Title- Vigil
Author- Melon
Rating- K+
Summary- As long as she lived, Katara would never forget the hateful smirk on Azula's face as she cut Aang down.
A/N- I'm late, don't sue me. Also, it's incredibly short. Also, just a note that every KW oneshot from here on out is connected to something that came before. Day 5 (which will also be a little late, sorry) is a prelude to Day 2, Day 6 is (or at least can be considered to be) a follow-up to Day 3, and Day 7 will be a follow-up to this oneshot.
Day 4: Smirk
For weeks, she sat by his bedside as he hovered between life and death, watching him breathe and doing everything in her power to keep him tethered to the world.
Her days were filled with healing him and bathing him and spooning the thin vegetable broth the Duke proved surprisingly apt at making into his mouth, trying desperately to keep him clean and nourished and alive. She poured everything she had into his care, because she couldn't do anything less. Not for him. Not when she- oh spirits, she was pretty sure she loved him, and that would have been terrifying in and of itself but with him just lying there, so still and just barely clinging to the skin of the world...
It was slowly killing her. She was killing herself trying to bring him back from the edge. But the truth was that she probably didn't technically need to stay awake almost all night, every night, guarding his bedside. She did it anyway. Partly it was for Aang, because she couldn't stand the thought of him needing something or even- dare she hope for it?- waking up, and finding her not there. But it was also very much for herself. She needed to sleep as little as possible and be completely exhausted- too exhausted to dream- when she did sleep. She was afraid of what she would see whenever she dozed off.
As long as she lived, Katara would never forget the hateful smirk on Azula's face as she cut Aang down. She saw it flashing behind her eyelids every time she so much as blinked, saw the flash and his fall and those ruby-painted lips twisted up in a vicious smirk that was almost more like a snarl, and it was burning her hollow from the inside out.
Katara was not a person who hated easily. She had been made to love, and she could only remember hating one man before in her entire life and that was the black-eyed soldier who had killed her mother. Maybe Fire Lord Ozai, at a stretch, but he was such a distant abstract concept that she couldn't put a face to, and it was hard to summon up real hatred for someone she wouldn't have recognized if she'd passed him on the street. But her mother's killer had company now.
She hated Azula. Hated her. She had shot down the Avatar; when everyone else had been struck dumb and standing in awe of the radiant beauty of the manifest spirit of the world in the form of a young boy, Azula had taken the opportunity and attacked with no remorse. That in and of itself felt like some kind of sacrilege. But worse, to Katara, was that Azula had nearly killed (no, she had killed) Aang, and it was only by the grace of a miracle that she had gotten him back. Sometimes, in the dark and selfish parts of her heart, Katara was forced to acknowledge that if she had been forced to choose between restoring the Avatar Spirit, saving it for a new incarnation, and bringing Aang back to her, she would have chosen Aang. Maybe that would have doomed the world, she didn't know, but she needed him with her. It was lucky for everyone that she hadn't had to make such a horrible choice, because Aang and the potent spirit that slumbered within him, all bound up to his own soul, were both restored to life.
But the knowledge that Aang was alright (and spirits help her, he would be!) did nothing to temper the rage and disgust she felt every time she thought of Azula- and her idiot of a brother too. It didn't stop the nightmares that had Katara waking up screaming and in a cold sweat, that vicious little smirk ingrained on the back of her eyelids in a flash of blue.