They say that fate works in funny ways.
Fate must have a pretty twisted sense of humor, because never has it worked in their favor. They've stumbled into each other countless times across the span of time, died together and lived together a thousand times, but their story has never had a happy ending.
Sometimes it takes years for them to meet. Decades. Sometimes it takes minutes. But each time, without fail, they find each other.
Everything would be so much easier if fate could just keep itself out of their damn lives.
i.
He sits with his back against one the columns, breathing steadily. Her hands move the water across his chest, and if he closes his eyes it's almost as if he's underwater, a gentle stream flowing over him.
"Katara," he says, his voice stronger than expected.
"I already told you, there's no need to say thank you." Her gaze is still fixed on the scar on his chest, but she's softly smiling and her eyes are filled with something like relief.
"No, Katara," he protests, but the rest of the sentence is stuck in his throat. He inhales so deeply it looks painful, with his eyes closed and his body shuddering.
She looks up at him, searching for the words in his eyes because he's never been good with speaking anyways. The moment that she finds what she's looking for, it's evident; her entire demeanor changes as realization settles in her.
"I-I think I lo-" he starts up again, as her blue eyes widen and her posture tenses.
"Don't," she warns, her voice firm and watchful at the same time. She glides the water across him a few more times, and then she withdraws and holds her hands in her lap carefully, as if touching him may cause her to break.
Then, softer, she repeats, "please don't."
He takes another breath in and releases it with a scoff, running a hand through his hair.
"Yeah," he sighs, breaking the silence that seems to fall over the entire world. "Sorry."
Katara has always held his reins in, always forced him to think things through before doing something stupid, and this is no exception.
She looks up at him, a twisted half smile on her face, and he wants nothing more than to hold her in his arms because it's the saddest thing he's ever seen.
"Me too," she replies quietly. "Me too."
And this, they believe, is how the curse begins.
ii.
She's cautious when she seems him at the train station, because his back is turned to her and it could be anyone, really, but she'd spent a year, one glorious year, memorizing every inch of him, so she's almost positive.
A piece of crumpled up paper flutters by him and he turns his head with it as it goes, and she has her confirmation: a patch of angry, red skin on his otherwise flawless face.
"My dad had anger issues," he had replied after she'd mustered up the courage to ask him about it.
She didn't say anything then, just pressed her lips to the scar, feeling it move under her as he smiled.
She stands up from the bench she's sitting on and walks over towards him. Her heart pounds in her chest, and all of a sudden she's whisked back in time to three years ago and she's seventeen with butterflies in her stomach.
"Zuko?" she asks carefully.
He turns towards her and she sees his amber eyes grow wide as he takes the sight of her in.
"Katara? I- what are you doing here?"
Her lips turn upwards in a half amused smile and she crosses her arms.
"I take this route every day. What are you doing here?"
He opens his mouth just a little and then closes it, a tiny smile on his face.
"Going out on a date with my girlfriend," he answers.
Her heart drops just a little, oh, and she swallows before smiling again. She's suddenly reminded of the reality of it all – she's twenty and he's twenty two and they both went their separate ways a long, long time ago. They're in that limbo, where they're not exactly searching for themselves but they're still wary of the destination that they're heading towards.
"Where to?" she wonders, and when he gives her the name of some restaurant she's never heard of before, she feels a small relief. It's pathetic, really, because she's never been the jealous type.
They grow quiet, and Katara feels a lump grow in her throat, full of all the words she wants to say and the things she wants to tell him.
She's got a million things she wants to say to him, but it's been too long and she's not sure they even know how to talk to each other anymore.
"I'm glad you're doing well," is what she settles for, because it's the safest choice out of the millions she has swarming around in her head.
The corner of his lips turn slightly upward.
"Thanks," he replies, and she knows he means it.
She opens her mouth to say something else, but then she hears a train coming up the tracks and all of a sudden she can't remember the words.
"That's my train," says Zuko, standing up. "Take care of yourself. Maybe I'll see you around again."
Yes, he will. They always find each other somehow.
iii.
They collapse onto the bed, struggling to catch their breath.
After their heartbeats have slowed down to a steady pace and they can think clearly again, Zuko turns his head to the side and looks at her.
She's beautiful. Always is, always has been, but there's something about the way she looks in the afterglow, relaxed and stress free - it's one of the only times she looks truly happy.
His gaze trails a path down her body, and he stops in his tracks when he sees it.
"Katara?" he asks, her name coming out slightly strangled. "W-what is that?"
He didn't have any time to notice earlier, too occupied with the task they're recovering from. Maybe it's just a trick of the light. Maybe she had slipped it on the wrong finger, but even Zuko knows, the idiot that he is, that deep down, none of these things are the case.
Katara hums and lifts her left hand of her bare stomach, holding it up in front of the window so that the silver band glints in the moonlight streaming through the thin curtain.
"Aang asked me to marry him," she replies simply, and Zuko would laugh if he didn't feel as if he were drowning, because she says it with the same tone one would wonder "hey, what are we having for breakfast?"
She turns so that they're both face to face, and from here he can see the thin sheen of sweat that still covers her forehead, a reminder of how fucked up this situation is.
"Don't look at me like that, Zuko," she tells him, a hand tangled in his hair.
"Like what?" he manages to choke out.
She frowns, her lips red and swollen and glistening.
"Like... you've just been told that you have six months to live," she concludes.
He laughs at that. It's a sharp, humorless thing that bounces off the walls.
"Why?" is all he says.
She smiles softly at him, her fingers lingering at the back of his neck.
"I'm all he has."
"You don't love him," says Zuko, and he's aware that he sounds slightly ridiculous, his voice containing all the pain of a wounded puppy.
"I don't love you, either," she replies, a painful reminder that he has, once again, put his heart before his head by falling in love with a person who would never allow herself to love him back.
"I would do anything to make you happy," he tells her, and they both know it's the truth. But the thing is, there's no way. Not unless he can change the forces of the universe that so desperately wish to see them suffer. All the things he would do for her don't matter, because they are simply not meant to be together – cannot be together.
"You've done enough," says Katara, kissing the corner of his mouth. He tilts his head just a little bit when she lifts her lips so that when she kisses him again, it's on his mouth.
"Zuko," she gasps as they part for air, "I-I think that this is the last time. You know how bad this makes me feel as it is, I don't think that I can-"
She's silenced as he tugs her by the arm and she comes crashing down on top of him. Every inch of her body is pressed against him and he shuts his eyes, trying to memorize it all one last time.
"One more," he whispers against her neck, and for once Katara cannot bring herself to refuse.
iv.
From his position on the hospital bed, Zuko smiles up at the nurse bandaging the cut on his arm with careful precision.
She's gorgeous, really, with smooth tan skin and bright blue eyes that remind him of the ocean.
"You know, Miss Katara," he says, glancing at the name tag on her chest and trying his best to sound casual, "When you're not busy saving lives, I'd love to take you out for dinner."
She glances at him and scoffs in amusement.
"Sorry, pretty boy," she replies, tying off the end of the cloth in a knot, "but I'm always saving lives. And you've got a war to win."
She takes a step back and places a hand on her hip, as if she's admiring her handiwork.
"Maybe after it's all over?" he tries again.
She laughs again and turns around, her hips sashaying side to side as she walks away from him.
"You take care of that arm, you hear?" she calls out, and Zuko thinks that this is the longest he's smiled since he first enlisted.
On the battlefield, everyone says that you need something to fight for in order to keep on going without losing your mind.
So Zuko finds himself about her – the nurse – all throughout the day, and even more so when shards of ice, daggers of rock, and bursts of flames come at him from all sides, when he stares into the blank, unseeing eyes of those who have done their duty all too well.
He thinks about her and imagines all the things that they could be, a thousand different scenarios that he knows will never come to life. But he needs to, even though he can't exactly remember the slope of her eyebrows or the precise shade of her skin, because he has only been fighting for himself, and among the blood that stains his hands and the permanent smell of death, that's no longer good enough.
The war ends six months later, although no side has really won.
He has nothing now, no honor left, no friends remain, just a tiny sliver of hope in him as he walks to the hospital, still dressed in his uniform.
The sliver is destroyed as he reaches the place where the building once stood, now just another pile of rubble among the thousands that are scattered throughout the city.
"Such a shame, right?" a stranger says as he passes by the site, an old man with a greying goatee.
"Do you by any chance know if- if anyone survived this?" asks Zuko, still clinging on to whatever he can.
The old man clasps his hands behind his back, shakes his head with a sad smile on his face.
"Sorry, son," he replies, his raspy voice somber. "You knew someone?"
Zuko stares at the ruins in front of him and vaguely wonders how many lives she saved, and if she ever tried to save her own.
"No," he answers. "I can't say I did."
v.
In what seems like the universe trying to make up for her early death and the long years between them, the next time they meet, they grow up together.
Katara grumbles in frustration as she tries to snap the back of her bra together, in what seemed like the fifth attempt. Breathing a sigh of relief as the clasps finally latch onto each other, she looks in the mirror and crosses her arms.
It's during times like these where she's reminded of how desperately she misses her mother, someone who would know how deal with things like these – definitely not someone like her dad or Sokka, who would probably choke on their own spit and die if the idea of Katara even having boobs was brought up in front of them.
She wonders if Zuko will notice them – her new set of boobs that just magically appeared a few nights ago, that is. It would be flat out lying if she said she hadn't noticed the way he'd grown into his lanky, awkward body over the past two years, all the straight lines suddenly becoming angular, sharp edges—
Katara sighs and sits down on the blue carpet of her bedroom, still in a state of half-nakedness. It's awful to think of her best friend like this; they've already been through way too much together, from her mother passing away to his mom leaving them. They know each other probably better than they know themselves. All the cracks and chips that they hide from everyone else are brought to the surface when they're around each other, and in a relationship like theirs, something like romance can't survive.
She is fourteen and he's sixteen when she finally figures it all out.
Both Ozai and Azula have just been thrown into prison – a place they rightfully belong, Zuko tells her that night, when they're sitting on the floor on his now empty apartment.
"He was still your father," Katara tells him, hugging her knees. "Maybe the world's worst, yeah, but still. If you're sad, don't feel guilty."
He laughs into the pillow that lays in his lap, and Katara thinks, for just a moment, if I put my head there, what would he do?
"I'm not sad at all," he replies, but there's a bitter edge to his words.
"Well, how about Azula?" asks Katara. She hates the girl with all her skin and bones, hates both his sister and his father with more fire than she will ever know, because they are the reason the boy in front of her is so desperately tragic. She's the one who had held him in her arms as he had
"I don't know," answers Zuko truthfully, because after all these years he knows better than to lie to her.
"She was your sister. You grew up together."
"No," he protests, shaking his head. "No, my sister's right here." He reaches over and rubs his hand on top of Katara's head until she squeals.
She smiles faintly, because that's when she knows that what she's wanted all along has finally come true, but in a twisted way.
Zuko does love her, and it's all too much yet not enough.
This is the closest they've ever gotten to their happy ending, and both souls anticipate that maybe next time will be the one where they finally come full circle.
A/N: I know this is a few days late for the unrequited prompt, but I was determined to finish this before Zutara week ended at the very least, and I'm happy to say that I've done so! As a result of the rush, there's probably going to be a few mistakes and I apologize in advance for that. You're welcome to point them out to me and I might post a re-edited version later on.
Please read and review as always, and Happy Zutara Week!