will always be hoping-" Zuko finally says, playing his role and picking up his mask, the last token of their love that will survive for Katara will later burn everything connected to the Painted Lady that she once was.
"Because otherwise there isn't anything worth living for," she finishes softly.
And with that understanding deep in their hearts they turned, never to truly look at the other ever again.