A/N: This scene wouldn't get out of my head (not to mention the idea of this pair freaks the hell out of me), but I wrote it in one sitting and I'm glad I did. More of "Ozai and Katara" than Ozai/Katara, but if you squint and look at it sideways you can see the one-sided, squicky deal.
Cold Water Blood
And Aang swallows the hard lump in his throat because his thirteen year old heart sees the girl of his dreams do this before. Once for Jet and several times more for him. It feels as if his ribs have been skewered by a slim barbecue stick; leaves a hole so tiny it slips right through the muscle and continues to bleed. Katara's hands glow a dark blue before crossing over to become several shades lighter. The lesion in the boy's chest grows deeper and redder and hotter with each passing second the waterbender stays her hands on either side of the previous Fire Lord's face.
Ozai is unfamiliar with the water girl's common procedure and the lethargy in his sun-deprived bones only just recognizes the tense lines of his son's shoulders as Zuko ushers him to the middle of the room. Down on his soiled knees with a tattered brown shirt and unwashed hair, the father of the Fire Lord bears the weight of his cremated ancestors in this triangle of teenagers who can all bend.
Then Zuko sucks in a sharp breath and considers fingering the clasps on the front of his robs only to remember that there are none on his heavy red regalia. Instead, his lungs tighten and the fabric bunches up against his skin so there can be more layers of clothing between he and his father, and the secondary disfiguring scar the second child of Ozai gave him.
Katara inhales. Ozai feels the child's healing power rather than sees it, the iridescent cobalt blue and her tanned fingers while his perfect ears catch the stale breath on the lips and hearts of each boy's throat. She's done this before.
The large, angry space inside him that spreads and spans he entire length of his being in his shell-like body, just underneath his sun-worn skin, Ozai expects something spectacular to occur. And the Phoenix King's diseased mind – while ill – still retains the ability to hope the hesitant concentration in this girl will bring everything he lost back.
It doesn't. The cynicism and the contempt slides back into place with finality. This single man is desperate and hopeless enough for pity, but the Avatar will not permit Ozai's dying wish. He will not do so. Anger swells like a balloon of toxic gas within the frame of his lungs. Something so passionate and missing and precious threatens to kill Ozai and the feel of the triangle changes from anxiety to fearing for this man's health. Diseased blood can only take so much pressure.
White ribs expand against the hardened shell of him as the waterbender's cool fingers slide forward from his temples to his forehead. Her thumbs stroke the deep creases of his brow.
The Phoenix King closes his eyes. The landscape of his mind clears a little like a path in the fog and he sees his expelled wife Ursa; not the way she is now – seven years in the future – but as she was seven years in the past.
Like a pendulum, the waterbender's metrical breathing pulls at Ozai's lungs and he is forced to obey, to breathe along with her in tandem. His body has no choice.
The world underneath his closed eyelids shines with a glaze of aquamarine; the ideal body his mind retains sways to and fro with the rhythm of Katara's tides.
Ozai knows he will live a little bit longer because of her. Before the boys break their kneeling position, haul him back up to his feet and hand him over to the guards on the other side of the twin wooden doors, he opens his eyes and is struck cold by the piercing gaze of the water tribe girl. He sees the island of promising green in the middle of her oceanic blue eyes, and his right hand rises ever so slightly with a full heart's yearnings to place his hand against the warmth of a familiar ruby flame.
His throat tingles. The tips of his fingers spasm pleasantly, similar to the sensation of holding his bare arm over an open-pit fire. It is the closest he has come to feeling alive in three weeks time. Soon the guards will stand firmly by his sides and take him back to the underground of his cell. Soon he will be staring at the metal bars that make up the fourth wall and he will begin sinking into the black tar of psychosis and join his daughter there.
But the day is a little different now. The Phoenix King is more sure his extended time frame has just become less of a curse and more of an opportunity.
"We are done for today," she says solidly. Ozai blinks back to reality and allows a small smile for him and her. Now, after her touch, he is more like himself and easily finishes Katara's sentence with the words, "And I will see you tomorrow, my Lord."
The Avatar breathes.
Ozai lives.
Katara leaves, but not before making one fatal parting glance as she exits the room before the Fire Lord. The doors close, the guards appear, and everything in the room remains as it is.
Well then, thinks Ozai. Tomorrow it is.