Chapter 1: The First Recipe
As he set her down onto the bed, she wrapped her arms around his neck. "Thank you," her voice barely a whisper. She kissed him on the cheek, making his stomach flutter. He crept away to his own bed as she fell into a deep, endless sleep. If only he could have stopped her.
"Leave her," the woman told him. "She is just fine without you." But she wasn't. She was dead without him. Just like everything else was.
This life, this wondrous life that was created with a spell, it was all over. She wouldn't be there when he woke up in the morning anymore. She would be... gone. Gone with another, another who had been killed by him.
As Zuko crept under the covers, he stared at Katara's lifeless body. She had loved him like he had always wanted her to. But it wasn't real, or was it? Could he call a mythical spell true love? He didn't suppose so...
The weight of Zuko's crime weighed heavily on him. The witch had told him that he had to kill the girl's true love, Aang, before any spells would work. So he did. Burned him to a crisp. Sure, he really would have died eventually, but he didn't have another hundred years. Knowing the airbender, he would refreeze himself in ice. Then what could he do than search around the globe again for a big ice chunk?
He slept shakily, all the time thinking of the life he could have had without Katara and her meddling friends. He wouldn't have had to kill his friend, and he wouldn't have had to experience her death of sadness. Which brought him back to an itching question...
Why wasn't he good enough for her?
It was too late. He was too late. His nightmares began to take over his thoughts, seeing glimpses of her dead body in different areas: Floating in the river, tangled in swamp vines, lying in the fire nation factory. All of those near escapes she had informed him about, all of them with the Avatar and the swordfighting master. None with him.
The fire lord had tracked the swordfighting master also. He had to kill him. Exactly what he did. He gathered the blood of the man and brought it to the enchanted witch. He also brought the essence of his sister, Azula. For a very odd reason, he felt very upset about the loss of Sokka, but didn't care at all for his sister. Probably because of the fact that he was almost killed by her.
The sweat drenched the sheets. He cleared them off of the bed and set them on the floor. He strolled down to the edge of the water. "Spirit of the Moon, hear my cry."
As he wept, the spirit returned the favor with a tear of gold, the first recipe for a potion he had been begging for since the first sign of Katara's sickness.
He would use the tear to go back in time.