Sorry for the wait! I dropped the ball because real life ate me; plus, I spent some time trying to coordinate with my beta reader. I really jumped the gun on some things in this chapter and had to figure out a significant rewrite, but here it finally is. Many thanks to PetertheChameleon (you should go read him) for agreeing to beta for me and for all the advice he gave on this chapter.
Chapter 10 – Illumination
ZUKO
There were noises in the dark—a deep, rhythmic clanging, soft footfalls, and an off-key melody, gruffly hummed by a voice I would know anywhere. I slowly blinked my eyes and looked around the room. I was in my cabin; Uncle stood nearby, stuffing leaves into a teapot, but otherwise, we were alone.
"Where… Where is she?" I intended to yell, and then strained to make out the sound of my own, weak voice. I frowned at its whisper and undertook coughing a backbone into it.
"Zuko!" Uncle's bright greeting ignored my question and my coughing. He set his teapot down and scurried to kneel at my bedside. "I was beginning to think you would never awaken. You have been asleep for more than two weeks," he informed me. "What kept you so long?"
It might have been a rhetorical question, but still gripped by the confusion of half sleep, I started to answer it anyway. "I was…" with Katara rested on the tip of my tongue, but reality rushed me, throwing me off balance as my world refashioned itself. My life was war and exile—nothing of the fantasy that had ended with my waking. "I was dreaming," I finally said as I limply tried to pry his calloused hand from my forehead. Freed from his testing palm, I planted my hands at my sides and shakily pushed myself up.
"I see." Uncle nodded sagely. "Dreams can be very powerful things—especially the good ones. Tell me, Nephew, was it a good dream?" He pulled one of my arms across his shoulders and hefted me backward on the mattress so the wall could support me.
"It was," I hoarsely admitted; although, my sour expression argued with that assessment when I leaned forward to let Uncle prop a head roll behind me and the skin across my stomach tightened. As if that odd pull snagged the memories to the forefront of my mind, I saw Zhao's blade again, crimson with my blood, and those frightened, watery-blue eyes peering at me. I touched my stomach and hissed in anticipation of the hurt my fingers would cause. No pain twisted my gut, though, and I pulled open my robe to experimentally probe at new, seamless flesh. Why wasn't I dead?
Uncle noticed my exploration of my own torso. "Some powerful Waterbenders have the ability to heal."
"She healed me?" My eyes swiftly narrowed in habitual suspicion, crinkling the left side of my face. "Why would she do that?"
Uncle shrugged. "Gratitude.... Kindness.... Selflessness." His tone gave no specific weight to any of his words, leaving me with no satisfying answer. As I absently traced the smooth place where my fatal wound should have been, I considered my captive. It was difficult to believe that Katara would feel so indebted. She had said enough on the topic that I was sure she saw no difference between me and Zhao; I couldn't even convince myself that I was at least the lesser of two evils in her eyes. Having kept Katara in my quarters, I wouldn't exactly describe her attitude toward me during the course of those weeks as kind. I doubted I actually deserved any kindness from her.
But I had known a young woman, once, who was completely selfless, and I questioned whether there were certain aspects of a person that were so strong they withstood the harsh conditioning of reality. I recalled having been horrified in that dreamscape by the reflection of my own visage—positive I had nothing in common with that hideous doppelganger. Now, as I stood on the other side of that memory, scowling back at the unmarred version of myself, I wondered if there was anything of that gentle young man in me.
"Could she muster that much sympathy?" I mumbled bitterly and let my head fall back against the red banner above my bed.
"Perhaps it is a question you should ask her yourself," he offered. Uncle dragged a pillow from a twist of blankets next to the bed so he could stuff it behind my shoulders. I eyed the makeshift pallet and grabbed Uncle's sleeve as he settled the pillow.
"Where is she? Where's Ka—" The familiar name burned as I swallowed it back down, afraid of what desperate intonations might leak into its pronunciation. "Where's the Waterbender?"
"Out on the deck," Uncle answered casually, as if it happened every day. Maybe it did. If I had been unconscious as long as Uncle claimed, there was no telling how sloppy things had gotten—Katara running loose was likely just one of a hundred violations I would have to set right. I started to roll forward in an attempt to get out of bed.
"What are you doing, Zuko?" Uncle gently pushed my shoulder back against the wall, and I struggled weakly under the weight of his hand. "You have only just awakened; you should take your time getting around."
"I have no time, Uncle," I growled. "She'll get away."
"Lieutenant Jee is with her." He tried to soothe me, but I shook my head in continued protest. Uncle's answering grunt held an ironic quality that tempted me to abandon my effort.
"Trust me, Nephew, when I say that she won't be going anywhere right now—at least, as long as she thinks you are still unconscious." His statement left me confounded. What had happened in these last weeks to delude him into believing she could be trusted without at least one of us there to ensure her cooperation? My fingers already itched for her wrist, and I knew, no matter Uncle's cryptic assurances, that I would not be able to rest until I had seen her.
"The Avatar might come for her," I muttered darkly, the thought simultaneously satisfying and dreadful, and the polarity of my reaction also confused me. I wanted the Avatar; that had been my plan, the entire reason Katara was on board. I should be looking forward to his arrival with all the enthusiasm of an armadillo-tiger watching a kangarabbit wander from its grazing herd. But as much as I knew that to be true, my conscience still squirmed when I thought about how Katara would react when I captured her friend—when I finally threw him into one of my cells and set my course for home. In another world, I was a man who would not have scorched a leaf on a crawling weed if it had drawn her favor. Now, I would sacrifice her savior on the altar of my father's ambition. Perhaps there was nothing of that young man in me, after all.
"The Avatar has already attempted a rescue," Uncle divulged.
"What?" I barked out, jerked from my introspection. "What happened? Was he captured? Tell me, Uncle!"
"A few days ago," Uncle began slowly, as if taking his interminable time would somehow dissolve my disquiet, "Katara and I were on the deck, taking in the sun, as the ship neared the Western Air Temple. When I went below to get my liuqin, the flying bison appeared. It took me a few minutes to get back out onto the deck, but the men fought fiercely," he defended. "Still, the bison managed to reach Katara."
"Then how is she still here? If they got to her, then why didn't she escape?" I was bewildered by his story, and my stomach clenched as I imagined her being lifted away from my ship.
"That is a very good question," Uncle answered, as if he had no clue, but I cut off a frustrated growl when he continued. "I suppose, in the end, it was my fire that blocked her. Although, if she had really wanted to leave, then I assume she would have." He shrugged again, and I frowned.
Uncle was losing his faculties. Katara wanted to be as far away from me as possible, as far from anything Fire Nation as she could get. She wanted to protect her friend and her brother. Katara wanted to leave—of that I was certain. So why was Uncle seeming to suggest she hadn't? Why would he think that the status of my health had anything to do with her staying? Why did the crazy, old hog-monkey never just say what he meant, outright?
"Would it be that surprising?" Uncle tilted his head at my scowl. "You did sacrifice a great deal to protect her. Perhaps your concern is not entirely unreciprocated."
"I sacrificed to guarantee my advantage over the Avatar," I snapped. Uncle's smile was telling, and I shifted uncomfortably, realizing he did not completely believe me. Something felt like it was moving beneath my skin, rousing from a deep slumber and not quite sure where it had come to. I was aware of Uncle's burdening gaze, and I tried to shirk out from under its examination by accusing him, "You think I'm letting her get too close."
"I think," Uncle said, surprising me, "you are not letting her get close enough."
I raised my sole eyebrow at him. I wanted to demand he explain what he meant, but that was a conversation I felt would lead into dangerous territory—a land I was ill prepared to explore right now with my dream still so fresh in my mind, misguiding me down strange avenues of thought. My gaze lowered aimlessly to my blanketed feet. Uncle watched me a moment more and then rose with a groan and returned to the table. "I will make some tea; it will help strengthen your constitution." I nodded mutely, my thoughts now occupied by Uncle's disturbing insinuations.
"I dreamt of my mother," I blurted out suddenly, eager to take my mind off Katara. I sighed when I realized this topic would be no easier to discuss, and yet, nothing else stood out as brightly in my dream as the two women I had loved so much. Uncle stiffened; his hand hovered just above the pot he intended to heat, but the air remained cold and dead beneath his palm.
There were things that my uncle and I did not discuss—edges of the world we had built here on the water that were still too sharp for our raw emotions to brush against—and so I had never had a chance to observe the reaction roused by my mother's mention. I filed it to the back of my mind as I watched him. Impatient, I invaded the silence.
"Uncle?"
He gave an acknowledging grunt, and it seemed to break him from his stillness. His fingers moved, the air above the water wavered with heat, and Uncle cleared his throat to speak. Forced levity did not quite disguise the thickness of his voice. "Perhaps the spirits give us dreams as a small kindness so we do not have to live so long apart from those we have lost." I looked away, my mind troubled by thoughts of spirits and dreams, of things I had lost, and of things that had never really been mine.
"Do you believe in the spirit world, Uncle?" I finally asked. "Do you think if a man is close to death, he could go there and then come back again?"
Uncle abandoned his tea to face me, and he eyed me curiously for a moment. "I believe that if a man is close to death, and if there is something Fate needs to tell him, the spirit world would be a good place for such news to be delivered."
I considered his answer, but it only begged more questions. "Can we change our destiny?"
"Zuko," Uncle said, "I have never known anyone with a stronger will to chart the course of his own fate than you, but Destiny is a funny thing. Some destinies are greater than others," he told me, "and the greatest destinies are set in stone. All paths lead to their appointed end." I felt that odd schism in my feelings again—expectancy and doom. "But," he continued, "it is not the destiny itself that matters—it will always be what it is. What matters most is what path you take to reach it. Some paths are difficult, while others are easy; some are right and some are wrong; some will destroy the world and others will preserve it; but most will leave you empty at their end."
I blinked and then frowned. Uncle was no less mysterious now than he had been two weeks ago. My resolve had never wavered; there had never been any doubt in my mind that I would be Fire Lord. That, I was certain, was my one true destiny. But until today, I had never considered that there might be more than one path to my fate. Capture the Avatar—that goal had been my entire world, my only hope. But now…
I thought back to what Katara had told me at the pond—that whatever world we were in, whatever people we had become, we would always have found each other. I was slightly chagrinned as I remembered my promise that we never would have been enemies. Was it possible to be anything else?
"How will I know my path?" I asked out loud.
"You must find the path that will save you," he told me gravely, "but to find it, you must first discover how you need to be saved. What does your heart tell you, Nephew?"
My heart was in an odd state of mourning, crying out all manner of things that I was certain would never be possible. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the skin peeling away from Zhao's face. My stomach twisted with the conjured smell of roasting flesh—a scent with which I was all too familiar—and my throat burned with the memory of fire. It still roiled deep down, buried beneath the guilt and horror of what I had done, and that weakness disgusted me.
I had been sired and raised by the greatest Firebender who lived, a man who had no qualms about killing those who stood in his way. But I couldn't think about Zhao without seeing his eyes, frightened and disbelieving, before they had burst. I should have been proud of my victory. My first kill should have brought me my father's approval, but it only condemned me; I was sure he would consider my execution of his Admiral an act of treason. My father was not the only one who would think less of me.
Even if Katara had not hated me before, I had killed a man in front of her; when she looked at me, I feared she would see only the blood that tainted my hands. Strangely, I felt both eager and reluctant. The urge still existed within me, as relentless and demanding as it had been in my dream, to be near Katara… but I wanted her to be my Katara—not this prisoner who could barely tolerate my touch, who looked away too often and never smiled at me.
"I don't know what my heart tells me," I muttered, standing there, slightly lost before I finally plotted a course and forced myself into action, "but my brain is telling me to go find the Waterbender before she realizes she can just bend herself off my ship." I threw off my bed covers and climbed unsteadily to my feet, pulling carefully on the wall hanging to guide my movements. My head felt clearer after I was standing.
"You should not be moving around so soon," Uncle persisted, even as his tone hinted at indulgence, but I shook my head.
"My men need to see me out of my sickbed," I argued, finding clean robes in my trunk and beginning to dress myself—and Katara needed to see that I was still capable of keeping her here. "The sooner the better."
Status: It occurs to me that some of you might want to know what I'm doing when chapters are slow in coming… or at least might be comforted in knowing that I am actually making progress. So I've added a status section to my profile that I plan to update every few days so you'll know where I'm at with chapter delivery. There are times that my schedule makes me feel like a black hole, so at the very least, it will make me feel better to be able to update something.
Story Stats: I'm excited and wanted to share. Thanks to you guys, More Than the Price of Honor has exceeded both the 100th Review and 100th Story Alert marks. That makes me feel awesome, and I hope I can keep putting out a story that you find rewarding enough to keep reading.
Now for Reviews of Chapter 9:
I'm so grateful to those of you who reviewed with your praise for this chapter. It was a difficult chapter, and I had a lot of misgivings about it, so I'm glad you liked it. On more specific notes…
hg-always: Clever girl. Yes, the dream world is what would have happened (more or less) if the Fire Nation had never started the war. As you can see, some things were always destined—Katara and Zuko meeting, Ozai becoming Fire Lord, etc. I guess this chapter answers the question of whether he'll remember because…
senbo-sama: …. "mold" is a good word to use here. I needed Zuko to recall that world and his feelings; otherwise, the entire effort would have been lost as my catalyst for his change in perspective. Katara is so open to love and is so compassionate, as she is that she really doesn't need much of a push to realize feelings—accept them, maybe, but she'll get her own catalyst. Zuko, on the other hand, needed some external manipulation to sort through.
TheMightyErrg: Yes, it is a nice fantasy, and he does get to wake up to Katara—just not a Katara who likes him very much, which has its own repercussions.
Moriko no Hikari: No, Zuko's heart didn't stop. The dream was just done with him, so it sort of dramatically ejected him and let him finally wake up… which I guess is obvious from this chapter.
beastlySmalless: I'm not sure why you liked the chapter so much. If I had to guess, though, I'd probably say it might have been the romantic dream Zuko and the proposal and all of Katara's blatantly molesting him while he was asleep. That's why I liked writing it, at any rate… but I'm just guessing. ;)
Ravenwyrd: You win for longest review, yet. I don't have so much a problem with relating the earth to the body, but I might wish native peoples would think of nicer aspects of the body to relate it too, rather than cannibalism and hacking things apart and dragging them about. The world apparently had a very violent birth. I struggle sometimes with how 'subtle' to be about the emotional development. I recently read a fic with a very short, seemingly unassuming line in it that had grand implications about the relationship, and I very much appreciated that I got to realize that rather than have it pounded into me through the prose. At the same time, I do worry that my subtlety won't come off quite the way I plan and I'll have lost an important relationship signal. I'll try to find a balance. You and Silverscreamer will both be happy to know that we'll have periodic shenanigans from Iroh. While I don't have a knock-down-drag-out planned, I can tell you that "peasant vs. prince" will come into play in several places throughout the story, often to Zuko's chagrin.