A/N:
Yes. Yes, I know this is a humongous jump from prompt number 12.
No, I do not know why the muses have cursed me so.
Prompt 21: Unravel
"I don't think we should be doing this…"
Katara opened another drawer and rifled through the papers and books. There wasn't much in this one compared to the one above it, but neither had anything of interest. There was a broken toy sword that she picked up, thinking of his two blades that he always kept close beside him.
Suki shifted noisily near the door. "Katara…"
"What? It's not even a big deal; it's fine," Katara said, opening a cabinet. "They should've locked the door then if they didn't want anyone coming in."
"It was locked… You picked it."
"Oh." She had hoped Suki hadn't remembered. "Well, they should've locked it better. Anyway! If you're not going to help, just keep lookout. I'll take all of the blame." She huffed, her hands on her hips in an attempt to look like one who had everything under control. Suki made a noise of disagreement and guilt in response, but she turned around and glanced outside into the hall, making sure they were alone.
With nothing at the desk, Katara made her way over to the bed. She was going to find something, even if she had to turn the entire room upside down, inside out, several times over! He was going to pay for embarrassing her last night. She was going to make sure of it.
"Sokka was the one who told the story," Suki mumbled from the entrance.
"Well! He laughed, a lot, okay?"
"We all laughed."
Katara glared at her irritably, clearly displeased that Suki was more interested in picking holes in her reasoning than actually helping. "He laughed the hardest," she said, and the other girl merely shrugged her shoulders and turned back around.
It didn't matter; she cleared her head. Despite whatever Suki said, she was still going to do what she was going to do because she promised herself last night while she was red with embarrassment. And Katara kept to her promises. Besides, Suki couldn't deny the fact that finding humiliating evidence of Zuko during his baby days or terrible pre-teen days would be absolutely amazing.
Katara poked around the bed and the beside table. What if he had a diary? She snickered to herself. Zuko, with a diary, how great would that be! She'd probably die laughing before even reading it.
Grabbing the pillow, she moved it off to the other side to check behind the bed when she felt something shift awkwardly inside it. She blinked, feeling around; on the other side was something hard and rectangular. Her heart jumped.
"He does have a diary…!"
Suki turned to her. "What?"
Katara grinned and cackled under her breath as she reached inside the pillow case, pulling out a black book.
"Pfft. Of course it would be black." She shook her head. "He's always moping."
She flipped to a page that seemed to be bookmarked, feeling power surge through her fingers. What secrets would this book contain? How many embarrassing stories could she find? Was he rejected eight times by a girl he liked? Did he not know how to swim? Did he suck on his thumb until ten or wet the bed until thirteen? All of the possibilities…
She knew she was going to have a delightful time picking out her favorites to pay him back tenfold for the humiliation she received last night.
The page she had flipped to was a blank one, but it had been bookmarked by a small family portrait, drawn by a steady hand and protected by the book from age and dust. There was crazy Ozai, who actually looked…regal in the picture. One couldn't tell that his head was full of the annihilation of other cultures. And then there was Azula who looked young, instead of clever and sneaky and vengeful. In the corner was a pretty woman with her hand on the shoulder of a young Zuko's shoulder.
That must've been his mom.
Her eyes drifted. Zuko didn't have his scar then. He looked to be seven or eight. Then…when?
She swallowed, feeling a dark lump drop into her stomach, a foreshadowing that maybe this book wasn't what she had made it out to be, but she shook her head and trudged on. It was for her honor and pride! She'd get him back.
Katara flipped to the last entry, her eyes widening when she saw that the handwriting was different, older, messier yet more stable; the word choice was different, more varied and similar to how he spoke now. It had to be a younger entry made by an older Zuko. She snickered. How long had he been writing in his diary?
"Katara," Suki said from the doorway. "Did you find anything good?"
But she had already started reading, and thus she could not reply because the words and the ink and the smoothness of the page pulled her into Zuko's mind at that specific moment in time. She was expecting something about having to capture the Avatar or about how his Uncle only ever drank tea and always lost Pai Sho pieces.
She found something completely different.
Her heart broke.
His voice whispered the words softly in her ears as she read them; she felt her her chest expand and swell with all that he had to say, all that he couldn't say. There was a painful sorrow hidden in the blank spaces and blank pages that were supposed to be filled, but he didn't know what to fill it with or how.
She read the thoughts he must've had when looking at them, the longing, read the trickles of confusion and anguish and wry laughter and solemn curiosity and emotionless acceptance. He must've thought of this constantly while he laid awake beneath the darkened skies as they slept, his sleeping bag feet away from theirs. These ideas and memories and questions were probably swirling in the back of his mind right at that moment, even as he was training with Aang, even as they would eat and tell jokes, even when he would laugh at Sokka's embarrassing and humiliating stories of Katara as a young girl.
She closed the book.
Did he even get a chance to create humiliating stories in his childhood?
"What's wrong?" Suki asked. "What did it say?"
Katara looked down at the black book and thought he must've grabbed this color unconsciously.
"I shouldn't have done this," she said, and then slipped the book back in the case and rearranged the bed. "Come on, let's go."
When Suki turned to leave, Katara quickly wiped at her eyes. They both walked toward the center of the beach house, hearing the last remnants of shouts as Aang and Zuko were finishing up their training session.
Zuko had a towel over his neck, using it to wipe down the sweat. Aang smiled at her, but she didn't notice, staring only at Zuko, trying to peer through his skin to see what was hidden beneath the bones.
And when she couldn't, she walked over to him and threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him close. He was tensed and confused, but she didn't know what to say and if there was anything she could say.
He wrapped his arms around her waist then, and she didn't know if he knew or if he just understood, but she held on tighter for all the days he wrote secretly in his book, under the guise that things would get better with time when they didn't.
A/N:
Cue cheesy grin as I bow down and hope you enjoyed this chapter and that you will continue to enjoy what I put out next.
Cue cheesy grin as I ask you to review, teeheehee.
I hope y'all have an awesome sauce day!
