The cold shouldn't be this much of a bother; she's from the south pole. But back home she had skins and furs to nestle herself in. Here, on the sandy shores of a small Fire Nation island, there isn't much to keep her warm in the night save for her clothing, a light blanket, and the fire. Her teeth chatter and she hugs her knees tightly, closing in on herself to keep the frigid air out, and her minimal body heat in.
Weather is only half of the reason for her trembling, though - Adrenaline hasn't fully dissipated yet, and each time she loses focus, awful flashbacks plague her. So she concentrates on the cold - concentrates on the shuddering within her chest, the tingling in her fingertips as she holds her unsteady hands closer to the flames. Anything at all to keep from remembering Yon Rha's eyes…
It's so strange now, to know his name.
She thinks she might have preferred to never know it at all.
For Yon Rah to have a name makes it less easy for Katara to see him only for the monster he is. Names are too humanizing. He doesn't deserve a name.
"Zuko…" she whispers, halfway hoping he doesn't hear. But what she doesn't yet know about the Fire Prince is that he's an incredibly light sleeper.
On the other side of the campfire, he doesn't shift from where he lies underneath his blanket."Yeah?" His voice is tired, quiet, and kind. Katara still hasn't gotten used to hearing him this way. Every time he opens his mouth, she expects him to yell, to bark orders or make threats.
When she doesn't answer he says, "Katara?" He sits up, yawns, and rubs his eyes, blinking away the blurriness to see her better.
"Nevermind. Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
Zuko sits and stares for a while. "...Are you-"
"You're really going to ask me if I'm okay right now?" The venom in her voice should have made Zuko flinch, but he stays perfectly still.
"...Cold? Are you cold, Katara?"
If she weren't so busy brooding, she'd roll her eyes. Instead, she just shakes her head a little, and fights back a shiver from deep inside.
He says, "I know you're not okay. You're not supposed to be okay right now, and believe me when I tell you it will be a while until you are again. But what I can't tell is if you're cold, or just… overwhelmed."
"...Both," she admits, rubbing her hands together. "But it's fine. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."
He raises his arms above his head, stretching and stifling another yawn. "Once I'm up, I'm up."
"Oh. Well, sorry." She's not as sorry as she sounds, though. Part of her is glad to have his company.
"Don't worry about it. I wasn't sleeping well, anyway. What about you?" He moves to sit cross-legged and leans on his elbows. "Have you tried to rest at all?"
He already knows the answer, though. He sees it in her posture - the set of her shoulders, the tension in her arms, the way she's curled in on herself like an injured animal. It's in her eyes, too. Katara's body is sitting there in front of him, but her mind is elsewhere. Zuko thinks that three and a half years ago, he must have sat just like that for days on end. It was weeks before he could even think about trying to sleep, let alone closing his eyes at all.
He has to call her name twice before she answers, jolting to alertness with a gasp. "Huh?" Her eyes are wide, pupils contracted in the firelight. She's still trembling like mad.
"I asked if you… nevermind. Here," he says, standing to bring his blanket to her, and wrapping it about her shoulders as he lowers himself beside her. "You're freezing."
Instead of thanking him she just nods, clenching her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.
"Hey," he says. "Look at me."
"I don't want to."
"Stop staring at the damn fire and look at me."
Then with hesitation she obeys. His eyes are the same color as the flames and, she supposes, it doesn't really matter which one she looks at. She half-whispers, "What do you want?"
"You can't just sit there silently steeping in anger and misery. At least talk to me. I know wallowing in anguish feels appealing right now, but trust me. It doesn't help anything."
"Then what does?" It's mostly a rhetorical question, but she still looks at him expectantly.
"Time, I guess. Once you've done everything you can to try and make things right, the only move you have left is to wait." Zuko gives a casual shrug that feels out of place. There isn't anything casual about this moment. "One day you'll wake up in the morning and you won't even notice that you managed to sleep through the night."
Katara swallows nervously. "When did that happen for you?"
At that, Zuko averts his gaze to the fire. "Soon, hopefully."
There's a sincerity in his eyes that she's seen before - in the crystal catacombs in Ba Sing Se. The memory has been smoldering inside her ever since, and the thought of it had always been painful. But now, in a misguided, desperate sort of way, it's the only thought that brings her any solace. She says, "The Fire Nation makes monsters out of good people."
"We…" A little startled by her words, Zuko glances back to her. His first instinct is to argue - defend his people and his homeland - but he holds his tongue. She's right, after all. Even his own mother, gentle and loving as she was, was capable of vicious, treasonous things once the Fire Nation dragged it out of her. "We... are a very sick nation. We're not well."
"And what," she leers, "you're different or something?"
Zuko laughs a humorless laugh. "No. I might just be the sickest one."
Hearing him admit it somehow makes the wound in Katara's spirit feel a little less deep. At least he knows, she thinks. At least he's not pretending to be something he's not. She's watching him carefully now - his unscarred profile catches the glow of fire at angles that soften his features into someone who almost looks pleasant. But she knows better.
She remembers Jet, and how he'd probably been a good person before the losses he suffered turned him to crime and vengeance. So she asks Zuko, "Were you ever good?"
The question seems to stab through his chest.
"I don't think that's for me to say. Nobody thinks they're bad while they're bad. Everyone always thinks they're on the right side of things."
"So then," Katara says, her tone hardening into a challenge, "as Yon Rah struck down my mother while she was on her knees… did he think he was right?"
Zuko wants to say something about how it's probably best not to ask questions that she can't handle the answers to, but after considering Katara for a moment - her steady glare and her rigid posture - he decides that if there's ever a moment where she can handle anything, this is it. So he says, "I think… I think he thought he was following orders." Then he swallows. "My grandfather's orders."
"If there was ever any good in him, he would have said no."
At that, Zuko's fists clench and he presses them hard into the sand. Katara pretends not to notice.
"You don't say 'no' in the Fire Nation. Much less to the Firelord himself."
Then, Katara's tone is much gentler. Her shoulders soften a little, and she turns her head to face him fully. "You did. Twice." She almost allows herself to feel sympathy for him - almost. And when Zuko sees the guarded look in her otherwise compassionate eyes, his heart seems to seize up with guilt.
"Yeah. I did."
"So, what makes you better than Yon Rah?"
"I don't know. I'm not even sure that I am better." That's the honest truth, and really, Zuko would much rather not think about it. It hadn't been so long ago when Zuko would hardly bat an eyelash at the thought of hurting someone, let alone the reality of doing it.
"You had the opportunity to get revenge for what your father did to you. I overheard you and Aang talking about it a few days ago. You could have killed Ozai when you shot that lightning back at him. And you would have had every right to, but you didn't. You spared him."
If Katara had thought Zuko's fists couldn't get any tighter, she was wrong. His hands are nearly shaking now as he exhales, slowly, steadily.
"I didn't spare him," he says, jaw clenched. "I missed." For a little while, neither of them speak. Zuko's eyes are fixated on the campfire, and Katara's eyes are fixated on Zuko.
In a voice hardly audible over the crackling of flames, she finally asks, "So then… If I had made a different choice about Yon Rah… if I had decided to kill him… would you have let me?"
This time, Zuko is careful to look her in her eyes when he answers.
"I would have held your hand while you did it."
For some reason, Katara breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe it's because she knows that anyone else in her life would have stopped her, or at least attempted to. Aang, definitely. Sokka, too. Maybe even Toph would have intervened. They'd have all insisted that she'd regret it in the long run, and while they might have been right, it wasn't down to them to decide. But Zuko - as much as Katara loathes to admit it - understands.
So lowly, hoarsely, she says, "Good."
"But you made the right choice," Zuko adds with urgency, golden eyes piercing into her and making her shiver. "I'm not sure what it is that makes me better than Yon Rah, but the fact that you spared him is what makes you better than me." Then he shrugs, looking away with a shyness that betrays his fierce attitude. "Well, one of the things, anyway."
On a different day, under different circumstances, and with a different person, Katara might have smiled. It would have been a satisfied, girlish smile, that she'd have tried to hide behind her shoulder or with a curtain of hair. But tonight, she doesn't think the muscles in her mouth even know how to smile at all.. So instead, she lets a massive sigh drain from within her, resigning to lean against Zuko's shoulder. "I'm so tired." Her whisper almost blends in with the breeze.
Katara's body seems to wilt into him, limp and exhausted. Zuko is sturdy, hardly budging at all against her weight, and he's nearly scared to move. She feels delicate, almost, but he knows she isn't. After all - hardly a day ago, he watched her bring a man twice her size and five times her age to his knees without laying a finger on him (one of these days, he'll have to ask her how in the world she did that.) But anyone observing the two of them now - one of them sitting up as straight as he can manage, and the other, slumping gently into the curve of her companion's body - wouldn't have been able to guess. And for a moment he almost finds himself mistaking her exhaustion for a gesture of affection.
"You should try to get some sleep," he hollowly suggests.
"I don't know if I can."
"Just try."
"Will you stay up with me until then?" Ordinarily Katara would despise the way her weariness makes it sound like she's begging, but tonight, she can't be bothered to care. The thought of facing the night alone terrifies her, and she almost manages to feel lucky that the one person in the world who intimately understands the sort of grief that burdens her is the one person with her tonight.
Zuko offers a solemn nod, and something about the way Katara is leaning into him compels him to gather her in close, guiding her to lie in his arms across his lap. He convinces himself that he's only trying to comfort her and help fend off the cold, and she tells herself that the only thing she appreciates is his warmth. "I think," Zuko says, and Katara suspects she hears a note of levity in his mostly melancholy tone, "our moms would have been friends if they'd known each other."
"And if there'd been no war," she adds.
"Yeah."
"We could have been friends, too."
"Yeah. Maybe."
"I probably would have liked you."
At that, Zuko pauses. He glances downward to where her head rests in his lap, expecting to find that she's half-asleep and only talking nonsense. But her eyes are open. Open, and brimmed with tears. His breath catches in his throat, and when her hand reaches upward toward his scar, he almost stops her - almost grabs her wrist, almost flinches away. But he grits his teeth and holds his breath, letting her touch him for a second time.
The wetness in Katara's eyes pools over, finally, as she strokes her thumb across his cheekbone. Lower lip trembling, she says, "Missing her was easier when I hated you."