characters: aang, katara, zuko.
etc: i probably shouldn't start new things but oh well.
…
i. try to make it better instead of trying to destroy it
of learning the boundaries
…
Aang thinks this is beneficial.
Katara thinks that Aang would sculpt with the Avatar State, he would breathe air into the bones of his deceased people, coat them with earth and push water through their veins and light their eyes with fire and pluck their spirits from the Spirit World—and think it erasure for all the Fire Nation has done.
But she floats down into the lotus position, tossing her thicket of curls over her shoulder and glaring into the face of her enemy, whose widened eyes and primly shut lips lend an aura of shock and nervousness to the air.
Aang sits down perpendicular to the two of them. He presses his fingertips into the dirt in front of him and draws his hands closer together; the ground shifts and both Zuko and Katara yelp as their knees collide.
"This is a terrible idea," she bites out, her nails digging into the red fabric at her knees.
"I—" Zuko's protests die on his lips as Katara levels another potent glare at him, and he looks down, fringes of his hair shading his eyes.
"Mediating is important," Aang says in a bright voice, resting his hands on their knees with a childish smile, a smile that speaks to how he thinks the world should work, and Katara thinks that perhaps a failure on a small scale like this will wake him up to reality. "Maybe if you two learn more about one another—"
"What is there to learn about him that we don't already know?" She huffs, hair fluttering from in front of her face, and Zuko's head snaps up, those glittering bright eyes narrowed at her.
"You know nothing—"
"I know what's important—!"
"Not to me!"
"—and it's that you can't be trusted," she ends on a harsh stab of a whisper, but their eyes are still locked with one another in a deadly gaze. Aang coughs and then it is Zuko who looks away, shame filling the bright red of his cheeks.
"This is exactly what I mean," Aang says with a tone exasperated with lifetimes of conflict built behind it. "We used to do this in the Air Temples when there were disagreements. All you have to do is sit in this position and share one thing—one important thing—about yourself. I believe that if you learn about the things that are important to other people, you'll be able to understand them more, and, heh, you two really need to understand each other."
He scratches the back of his head and smiles at them, but it is Katara whom he softens. Zuko's eyes still rest in his lap, his cheeks stained red. "Okay, Aang," Katara relents in a soft, understanding voice, and it's so startling that she barely recognizes it herself; the roundness of Zuko's eyes shows he doesn't recognize it either.
His lips uncurl over his teeth in a smile that frightens her because she's never been that happy, never been pleased by little things such as reconciliation and friendship and possibilities. "Five minutes!" He adds in a bright voice, and then he is a tornado spinning away from the two of them.
…
notes: i like to think that if zuko and katara learned more about one another, instead of the roundabout way they gained their information, that there would have been no choice for zutara endgame. i'm thinking this may have a little over twenty installments from looking at a rough outline, but what do i even know. also a tiny thanks to shannon because her opinion matters a lot.
