PART I
Making sure there was no one around who could see him, Zuko quickly lifted up his mask to scratch the itch that had been plaguing his nose for the past 15 minutes. His Blue Spirit disguise could feel extremely uncomfortable sometimes.
As soon as he was able to readjust his identity, he took off again, hopping from rooftop to rooftop of the small Earth Kingdom town. It had started out as an attempt to get rid of his boredom and insomnia, but then he began doing it nightly. It helped him blow off steam and keep in shape since he couldn't get away with much training during the day without worrying that someone might discover and start questioning him. And he liked sneaking about the city night after night, searching for and quelling any signs of danger. Though he'd never admit it, it made him feel more like a hero of some sort, instead of just a thief and a traitor.
He stopped to listen for any kind of quarreling or rustling amongst the streets, but heard none. The city was as quiet as death, so he set his sights on the fastest route he knew to the hospital and made off in that direction. Every now and again he liked to check up on the patients there whenever things got slow in the streets. Even though there was nothing that he could really do for them, it made him feel good to think that they were safer under his watchful eye.
As he propelled himself on top of the infirmary's roof, he cracked open the latch that led into the building's venting system and climbed into the metal tunnel. Through the ceiling vents, he could visit each room of the hospital and look to see that each patient remained safe. After checking on a couple of his regulars- mainly the elderly and some sick pregnant women- he stopped above the large room that was to be considered the children's ward. Again, no one seemed in serious danger or dire need of assistance, and for a second Zuko felt slightly disappointed that he wasn't needed, but quickly scolded himself for thinking such a thing as hoping for innocent people to be in trouble.
He took one last look over the sleeping children, disliking the fact that they were there in the first place, but there was something else that was unusual about the hospital that night.
Where the fuck are all the doctors?
Regardless of their absence, Zuko saw no need to stick around any longer and began making the round trip through the vents back up to the roof so he could go home and slide into bed. He crawled carefully and made as little sound as possible with each movement, but stopped when he heard some muffled words coming from the room below him. He slinked up to where the vent cracked opened so that he could gaze into the room and make out what they were saying.
The room appeared to be mostly empty except for three people: two of them, nurses perhaps, stood quietly beside the bed-stricken form of the third, whispering so as not to bring alarm.
"We don't have the space for her here. They think she may be contagious and don't want to put her in a room with any of the other patients. We just can't accommodate her any longer."
"Well we can't just throw her out into the street, she'll die."
"Some of the city's officers are coming in the morning to take her away. They're going to try and find a family that will take her in."
"They won't have much luck."
There was a heavy sigh. "I know."
Zuko was becoming desperate to try and see the condition of the girl who rested in the bed below. Her illness must have been dire if the infirmary was actually throwing her out for being too sick. His limbs began to grow sore from his awkward position in the vent, and he considered leaving and returning the next day, but as soon as he moved to go, so did the two nurses. As the door closed softly behind them, Zuko dropped himself down into the abandoned room and slowly approached the patient.
She was clearly unconscious, or else she would have made some movement against him, and her unresponsiveness gave him the confidence to be able to stand over her without the fear of getting caught. But his assurance quickly turned into shock as he could just barely recognize the woman below him.
The sweat streaked across her brow made her thick brown hair stick to the sides of her face and concealed the structure outline of her jaw and cheekbones. There were large dark bruises covering her closed eyes that made it seem as though she couldn't open them even if she wanted to. Her breathing was light and shallow, but she still appeared to be gasping for air that she didn't know how to reach, and the moon shining in through the ceiling skylights gave her skin an unusually pale glow. Her clothing and the blue pendant around her neck were perhaps the only things confirming her to be who he thought she was, and although he considered her one of his deepest enemies, he couldn't help feeling that not even she deserved to suffer from such a condition.
She's fucking dying and their just gonna throw her away?
He didn't like the idea of giving up on someone who so clearly needed help, regardless of who that person was, and he could already feel himself turning the situation into one that played in his favor- both their favors, come to think of it. Clearly, the Avatar was not accompanying his traveling companion at the moment, but from numerous experiences Zuko already knew that he'd be coming for her eventually and wouldn't give up until he found her. She was a piece of bait practically begging to be taken, and it wasn't like she had many more appealing options. If he could manage to bring her back to his apartment, he could prevent her from being thrown out onto the street and also give himself some much-needed leverage over the Avatar when he finally came for her.
It was only a few blocks back to his apartment; she could handle it couldn't she? He tried carefully sliding his arms underneath her back and knees and lifting her slightly to test out how much movement she could take, but it wasn't long before she started shivering rapidly. He sighed, there was no way he was going to be able to carry her through the vents. He didn't have much of a choice; he was going to have to bring her out through the front door or one of the windows if he could find one that actually opened.
He tried lifting her once again and her bare legs cringed from the sudden lack of warmth. Though her robe was very loose and was meant to flow off her body, the amount of sweat that her body was emitting made it cling to her skin and outline all of her features. For his sake and for hers, he managed to wrap one of her blankets tightly around her like and cocoon, thus keeping her warm and saving him from her distracting body. Without wasting any more time, he held her close to his body and moved quickly towards the door and out into the hallway, keeping low out of fear that someone might walk by.
In and out. She kept drifting in and out. She was on fire one second, then chilled to the bone the next. It was like she was somehow being lifted up and down at the same exact time and every instant she attempted to make sense of something, her mind became even more weak and feeble. She couldn't even trust the feelings of her in conscious out of fact that they could have just been illusions formed by her out conscious.
She was being carried from what instincts were telling her, but not even that was clear. All she knew was that she wanted it to stop. She wanted to be put down, but she lacked the capabilities to communicate it. And she hated it. She never again wanted to feel so useless and frail, but by the time she was able to recognize her frustration, it was wiped away and forgotten to make room for more useless thoughts, as if she could only think or feel one thing at a time.
She didn't feel alive. She felt current, like she was there, but not alive. Maybe she wasn't alive. Maybe that's what death feels like: presence without actually being present.
Perhaps it wasn't worth the effort.
As Zuko laid her down on the extra cot he set up in his living room, she looked almost worse than she had at the hospital. He assumed that he was doing her a favor by taking her in, but it never occurred to him that she could end up dying faster in his care than she would had she been left out on her own. As he watched her lay helplessly on the cot, he prayed that she'd start looking better with some rest. Dead bait didn't make good bait. He scrounged up all the extra blankets and pillows he could find and turned her cot into the most comfortable bed he could manage.
But perhaps it really wasn't worth the effort. She required constant attention and care. He even debated bringing her back to the hospital; she might have been safer in their hands after all, but the thought vanished immediately after he felt something grab onto his hand.
Next to him, Katara had made the first voluntary movement he'd seen her make all night as she reached out and wrapped her grip around his pointer finger. Whether it was a conscious movement or not, he didn't know, but after she had done it, he couldn't find it in himself to give up on her immediately after he had just criticized the hospital for doing just that. Her fingers seemed so small and delicate when wrapped feebly around his own. He sighed.
You're going to be a lot of work aren't you?
He sat down next to her bed and rubbed her hand in his as she continued to shake timidly in between the blankets. He began to question how she ended up in her condition in the first place. He always imagined the Avatar being much more responsible for his friends. Had the girl been his accomplice, Zuko would have never allowed her to wind up in such a state. It almost made him angry just thinking about it. She may have been his foe, but even Zuko was willing to admit that he didn't want to see the girl die. At least not like this.
He tended to her as best he could. He took to wiping her forehead constantly with a hot rag as it seemed to calm her whenever she took off into one of her shivering episodes. Occasionally he tried to get her to drink some tea, but the task often proved to be difficult considering she had no idea she was supposed to swallow. But it got better with time. Eventually he had studied her body well enough to be able to tell when she needed what and how to get her to eat and drink when she needed to. He was also able to create a makeshift water sac that he heated and placed underneath the small of her back, which she seemed to appreciate. And all the while he kept on his Blue Spirit mask, mainly to avoid the chance of her waking up and identifying him. All-in-all it was better that she not recognize who he really was. He didn't want to jeopardize her health further by scaring her into a deeper coma if she ever found out that she was supposed to be a prisoner instead of a patient.
Katara possessed no knowledge of time. She couldn't tell if two hours or two weeks had passed since she'd been like this, but there were certain things that she was beginning to pick up on every now and then. She didn't know where she was, but she started to faintly remember when they carried her to the hospital and began diagnosing her, although something about her body was letting her know that she was no longer there- she was somewhere safer, and with somebody- a man, she felt.
As her senses slowly started coming back to her, she could feel contact and touch things. She could feel it when her brow was gently wiped and when a heat radiated from underneath her waist, warming her spine. Whoever her caregiver was, she appreciated him more than she thought herself capable of. Whoever he was, his hands were soft, though his knuckles were rough. Often at night, when she would continue to shake violently, he somehow always managed to heat her skin and calm her body in the places where he pressed his hands. And eventually, when her sense of smell began to return to her, she could tell whenever he was in the room since he gave off an aroma that reminded her of a mix between pine needles and rain water.
Sometimes it reminded her of Zuko.
As her senses gradually returned, she feared that perhaps her hearing never would since she could never hear her caregiver talk to her, or anyone for that matter. But she dismissed the thought after figuring out that she could make out sounds in the background- like when the teapot started whistling, or what the weather was like outside the open window. Maybe her caregiver was just mute.
She couldn't entirely see anything yet, but images would come to her in blurry flashes and anytime her caregiver sat next to her, his face always came across as blue for some reason she couldn't explain. She could stir and shuffle a little, but her limbs were still very weak and larger movements tended to put her in pain. Perhaps the only thing she couldn't actually do yet was speak. But she would get there.
AN: This story is just gonna be a short miniseries that I'm writing on the side. I'm working out the outline, but I doubt it's gonna be more than 3-5 chapters, which I'll make sure to update quickly. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading.