Would You Catch Me?
I got the idea for this story after watching the Season 3 finale 17 times on YouTube. This is placed after the Season Finale. I thought of what Katara would think if she didn't catch Zuko when he fell. I was also listening to the song 'I'm Still Here' by John Rzeznik. This song was in the movie Treasure Planet and I loved it there and you know what? It fits Zuko perfectly. Just listen to it. And watch Treasure Planet. Just a One-shot.
I guess you could consider this my submission for Zutara Week. I don't know who started the thing, but I like the idea.
The boy who had chased us and tracked us around the world had given up everything he had known to train the Avatar, the boy he had tried to capture for three years, in the ancient art of firebending. He had given up a girlfriend and more important…his honor, to help them defeat his own father. Aang once told her that he believed Zuko had gained his honor when he decided to save the world. Toph had told her that she heard Zuko's late night confessions and conversations with a photo of his Uncle. Zuko himself once told her that his Uncle was more of a father to him than Ozai had ever been.
Zuko was her opposite in nearly every way possible except that they were so alike. He was a firebender, she was a waterbender. He was hot-tempered as was she. He had lost his mother to the Fire Nation as had she. She didn't know how or why but they were completely different and completely alike at the same time.
Why or how he had changed, she did not know, but she knew she had not seen it in the beginning. He had believed it was an instant change, but she had seen the signs yet chose to ignore them. Now she remembered them and saw them for what they were. When she had offered to heal his uncle after Azula had shot the man, he had shot a blanket of fire over their heads. He hadn't tried to hurt them. In fact, he had never tried to directly injure them. Not even Momo. He had kept her mother's necklace safe through everything. The thought that he had actually paid enough attention to her in all their encounters to notice that she always wore the same necklace now sent shivers up her spine. He had noticed her. Why had he kept the piece of jewelry that he knew meant so much to her around his wrist? She questioned this, and so many other things, now.
Zuko had chased them around the world, starting at hers and Sokka's home. He had threatened her Gran-Gran and destroyed Sokka's 'watch tower'. Normally she would have laughed at the memory of Zuko's defeat by Sokka's boomerang, but now was not the time for any humor.
Zuko had once asked her if she would catch him if ever he were to fall. He didn't come outright and ask her if she trusted him, instead he chose to ask her something like that. She had expected him to be blunt like the little earthbender he had treated like a sister, but he had beat around the bush and asked a question that meant so much more. It meant that he cared about what she thought. It meant he cared…just that simple. He had asked her a question that she couldn't truthfully answer because she herself didn't even know the answer. He had been confused by her silence at first but then he closed his eyes, nodded, and uttered those two words that she knew he had yearned to hear the entirety of his messed up life. He had said, "I understand." Two little words that meant so much to the both of them.
And now…now the boy that had chased and tracked them around the world would never hear those words turned back in his direction. He would never see his mother; never see her kind face again. He would never firebend, never train with her brother like they had always done when one or the other was frustrated. She had never realized before that both her brother and the fire prince benefited from their little sparring matches. They did so in silence, but you could tell each was comforting the other in a way which she could not explain.
Zuko was gone…all because she hadn't known the answer to the prince's question. She hadn't known she wouldn't have to answer it in words. She hadn't known he would actually fall.
As he fell, her mind flashed back to when those words had left his lips. She had been sitting with her legs hanging over the cliff side, watching the moon make its way across the night sky. The fire that Aang had struggled to light under Zuko's guidance lay in embers behind her. She didn't hear the light footsteps of her former foe approaching and jumped slightly when he spoke. "Would you catch me…if ever I were to fall?" he had asked cautiously. She had been shocked into silence. She hadn't spoken to him since then; she hadn't known how to answer. She had hugged him before the final battle, but had said nothing. He thought that meant she had answered his question. She hadn't and now she regretted it.
If she had said yes, he might still be alive. Her mind would have already been made up and she would have caught him. As he fell, he wouldn't have given her a look that said 'I understand' before closing his eyes for the last time. He wouldn't have fallen to his demise. He would be beside her right now, sharing in the misery of Toph's death, waiting to be crowned Fire Lord. She wouldn't be feeling the weight of both her friend's deaths on her shoulders and the guilt of not saving one.
She broke the promise she had made to the people who needed her. She had always believed that she would never turn her back on the people who needed her, yet she had done just that to one of her closest friends and he had died as a result. She shed her tears in silence; she deserved no pity. She deserved all the pain she received. He had died fighting in the greatest battle of all time, but she could have prevented his death. She stared at a lovely painting of Zuko as a child, before he was burned. It hung elegantly in a golden frame. He stood with his mother's hand on his shoulder. He seemed genuinely happy.
"No, I guess I won't catch you." Tears slid down her face and she crumpled to the ground before the painting and cried herself to sleep.
I actually cried while writing this so I know I'll cry during 'Southern Raiders' as Nick informed us that it was a real tear jerker. -Phantom