When she draws her knives there is a sleek, metallic slick. The sound is controlled, calculated, and condemning, especially when dark eyes rise and settle on their target without a trace of mercy. He gulps, even though the gaze is not directed towards him, and tries not to remember the explosion of foaming white water and bright blue when he had fought beside another. He tries not to think about how he prefers it.
Her eyes watch him carefully and he knows she has sensed it. Her instincts are as sharp as her razors and she lounges in her chair, twirling a knife between long pale fingers, watching him.
"You wish you could have stayed longer."
He nods, knowing better than to argue, and approaches her seat. Her expression remains stoic as he lowers himself down beside her on the cushion and takes her free hand in his. He rests his fingers on the skin of her wrist and feels her slow pulse. The watertribe men and women have quick pulses, thrumming and pumping warm blood to stave off the effects of the cold. He knows because they had told him during the visit he just returned from. Sokka had offered his wrist and then Katara hers. Zuko wishes he had only imagined the small jump of his own pulse a second after his fingers settled on Katara's skin and wishes he hadn't had the good sense to drop her hand a second later.
"Next time I'll come with you," Mai says.
Her eyes settle on his and Zuko can't help but think that it's for the best.
He pretends he doesn't notice the way Katara's eyes linger on their linked hands clothed in red gloves. The color looks garish on the blue cloth of the table but Mai's hand is strong and the other half of him doesn't want to let go.
"Thank you," he mutters when Katara pours them both tea.
There is a pause before she gives him back a quiet, "You're welcome."
She leaves the table early that night and Sokka follows soon after, smile forced and eyes sliding over the faces of the visitors as if he isn't really seeing them or at least as though he's trying not to.
Zuko and Mai leave the next day, cutting their trip one week short.
He wakes to the skin of his scar prickling sharply and tingling like it was conducting a blue current of sizzling searing electricity through his blood again. He gasps and chokes with fingernails scrabbling at the ridged scar at the hollow where chest met stomach. Shallow gouges replace the phantom pain with tangible hurt, and he tries to ignore the feeling of his own skin collecting under his nails. After a moment the sensation fades into the recesses of his consciousness, lingering there to strike again another night. He sags back into the sweat soaked silk sheets, staring at he ceiling. After a moment of ragged breathing he rolls over and rests his feet on the cold tile floor for a instant before going to his study.
He sits behind the massive wooden desk that is still too big for him and fishes for his quill in the drawers that are slowly becoming paper scrap and fire flake filled messes under his reign. After a moment he finds the quill and the thin tip quakes in his hand while he tries to get a good grip on it.
Katara,
I'm so sorry. I'm glad you're ok.
Zuko
He looks the spidery letters, wavering and messy from an unsteady hand, and with a strange ache in the skin of the scar he crumples the paper. Flames lick cherry red up from his palm and the golden tips dance triumphantly as the parchment shrivels and curls in on itself in black ribbons. A moment of sharp crackling with a breath of bitter smoke later and he is left with a handful of grey ash and a reminder of how quickly and easily things burn. He stares at the sooty mess sunken into the lines of his palms for a instant, wonders what could have been, and tips it into the waste bin, smearing what is left of the blackness onto his bed robes. He stumbles back to his room wondering why he feels drunk if he hadn't drank anything at all and dismisses it all as a simple nightmare.
The next morning Mai asks him why he looks so tired. He hadn't been able to go back to sleep. He'd been too busy imagining unwritten letters by the light of the moon.
This was some practice for writing in first person! I don't think I'll continue this because I'm horrible and I like bittersweet endings.