Title: Twilight's Edge
Author: Yumeko Dragonfly
Summary: An innocent training session goes horribly wrong for Zuko
Warnings: Post-TBR, blood, angst
Disclaimer: The TV show "Avatar - The Last Airbender" does not belong to me, nor do its characters or anything related to the show. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans.
Part: 3/9

A/N: Wow - I'm still incredibly amazed by all the reviews and the sheer amount of attention this story is getting. So, even though we're just starting the third round with this, I want to thank you all for the support you have given me so far. I'm really looking forward to further reviews from you guys.
So, there's a huge "THANK YOU" just for you.
Yeah, that's right. Specifically YOU.



Twilight's Edge

Chapter 3: Wounds

She was floating.

Suspended in a world without gravity Katara floated, eyes closed. Something softened all the sound trying to reach her ears. The world was blue and pleasantly cool and far removed from the troubles of her life. Still they would not let her go and all too soon she became aware of her surroundings again. She had given herself to the illusion of not being there anymore. But she was. This was nothing she could ever escape from.

She had wounded him.

Katara blinked once, surprised to find tears gathering in her blue eyes. It was not right. She would not cry for him.

Blood.

She had not been aiming for his face specifically. She had not been aiming at all. She had not been thinking at all.

He had attacked her father. They had been fighting. Dealing cruel blows. Bare fists and a strange gleam in their eyes.

She had had no time to think it through.

Katara raised her hand out of the water and touched her cheek. It was wet and she was glad that there was no way to tell if those were tears or plain water. She would not cry for him.

What would have happened if her attack hat hit just a little lower? Katara touched her neck. She could have killed him. Maybe she had done something worse than killing him. All that blood dripping from between his fingers. She had only caught a glimpse of his face when her father gently pried his hands away. It had been a horrible sight and it haunted her whenever she closed her eyes now.

She kept them open, fixed on the bright blue sky.

She would not cry for him.

Would she have reacted any differently if he had been sparring with anyone but her father? Probably. Shameful as it was, but that was her reason; her father. Not that there was any way to truly justify her actions. She could only try to explain. It had been because of her father that she had lashed out.

Having lost her mother already, the fear of losing him had gripped her heart like a vile claw. She had been separated from him for such a long time, her family torn apart by the Fire Nation. Over and over Katara had gotten her father back, only to have him leave or be taken shortly after that. She was too happy when Sokka had freed him this time, and would never have been able to stand losing him once again.

Sokka and… him.

He had helped.

He, crown prince of this vicious nation, firebender, nightmare, monster, just as lost as she was herself. Traitor. Victim. She was no longer sure where to place him, what to call him. The world had been perfectly black and white for such a long time, but now she found herself facing shades of grey she did not want to see. In blind panic, she had lashed out and wounded him.

What was she supposed to do now?

Wetness trickled down her face and glided into the lake in which Katara floating, stretched out on her back and facing a peaceful sky that would give no answers.


Being blind was not a pleasant sensation. That was the first realization that hit Zuko after he had calmed enough to form coherent thoughts other than "Agni I'm blind help me save me do something I don't want to be blind" and more of the same in an endless stream. He was just glad that he had never developed the tendency to share his private thoughts, or else this would have been embarrassing on top of horrifying.

Carefully Zuko lifted a hand and reached for his face, missing it by several inches. So much for coordination when you were unable to see. With more time than he would have considered appropriate he finally located his own face in the eerie darkness.

Zuko could feel smooth skin, then the sudden change to rough scar tissue. He almost pulled back his hand in disgust, but forced himself to go on. The result would have been a straight poke in the eye, he guessed, if he hadn't felt the rough texture of his blindfold first.

Was it alright to call it a blindfold even if it's intent was clearly not to blindfold him? He should probably stick to calling it a bandage. No need to boggle his mind with further complications.

Zuko's fingers slipped underneath the bandage and hesitated.

Hakoda had told him not to take the cloth off under any circumstances, for he feared that the strain to see could do more harm than good. Still. He did remember making out vague shapes, nothing more than differently coloured blotches, when the blood had been cleaned away. Though telling Hakoda that had probably not improved the situation at all.

Slowly Zuko lowered his hand and sighed. He would obey Hakoda's command. The man was a warrior after all and had sure seen many injuries. Of course, he knew what to do. If anyone could help him restore his sight perfectly, it was Hakoda.

Well, and his daughter, Zuko supposed. But she was out of question in this matter. She would never save something as insignificant as his eyes. Or him in generel, for that matter. The firebender's hands curled into fists. What had he done this time? Was sparring now some crime against humanity that gave her the right to go ahead and shred his face to pieces? If Hakoda could find no way to heal him…

He would never see the sun rise again.

He would never see that Avatar kid bend fire, making him proud although he would never admit it.

He would never see the forgiving look in other people's eyes he yearned for so much.

He would never see again.

Zuko rolled onto his side and curled in on himself.

Agni. The pain…


Why had she run away? Katara tried to find an answer within herself but faced a multitude of options, most of them not remotely reasonable. To run had somehow been her first instinct when she glimpsed the injury she had inflicted.

Was she afraid to face the others after what she had done? No… it could not be that. Aang would be understanding, she was sure of that. He would never judge her too harshly, would know that she had not thought things through when she acted. Of course, he would never truly side with her, and that was a good thing. Her side was the wrong one to take currently.

Or was it?

When had it been decided that Zuko was the victim here? But she knew the answer already and didn't need to ask. It had been decided the moment she had attacked him. Maybe even before that. Maybe he had made himself the victim willingly by joining them. That did not mean, however, that he deserved to be treated as such. He had been at her mercy this whole time.

Thinking back on the way he never fought back she felt like she had been kicking a puppy the whole time. A puppy that had done something utterly wrong and was sincerely sorry. But was a wolf not a wolf, pup or grown up all the same?

She was going in circles.

Back to the reason for running away. This would all take a turn for the better once she had figured it out. Somehow. It had to. It was the only thing she could cling to now.

Aang was not the reason she had run.

Sokka, maybe? He had grown that much closer to Zuko ever since their adventure to the Boiling Rock. It did not stop him from pestering the firebender all the time, but even the rudest remarks had gained a somewhat peaceful notion, somewhat affectionate even. It was the bickering of a sibling, and although she had to admit that it disturbed her, she doubted Sokka would actively choose Zuko over her. One adventure did not make up for a lifetime.

She sure was not afraid of Suki's judgement. She liked the Kyoshi warrior, true, but she had only recently joined their group along with Hakoda, so her opinion did not matter much yet, and Katara could stand her disapproval.

The others – Toph, Teo, Haru and the Duke – had not been present, so it was natural to be less worried about their reactions. Still, could it have been fear of what they would think of her? Katara let their faces pass before her inner eye and furrowed her brows. Clearly not.

Which left Hakoda. No. He was her father and he was the best father in the world, he would never be angry or disappointed because of this. They had talked right after it happened, after all, and he knew what had driven Katara. The slight possibility remained, of course, that seeing the wound could have changed his mind about the incident. Her father had never been truly angry with her before and the prospect truly scared her. He was the one adult she needed these days, he was the only family Sokka and she had left. They had lost him too many times already. The thought of losing him emotionally rather than physically this time settled around her heart and started to squeeze violently. She could just picture her father's eyes, filled with disgust, anger, disappointment, fear because she was so violent, so cruel. And then those eyes changed and turned golden.

She nearly slipped underneath the surface as her first sob escaped. Why, oh why had she gone so wrong?


Aang sat on the shore of the lake and watched Katara cry. He felt uncomfortable, as though he was intruding on a very private moment. And yet he could not leave, for his heart reached out to Katara and wanted to offer comfort. He was torn between both instincts. His heart, ever in love with this wonderful girl, ached.

Gently he scratched Momo's head. He was currently not giving much thought to Zuko, which was not out of a lack of care, but rather the knowledge that he was in best hands. Hakoda, Sokka and Suki would tend to his wounds and he would be as fine as possible when Katara was in a state of mind again in which she could use her healing powers.

And she would.

Aang was convinced of that. She was a gentle spirit and would not let anyone suffer unnecessarily, not even Zuko. It might take some persuading on his part to get her on the right track, but she would come around.

She was Katara, after all. One misplaced step would not change that. Aang knew that deep within her heart the waterbender knew right from wrong in this situation. Admitting it to herself would be hard, but she had the strength of character to come around on the right side of this.

And so he called out to her with a cheerful voice when her sobs had finally died down, acting as though he had just stumbled upon her hiding place.


Toph stood in the open doorway to his bedroom and watched him, as much as one could call what she was doing "watching". But what else was it, really? She could tell he was curled up in bed like a child, could feel him shivering, could smell his fear. Oh yes, being blind was scaring the shit out of the firebender, she could tell. What did it feel like, being able to see and then not all of a sudden?

They had said he had been able to make out shapes, but since they had tied something over his eyes it did not really matter. He could not see a thing now, nothing else mattered.

He was like her now.

Only… he was not.

Toph frowned and worried her lower lip between her teeth. How could their situations be so similar and yet so different? She was an earthbender, she could use her abilities to gain a sense of the world, thus enabling her to detect certain things better than others could. She had lived with her blindness for all her life and she took more pride in it than seeing it as a hindrance. She was the Blind Bandit, the best earthbender in the world, the only metalbender.

Zuko, naturally, would not make much of a difference between losing his sight or, say, an arm. It threw him off balance, it made him less effective, he missed it. He had truly lost something important.

Slowly Toph reached upwards, until her hand covered one of her unseeing eyes. For him, such a gesture used to have made a difference. She could only feel the warmth of her own skin. There was no change in the absolute darkness she lived in.

Zuko still had not realized she was there. He could not see her and had no way to tell by other signs that she was there.

They were too different. She could never help him.

Toph nodded to herself, determined that this was sufficient. She had considered helping him, but there was just no use. No way.

Not yet.


It was horrible.

Zuko had the feeling that he was being watched closely, but without his sight, there was no way to tell if someone was there. The feeling just tingled along his spine, clenched around his heart, confused him and scared him.

Was someone there? Or was he alone… completely and utterly alone, no help close by should he need it? Maybe he was just drifting towards paranoia.

Would they abandon him, now that he had become useless, powerless? He could not teach the Avatar any longer. He could not even assist with the most mundane tasks Katara would be able to think of. He would not even be able to glare back at her. Or could one glare when blind? Zuko did not think so.

Well, truth be told, he could not think very much at all. The searing pain from his face kept him from doing much of it. Each thought pounded through his skull like an explosion.

The darkness was so horribly complete. Had he already lost his sight for good or was it the blindfold? Again, he was tempted to test it by tearing the cloth off his face. But was it worth the risk?

There! Had there not been a shuffle somewhere close by? Zuko fought to sit up and winced, causing every nerve in his face to explode with pain.

"Hello? Is somebody there? … Hakoda? …. Sokka? … … … anybody…?"

There was no answer.


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