"I guess I'm not the only one who comes here."
She started at the sound of his voice but turned back to the horizon without saying anything. She didn't have anything kind to say to him after that awful night. If she hadn't been submerged in the calm of this place she would have been able to muster up something polite to say, but since he'd caught her off guard she decided silence was the best she could give him.
He sat next to her on the cliffside, letting his feet dangle off the edge next to hers and continued to just let the whispers of the wind and the crash of the waves speak for them as they watched the sun that promised to sink into the ocean.
She loved this place. There was a perfect balance between sea and wind, no room for death or destruction. But she guessed that this would probably change with his presence. The bitter thought intruded before she could stop herself.
"This seems to be the only place I can think clearly," he said, finally breaking the silence, "I don't know how, but the wind, it feels like, almost like-"
"—he's speaking to you." She surprised both of them by finishing his sentence. It felt natural and easy to talk to him. She decided to resent him for it.
"Yeah," he said with a sad smile.
Yes, the wind's playful breezes sounded like his sincere laugh and when it whipped through her hair and around her body, it almost felt like he was holding her again. But she had no intention of confiding any of this in Zuko, of all people.
"Please don't go," he said when she started to rise.
"Why?" she demanded unkindly, but stopped anyway, focusing on the way the sun was now bleeding crimson into the azure sky and sea. It looked like the world was burning and its blazon beauty only made her angrier.
"Katara," he paused and seemed to struggle for words, "Are you alright?"
"Considering what just happened, there would be something terribly wrong with me if I was." This was exactly why she didn't want to speak with him. She knew she was being unfair, but now that she'd started she couldn't stop.
"Of course, you're right," he said embarrassed and hurt, "I just, I hate seeing you like this. I want to help."
She sighed in frustration. "Do you really want to do this right now?"
"Please, if there's something I can do, tell me."
She rolled her eyes and began to release some of the anger she'd bottled for three days. "You could start by finding out that monster's weakness and killing her. Or better yet," she said with cruel enthusiasm, "you could go back in time and NOT knock me unconscious so I'm not able to save the best person I've ever met."
It felt so good to rail on him. For the first time since she learned of Aang's death, she felt alive. But she knew she was hurting him so she tried to end it by walking away. Unfortunately, he stood and tried again, refusing to let her leave that easily.
"It was what he wanted. All he cared about was making sure you were safe."
He was trying to make her understand, but she didn't want to. She just wanted to continue blaming him because it was easy to once again associate his face with the death of the people she loved. And since he wouldn't leave her alone, she decided to let this new sense of life grow within her by attacking him.
She rounded on him. "It wasn't your decision to make!" she jabbed his chest enough to make him back away, "You should have given me the choice instead of betraying me that way! Instead of betraying him that way!"
"You think I wanted Aang to die? Trust me, Katara, if there was anything I could do to change that moment, I would!" his calm demeanor had finally broken and he was fighting back tears.
"Well you can't!" she shouted through her own tears, pounding a faltering fist against his chest, "And now we're here and he's not!" She pounded another fist against his chest, left it there and stared at it, shaking with gritted teeth. "It should have been me." She hit him again, harder this time, terrified by the fact that she had almost said 'you' and even more disgusted that she almost believed it. With everything she had, she shouted again, "It should have been me!"
She hit him again and again, wishing he would shove her back, bend fire at her; just do something, anything to heighten the burning that dulled with each strike she used to feed it. She wanted to live, she wanted to die, she wanted to give up in every way she could but she just kept hitting him, no force behind her blows and no hope for a way to stop.
And then suddenly, for the first time in three days, she felt not just alive, but safe.
She expected and hoped for a fight when he grabbed her wrists to stop her senseless pounding, ready for him to finally make the switch from vulnerable to dangerous. She couldn't wait to try escaping his fire and unleash her gathered tempest against him, but the only heat she felt came from his arms around her and the sudden warmth of his body against hers. Her body reacted faster than her mind and she immediately released her storm of violence through tears and held onto him as if everything depended on it.
"Katara, I'm so sorry," he whispered as he cried with her, holding her tightly against his chest.
She had only expected to elicit hostility and violence from him, but his arms had come around her swift and strong and warm. Once calm finally drifted through her, she reveled in the security and comfort of his embrace. His skin was warm against hers and she imagined his heartbeat as a small, beautiful flame trying to gently spread its life into her and she gladly welcomed it.
So she matched her breathing to his, hoping to gather as much light from him as possible when a sudden pull seized her, telling her that there was more if she was willing to reach for it. Trying to ignore it, she focused once again on the increasing warmth of his heartbeat but this only led to the pull grasping her again and defining itself as an insistence to reach for him like waves seek the moon.
She drew back to look up at him and hesitantly whispered his name, wondering how she could sound both innocent and seductive at the same time. She decided not to care and instead lost herself in this overwhelming force that told her that amber was the most beautiful eye color she had ever seen and that she should never let the warmth of his hands leave her body.
Following the instinct of this pull, she wondered if her lips would burn if they were to touch his.
The wind angrily roared between them and through her hair, screaming of right and wrong in one deafening burst. Her body froze as she realized what she was about to do. Three days ago, she never would have dreamed of closing this gap between them. A death was what it had taken to tempt that possibility; the death of the only person she had thought could make her feel the way she did in this instant. There was no way she could take that step forward so soon towards the person she had blamed for Aang's death. So she immediately took a step back, knowing that she decreed an irrevocable distance between them with this single step.
It didn't matter if it was just her imagination or if Aang really did speak through the air; one gust was enough to wake her from the haze and drench her in a flood of shame and self-loathing. So without another word, she turned her back to the burning sunset, ran away from her friend, and tried to forget that she'd felt fire and found it beautiful.