OOO

Day 4: Rue

(v. bitterly regret)

Summary: Katara was probably the best thing that had ever happened to Zuko. But he was a screw up, and he naturally found a way to thoroughly ruin a very good thing.

OOO

Zuko knew he was screwed up. His father thought so, his sister thought so, and he later learned to agree with them.

It wasn't just the scar on his face, although that certainly had a lot to do with it — "You look like a fucking mutant, you know that?" Azula always told him. She always reminded him about it as if she was afraid he'd forget it. But it was hard to get over something that was literally written across half his face. He saw the people in the street wince and look away. He was very well aware that he looked disgusting.

But his father was in jail and thought he was an embarrassment. His sister was in a psych ward and thought he was a failure. The only people who ever really cared about him — his mother, Lu Ten — were dead and long gone. His Uncle tried to help, but it was way too late for the old man's assurances. Zuko was beyond help, and it seemed at times there was nothing about him that anyone found redeeming.

High school had certainly been an eye opening experience. It was like he was a plague — people were afraid to touch him, sit next to him, look at him, or even have a locker next to him. Burn Victim. That's what they called him. If only they knew…

It took him until junior year before he met Aang — a transfer student, someone who saw the good in everyone and didn't have a pessimistic bone in his body. They had nearly nothing in common and at times Zuko wondered why on Earth he took this person's friendship, but Aang carried him through college and gave him some semblance of normalcy. Like he was just a regular guy with friends that he could do things with.

But friends were just a small part of life. Any normal straight guy like himself wondered about the possibility of a girl — someone who liked him and loved him at the same time. Someone he could kiss and touch one moment and comfortably talk to the next. Someone special. Someone that mattered more than everyone else.

Of course, girls were more likely to spit at his feet or cringe at his face than to even bother talking to him. It wasn't like he had much to offer anyone anyway.

Toph — Aang's girlfriend and the only female with the stomach to spend extended periods of time with him — often said he was just being self-deprecating for the sake of being annoying.

"You thinking that you're incapable of affection and unworthy of love sounds like a load of shit to me," she told him once. "Anyone that looks at you and thinks you're less than human is a shallow jerk and they're not worth your time anyway."

She was always abrasive, but Aang more or less agreed with her. "There's someone out there for you," Aang promised him. "But it's not the sort of thing that just falls in your lap. Give it time. Someone will come, and they'll see all the good in you that I see."

For the entirety of high school and most of college, it seemed like that was never going to come true.

But then he met Katara.

She was roommates with Toph and was in the same philosophy class as Aang. He'd met her when Aang and Toph had dragged him out of his room and begged him to please socialize and get out that dark room just once. The minute Zuko laid his eyes on her, he knew he was a goner.

Initially, it was fine. They'd only hung out through Aang and Toph a couple of times and he didn't know her well. It was easy to acknowledge the fact that she was gorgeous and never let it get past that point. There was no chance in hell for anything more than his silent musings, and he quickly shoved her into the same small category he shoved Toph — strictly platonic friends. She was too pretty, too nice, too sweet. Another guy would snatch her up in a second and he'd be left where he always was.

But coffee dates, movies, and group study sessions only managed to last for a couple of weeks before Katara had quietly asked him in the library one evening if he was any good at economics.

After replying that he was somewhat decent, she smiled, laced her hands together, and tucked them under her chin. "Do you think you could help me pass this intro class? I'm really horrible with all these graphs and formulas, and I need to do well in this elective."

It would have been so easy for Zuko to say no. There were a breadth of excuses — he was too busy, he wasn't comfortable tutoring — but he quickly learned that he couldn't come up with a way to say no to her.

Separating his attraction for her and his friendship with her grew increasingly more difficult the more time he spent with her. It wasn't just her looks anymore. She was intelligent, engaging, and funny — able to get a laugh out of him easily, something that took Aang weeks. She cared passionately about things — her dreams of her medical career were particularly inspiring — and her relationship with her family — her brother, her father, her grandmother — was positively endearing. It was the kind of endearing family Zuko wished he had, and he could listen to Katara talk about her family for hours.

Katara walked with him to class, Katara texted him every day, Katara baked for him as a thank you for all of the tutoring, and Katara was honestly so happy and thrilled to have him as a friend. And wasn't that a strange feeling.

It was why he didn't push her off when she finally kissed him. Zuko was walking Katara back to her dorm after a late night spent in the library and she had pulled him into one without any warning. Zuko should have pushed her away — told her he didn't feel the same, told her it was too soon, hell maybe told her the truth and just admitted that he was a wreck and she deserved someone better — but kissing her felt so damn nice. Zuko couldn't remember the last time he'd ever felt so complete and...cared for.

Dating her was seamless. It never felt any different from all the private time they'd spent together before. The only difference were long talks at night, hot kisses in his bed, fervent touches in her room, whispered endearments, linked hands, and so much warmth and happiness. Katara always pulled him into all the new bistros and coffee shops she discovered for impromptu dates, and Zuko always surprised her with presents when she got good grades on her econ tests or landed a job. She napped in his lap when he was up late studying, and he could never fall asleep unless he had his arms wrapped tightly around her, pressing kisses against her temples and across her cheeks.

Things were glorious for a month, and the sources of his problems were never discussed.

Zuko wondered if Aang and Toph had told Katara something, because as much as she went on about her own family, she said not one word about his. She had met his Uncle and spoke about how charming he was, but the normal questions — where are your parents? Do you have any siblings? — were never touched. His friend circle was horribly limited, but Katara never asked about it. There were days when he couldn't see her — when he desperately needed to be alone — and she understood without a protest.

And his scar...it was like it wasn't there.

That was what bothered him the most. She looked him straight in the eyes and seemed to like what she saw every single time. But certainly that couldn't be true. It was so hard to ignore. Even Aang's eyes lingered occasionally on his scar, and Toph often found herself staring and quickly looking away. It couldn't have been possible that Katara hadn't noticed — that she had no questions, that she had no complaints, that she had no comments. Surely she had an opinion. Surely it was something she had to force herself to overlook. It wasn't just something she saw and accepted like you would accept brown hair or blue eyes.

It was the moniker of his fucked up past and his fucked up view of the world.

So one day, he made the horrible mistake of asking her.

It was while they were in his room. She was doing her chemistry homework while sitting at his desk and wearing one of his t-shirts. Katara turned to him and stared at him as if he had asked her some terribly confusing riddle. "What did you say?"

Zuko shrugged. "What do you think of it?" he asked. "It's a simple question."

Katara frowned and looked back down at her notebook. "I don't see why my opinion matters…"

"Of course it matters," he explained. "Why would you think it wouldn't? Other people can't stop staring at the thing."

Katara pursed her lips. "Well that's other people. I'd rather focus on other things."

"So you'd rather ignore it because it's disgusting to talk about."

That was the wrong thing to say, although he hadn't realized it at the time. She pulled her chair out and turned herself to face him. "I never said that," Katara said sternly.

"Why do you never ask about my family?" Zuko asked her suddenly, changing the topic abruptly. "Why do you never ask about my mother? My father? If I have siblings? I mean, obviously Uncle couldn't be my only family. I must have had more once. Why do you never ask?"

Her mouth opened and closed before she bit her lip. "I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would," Katara explained. "I always bring up my family, always talk about them, and you never bring up yours in return. I figured it wasn't safe territory. I was being considerate!"

Zuko scoffed. "You were ignoring it," he insisted. "Because it's ugly to talk about. I get it, I do. Trust me. No one knows that more than me."

She stood up from her chair and immediately walked towards him. "Woah, ok, where is this coming from?" she demanded. "I have never said or thought that your life or anything about you was ugly or detestable. Why would you ever think that?"

"Because that's what everyone thinks!" Zuko said, raising his voice. "My family is fucked, my face is fucked, and anyone who purposely decides to ignore that or 'not see it' is just a liar."

Azula's words were ringing again — "It's not like anyone is ever going to ignore that eyesore you know," "You're hopeless, I can't believe we're related," "You're such an embarrassment, I swear I'll throw a party when I'm finally an only child" — and suddenly everything just didn't make sense.

Katara was starting to look angry and uncomfortable. "You think I'm lying to you?" she asked, affronted. "Because I'm not playing into this sick fantasy you have about how horrible you are?"

"It's not a fantasy," Zuko said carefully. "Open your eyes. It's my reality and it's like you're too bothered by it to even say anything about it."

What he was saying wasn't getting through to her, he could tell, and she looked like she was slowly running out of things to tell him. Katara stared down at her feet and muttered, "So you want me to tell you what I think about your scar?"

She walked in front of where he was sitting on the edge of his bed and placed her hands on both of his knees. She brought her face closer to his, looked at him imploringly, and spoke slowly, "I think it's proof that you've been hurt — horribly, horribly hurt — and I think it's proof that you've had a lot thrown at you that you didn't deserve." She swallowed and brought her fingers up to his chin. "It's a part of you. And I like every part of you."

Zuko wondered if just her words and only her words would have placated him at that moment. Of course, he'd never know, because Katara's words were coupled with a gentle caress against that dead, disgusting, scarred skin of his. No one had ever done that. No one ever dared to touch him there, and it inspired such fear, anger, and anxiety that before he knew it, Zuko's hands were latched around her wrists and he was shoving her roughly off of him.

He didn't remember much, but he remembered screaming. Screaming at her. He told her to never touch it — she was never allowed to touch it, no one was. It was a scar. A horrible scar and it wasn't something to love it was something to be deterred by. It wasn't an encouragement, and anyone who thought that was not someone he wanted to be around.

Katara was screaming back at him, but to this day, he couldn't remember even a piece of what she said. Probably defending herself, probably telling him how ridiculous he was being — because he was — and telling him that nothing about how she treated him was a lie.

It wasn't until after they had broken up that he had realized what a horrible mistake that had been.

Katara avoided him, and oh how much that stung after all the days and hours they spent curled around each other and whispering loving words to each other under warm sheets. Her things were immediately moved out of his room and vice versa. Katara didn't need tutoring, Katara went out by herself, Katara could buy her own presents. There was no need for him anymore, and it was like they had previously shared nothing. Aang assured him that it was just a fight — he and Toph had them all the time. But Toph shared Zuko's pessimistic realism and she wisely decided not to give Zuko any false hope. There probably wasn't any truth to it.

Zuko accused Katara of ignoring the ugly parts of him, but this time, she made it a point to make sure she saw them.

It was the way she looked at his scar one day when they were passing by each other on campus. Katara's eyes immediately latched onto his scar, but the stare felt cold, accusatory, and wrong. Immediately, Zuko knew that this was different from how anyone had ever looked at him.

She was disgusted. But he could tell it wasn't by his scar. It was by him. Every snide remark and ugly stare that anyone in his life had ever given him didn't compare to this.

Because Zuko knew that she wasn't judging him off of things he couldn't control. She was looking at him — his harsh words, his accusations — and hating what she saw.

Regret wasn't usually a word in Zuko's vocabulary. But damn it if he could take even a quarter of what he did and do it over, he'd do it in a heartbeat. He wouldn't even have to think about it.

But Katara wanted nothing to do with him. He was alone again, and it felt worse than before.

Zuko wasn't sure if this would wind up being the worst mistake of his life, but at the moment, it certainly felt like it.