Author's note: Let's face it, if Avatar weren't a kid's show, it would have been Zuko that Katara kissed at the end. We know she goes for the older bad-boy type, and it's obvious how deeply Zuko cares about her. So this is written according to how the characters were shaped for us, not necessarily how they were forced to act because of a kiddie-safe TV rating. Yes, this is Zutara, but it's vague enough that Kataangers can still gloat and Zutarians can hold it smugly to their hearts. There will be at least a second chapter.
Zuko, twice-exiled prince of the Fire Nation, was chopping vegetables. Rather than sulking at having to perform such a menial task, he was mildly confused and more than mildly uncomfortable with the way the Southern Tribe waterbender was looking at him. He hadn't done anything wrong - that he knew of - to make her so upset. That poster wasn't his fault. He just couldn't puzzle out why she would deliberately put them in a situation where they would be alone together if she was that angry at him.
The radish in his hand mocked him silently. "Come with me," she says. "I want to see your sword in action," she says. Yeah, and then she hands me a bag of produce and tells me to chop it. His only consolation was that Aang and Sokka hadn't been there to witness it - Toph smothering laughter was bad enough. He caught Katara glaring at him, raised his one remaining eyebrow, and the glare turned into a scowl. Zuko started slicing the radish.
"Who is she?"
Both radish and knife wound up on the floor and Zuko checked to make sure he hadn't cut himself. "Who's who?" he asked, thoroughly confused and a little irritated at the waterbender's angry outburst.
"Your 'passion without love' girl," Katara spat.
"You mean Mai?"
"The girl with the knives?" The water in the cook-pot, which had been simmering happily, developed a crust of rapidly-melting ice. "You got passion out of her?"
Zuko eyed the shrinking disk of ice in the pot and decided that discretion was the better part of not being frozen from the inside out. He shrugged, not making eye contact. The ice grew thicker.
"Do you love her?"
Love one of Azula's twisted minions? As if. He knew where their loyalties were. "No."
"Why not?"
The accusing tone of the question startled the ex-prince into letting the grip on his temper slip, and he met Katara's eyes squarely.
"Why do you care?" The question came out equally accusing, and his eyes widened. He looked away quickly, but the damage had been done. Frost crept up the inside of the pot.
"I guess it runs in your family, then," the waterbender snapped.
"What are you talking about?" Zuko shot back, irritated.
"Inability to love." There was a pause. "Betrayal."
Zuko blew a stream of fire at the pot, melting the ice. "I know how to love," he said shortly, trying to keep his temper in check.
"Oh?" Katara made the word a sing-song mockery. "So who do you love, then?"
"Uncle," he replied immediately, still keeping his eyes on the pot. Then, softly, "My mother."
The pot crusted over with ice again. "Lucky woman," the waterbender said bitterly. "She must be the only one you haven't betrayed yet." Zuko looked up at that, eyes blazing, and she smirked. "Or did you?"
"I would never betray someone I love!" Zuko protested hotly, but the protest and his anger died a swift death as the memory of the fall of Ba Sing Se rose before him, Iroh's hurt gaze reflected in Katara's stormy eyes. Katara nodded grimly.
"How do we know you won't betray us, too?"
The shamed prince was silent. He had no answer to that. "Do whatever you want to me," he said finally, all the anger gone. "Yell at me, call me names, strike me, bend at me. I won't fight back."
The lack of fight made Katara even angrier. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"
Zuko brushed his hair away from his scar, turning his head so that she could see it clearly. "That's how I got this."
Silence.
"That's how...?" Without the anger, Katara's voice sounded younger. "You didn't-?"
"My father challenged me to an Agni Kai for speaking out of turn. I refused to fight him, so he gave me this-" one hand gestured to the scar covering a third of his face "-as a lesson. To teach me respect."
"Did you love him?"
"I used to."
"Is that why...?" She let the question trail off, not wanting to re-open old wounds.
Zuko snorted. "Why I didn't fight back?"
The waterbender looked away, face coloring slightly, remembering the firebender's assertion that he wouldn't fight back against her. "Why you don't love him anymore."
"Oh. No." Zuko prodded the last bits of ice, watching them melt without Katara's anger keeping them solid.
"Then...why?" The question was hesitant, as though asking for permission to exist.
"He told me that Firelord Azulon had commanded him to kill me, and that he would have done it if my mother hadn't begged for my life." The words were clipped and emotionless. "He banished her."
Katara stared at him in horror, trying to imagine a father who would kill his own son. "What did you do?"
Zuko looked up and met her eyes with a steady gaze. "I told him that I was going to join the Avatar - Aang - and help him defeat him. My father. Firelord Ozai," he corrected himself hastily, sounding as awkward as when he'd first tried to join the gang.
"What did he say to that?" It was like watching two ships collide, Katara thought. So horrible, and yet, she couldn't look away.
A shrug. "He shot lightning at me."
Zuko picked up the knife and speared what was left of the radish. Katara watched him resume slicing it up, and decided that she didn't really want to pry into that anymore. Toph's assertion that he could have turned out a lot worse suddenly sounded a lot more reasonable.
"So...um...why Mai?"
He shrugged and picked up a carrot. "She's always had a thing for me."
"That's it?"
"Well, better her than an arranged marriage. A prince has to carry on the line, after all. At least with her, one of us would be happy and neither of us would be marrying a stranger."
She had to admit, it was a logical reason. But... "Doesn't that seem... I mean, isn't that a little...cold?" Katara winced, waiting for Zuko's temper to explode again.
"A prince doesn't have the luxury of chosing his bride," he said shortly, slicing the carrot into the pot with angry strokes. "A prince has to do what's best for his country."
"But you're not a prince anymore." Katara wasn't sure why she was even pressing the point, except that it sounded like Zuko was somehow running away...and after the last year, she hated seeing him run away before she could beat him soundly.
"It doesn't matter. No one wants me, remember?" He scowled at the diminishing carrot, sullen and resigned to this state of affairs.
Katara hated backing down from a challenge. Really, really, hated backing down and having to admit that something had bested her - which is how she'd wound up at the North Pole. That, she thought, had to be why she found herself saying, "So when happens if - when - Aang defeats the Firelord?"
The look the banished prince gave her at that was far from cold or resigned. Passion burned in his golden eyes, unmatched by anything the water tribe girl had seen except for the notion of capturing Aang to restore his honor. Where that passion had been fueled with anger, however, she was willing to swear that this fire was fueled by love, and she felt her pulse quicken under its heat.
"If I'm still alive," he said slowly, voice throbbing with urgent desire, "I'm going to take the throne." The rapture left his face at the look on hers, and he scowled. "What?"
Katara waved the question away, calling herself three kinds of fool for thinking that no-longer-prince Zuko could have ever been talking about anything but his birthright. She angrily told her pulse to slow back down - she didn't even like him! ...that way. Whatever. The waterbender pushed that sort of thought to the back of her head and returned to the field of battle.
"So when Aang defeats the Firelord, and you...take the throne..." she couldn't keep the words free of the derision her anger at him naturally brought with it. "...won't you need to...pick a bride?" Why am I taking Zuko's hypthetical future love life so seriously? Just because he isn't?
The look of bewildered dismay on his face was unexpected.
"Wait, you mean you hadn't thought about that?"
Zuko felt his ears start to burn and ducked his head. "No," he admitted.
Sensing an opening, Katara struck. "Not going to marry Mai?"
"No," came the immediate response, and the scowl she was more used to seeing on his face.
"Why not?" The waterbender pounced on that one, clipped word.
"I left her a letter on the Day of Black Sun," he said, a warped sort of smile replacing the scowl. "I told her that I intended to join the Avatar, and that the next time we met, we'd probably be enemies unless she did something to prove that she wasn't Azula's puppet anymore. Even if she does switch sides, she's not going to be very happy with me. You've seen her in a fight – would you trust her to not kill you in your sleep?"
Katara couldn't disagree with Zuko's decision. That didn't mean he'd won the fight, however, nor that she'd given up trying to beat him. Even if it was just a battle of words.
"So who are you going to marry when you're Firelord?" The Water Tribe girl cheerfully ignored the fact that she'd just promoted the ex-prince in her mind, and focused instead on the brief look of hope, followed by an equally brief look of horror, that flashed across his face before being swallowed by his usual unhappy look.
"I don't know," he said sullenly, wishing he could get a few minutes alone with his uncle to find out why that stupid poster even existed. Why had the smiling, painted Katara come to mind when the real one had asked him who he would marry? This was all Uncle's fault.
"What was that look?"
"What look?" Gah…what did she see?
"You had a look of…well, you had a look." Oh yes, very descriptive, Katara. Good going. Could you get any more vague?
Zuko just glared, unwilling to admit to anything he hadn't thought out in detail a million times already.
"Tell me what you were thinking of."
"No."
Katara's eyes narrowed. "I hate you."
"I know." Zukos lips twitched into a self-mocking grin.
Damnit, how could he just…just…give up like that? How was she supposed to beat him when he didn't fight back?
"Yell at me, call me names, strike me, bend at me. I won't fight back."
"Get out."
Her voice was as cold as her ice; Zuko got out. Katara sat in the alcove that had been converted into a cooking area, feeling like somehow she'd lost that fight, even though Zuko had been the one to surrender. Why would he surrender to her? Why not Aang, who he'd wronged the most? Why not Sokka, the one least likely to forgive him? Why not Toph, who he'd hurt most recently? Why her?
And why did it scare her?
