WARNING: SOME LEMON Y REFERENCES IN THIS CHAPTER!
WARNING: SOME LEMON Y REFERENCES IN THIS CHAPTER!
WARNING: SOME LEMON Y REFERENCES IN THIS CHAPTER!
Chapter 12
There were two ways to get to the Northern Air Temple from the inn or from any point in the borderlands. One was to travel south and take a path that looped up to the mountains. This route was traveled by merchants who carried goods, and most parties that contain women, children, or the elderly.
The other was shorter but more difficult. It required for them to cut directly through the borderland forest that grew thicker and wilder and rose to meet the mountains that formed the Air Nomad's border with the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. The path became too rocky and uneven for the ostrich-horses. Those who crossed the mountain pass did so on foot. An inn on either side of the pass bought or kept the animals of those who approached the mountains and sold or returned them to those who came from the mountains. This was the route Zuko and Katara would take.
The Northern Air Temple was the walk of a day or so beyond the mountain pass, less if they purchased new ostrich-horses. The walk to the temple wound through the valleys grown lush with the water that flowed down from the mountaintops. It was a landscape of icy rivers and streams, Zuko was sure Katara would adapt nicely to the cooler mountain air.
Late in the morning the skies began to drip. By afternoon the drizzle had turned to rain, a cold, relentless rain that beat down and hid the forest road from their sight. Even with Katara freezing the rain surrounding them, she could only keep doing so for so long. Finally they stopped, soaked to the skin, to see what they could do about shelter before night fell. The tangle of trees on either side of the road provided some cover. The enormous pine smelled of the sap dripping from its branches with the rainwater.
"It's as dry a place as we're likely to find," Katara said. She smiled. "I can't say I really mind the rain, it's soothing."
Zuko wasn't in similar spirits. "A fire will be impossible, but at least we won't sleep in the rain."
"A fire is never impossible," Katara said. "I'll bend the water out of the branches, and move the supplies here so I can dry those too."
Zuko did as she said and stepped out into the downpour, "I'll be back with dinner."
So Zuko set out into the trees, somewhat skeptically, and Katara set to work bending the water out of their soaked belongings.
When Zuko came back, dripping, to their camp, she was grateful for the fat rat-rabbit in his hand. He stepped in and wiped the water from his face.
"You're soaking wet, you must be cold."
Silently, Zuko steamed himself dry and replied, "I'm a firebender. I've never been cold."
She laughed at that. He crouched beside her. "It's good to hear you laugh," he said and breathed a warm fire into the branches.
Katara warmed herself, saw to their dinner, and tried to make a casual conversation. When the meat was propped and sizzling above the flames, Zuko joined her. He opened Lu Ten's packet of medicines and inspected them. They were dried, but the water had smudged the ink labeling rendering the herbs almost useless if they didn't know what each was. He sighed.
It was comfortable, their camp, with the drops plopping down from above and the warmth of the fire, and the smell of burning wood and cooking meat. Katara's patter of conversation was comfortable. Zuko kept the fire alive and smiled at her talk. He fell asleep that night, in a blanket partly wet from the drops that dripped down occasionally, secure in the certainty that he was in tune to his surroundings.
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She woke in the middle of the night in a panic, certain that Zuko had gone and that she was alone. But it must have been the tail end of a dream, snagging into her consciousness as it departed, for she could hear his breath through the even fall of rain. When she turned over and sat up, she could make out his form on the ground beside her. She reached out and touched his shoulder. Just to make sure. He had not left her; he was here, and they were traveling together through the mountain pass leading to Air Nomad lands. She lay down again, and watched the outline of his sleeping body in the darkness. A thin moon shown in the sky, and she felt comforted.
She would accept his protection after all, if truly she needed it. She was not too proud to be helped by him. He'd helped her in a thousand ways already.
And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need-if a fight became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or simply company in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would give him anything, and would protect him from everything.
That was settled then. She closed her eyes and slipped into sleep.
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Zuko didn't know what was wrong with him when he woke the next morning. He couldn't explain the fury he felt toward her. There was no explanation; and perhaps she knew that, because she asked for none. She only commented that the rain had stopped, watched him as he rolled his blanket, deliberately not looking at her. As they traveled, still he did not look at her. And though she couldn't have missed the force of his fury, she made no comment.
When they stopped to rest beside a pond swollen with rainwater, she leaned against a tree and ate a piece of bread. She watched him, calmly, silently. He didn't look at her, but he was aware of her eyes on him, always on him. Nothing was more infuriating than the way she leaned against a tree, and ate bread, and watched him with those blue eyes.
"What are you staring at?" he finally demanded.
"This pond is full of fish," she said. "Catfish, hundreds of them. Don't you think it's funny I should know that with such clarity?"
He would hit her, for her calmness, and her latest ability to count catfish she couldn't see. He clenched his fists and turned, forced himself to walk away. Off the road, into the trees, past the trees, and then he was running through the forest, startling birds into flight. He ran past streams and patches of fern, and hills covered with moss. He shot into a clearing with a waterfall that fell over the rocks and plummeted into a pool. He yanked off his boots, pulled off his clothing, and leaped into the water. He screamed at the cold the surrounded his body all at once, and his nose and mouth filled with water. He surfaced coughing, and teeth chattering. He laughed at the coldness for it reminded him so much of her, and scrambled to shore. And now, standing in the dirt, the cold cooling his rage, he was calm.
It was when he returned to her, chilled and clearheaded, that it happened. She sat against the tree, her knees bent and her head in her hands. Her shoulders slumped. Tired, unhappy. Something tender caught in his breath at the sight of her. And then she raised her eyes and looked at him, and he saw what he had not seen before. He swallowed.
Her eyes were beautiful. Her face was beautiful to him in every way, and her slender shoulders and hands. And her chest that was not moving, because she held her breath as she watched him. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had he not seen this before? He was blind. And then he saw tears from those azure eyes of hers. He had not asked for this beautiful woman before him, with something hopeful in her eyes that he did not want.
"I don't want this," he said.
"Zuko..." her face, so innocent. "I hadn't planned for it either."
He gripped the branch of a nearby tree to steady himself. "You…you have a way of upending my plans."
She cried out and sank to her knees, then forced herself up before he could come to her, and help her, and touch her.
"Get on your ostrich-horse," she said, "right now. We're riding."
She mounted and took off, without even waiting to be sure he followed. They rode, and he allowed only one thought to enter his mind, over and over. I don't love her. I don't love her. He matched it to the rhythm of his animal's hooves. And if she knew his thought, all the better.
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When they stopped for the night he did not speak to her, but he couldn't pretend she wasn't there. He felt every move she made, without seeing it. He felt her eyes watching him across the fire he built. It was like this every night for days, and this was how it would continue to be. She would sit there gleaming in the light of the fire, and he unable to look at her, because she glowed, and she was beautiful, and he couldn't stand it.
"Please, Zuko," she finally said. "At least talk to me."
He swung around to face her. "What is there to talk about? You know how I feel, and what I think about it."
"And what I feel? Doesn't that matter?" her voice barely above a whisper.
Her voice was small, so unexpectedly small, in the face of his bitterness that it shamed him. He sat down across from her.
She seemed suddenly not to know what to say. She looked into her lap and played with her rings; she took a breath and rubbed her head; and when she raised her face to his again he felt that her eyes were naked, that he could see right through them into the lights of her soul. He knew what she was going to say.
"I know you don't want this, Zuko. But I can't help myself. From the moment we met, I was lost. I'm afraid to tell you what I wish for, for fear you'll…oh, I don't know, throw me into the fire. Or more likely, refuse me. Or worst of all, hate me for it," she said, her voice breaking and her eyes darker.
"I love you," she said. "You're dearer to my heart than I even knew anyone could be." She was crying now. It was because of a certainty he refused to consider while he sat before her.
He stood up. "I need to go."
She pulled at his shirt. "No, Zuko, please."
"I won't go far, Katara. I just need to think, without you in my head."
"I'm afraid if you leave you won't come back."
"Katara." This assurance, at least, he could give her. "I'll come back."
She looked at him for a moment. "I understand you. But I'm afraid once you've gone off to think, you'll decide the solution is to leave me."
"I won't."
"I can't know that."
"No," Zuko said, "you can't. But I need to think on my own, so you have to let me go. And once I'm gone you'll just have to trust me, just as I do, with you."
She looked at him with those naked, unhappy eyes again. Then she took a breath and nodded. "Put a good ten minutes between us," she said, "if you want privacy."
Ten minutes was a far greater range than he'd understood her bending to encompass; but that was an argument for another time. He felt her eyes on his back as he passed through the trees. He groped forward, hands and feet, in search of darkness, distance, and solitude.
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Alone in the forest, Zuko stood still, and yelled. He released every anger, every reason why he might be angry. His heart roared like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.
He couldn't have her, and there was no mistaking it. She could never be his wife. He could not declare himself free of his father, only to give himself away to another. He could not belong to another person, be answerable to another person, and build his very being around another person. No matter how he loved her.
Zuko sat in the darkness of the forest and understood three truths. He loved Katara. He wanted Katara. And he could never be anyone's but his own.
After a while, he began to thread his way back to the fire. Nothing had changed in his feelings, and he wasn't tired. But Katara would suffer if she didn't sleep; and he knew she wouldn't sleep until he had returned.
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She was lying on her back, wide awake, staring up at the half-moon. He went to her and sat before her. She watched him with soft eyes and didn't say anything. He looked back at her, and opened up his feelings to her, so that she would understand what he felt, what he wanted, and what he couldn't do. She sat up. She watched his face for a long time.
"You know I'd never expect you to change who you are, if we were to wed," she finally said.
"It would change me to be your husband," he said.
She watched his eyes. "Yes. I understand you."
A log fell into the fire. They sat quietly. Her voice, when she spoke, was hesitant.
"It strikes me that heartbreak isn't the only alternative to marriage," she said.
"What do you mean?"
She closed her eyes for a moment and raised her eyes to him. "I'll give myself to you however you'll take me," she said, so simply that Zuko found it to be somewhat innocent.
He watched her face. "And where would that lead?"
"I don't know. But I trust you."
He watched her eyes.
She offered herself to him. She trusted him. As he trusted her.
He hadn't considered this possibility, when he'd sat alone in the forest, contemplating his anger. He hadn't even thought of it. And her offer hung suspended before him now, for his to reach out and claim; and that which had seemed clear and simple and heartbreaking was confused and complicated again. But also touched with hope.
Could he still be her lover and still belong to himself?
That was the question; and he didn't know the answer.
"I need to think," he said.
"Think here," she said, "please. I'm so tired, Zuko. I'll fall right asleep."
He nodded. "All right. I'll stay." He reached down and wiped a tear that sat on her check. He felt the touch of her fingertip on his hand, and fought against it, against allowing her to know of it. She lay down. He stood and moved to a tree outside the light of their fire. He sat against it and watched Katara's silhouette, waiting for her to fall asleep.
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Author's Note: I just had to do that because I feel SO relieved that their feelings are out in the open now! Sorry, it's a short chapter, but filled with lots of fluff _
I know this chapter might be somewhat confusing, so feel free to PM me and ask me anything u want :)
Also, I really hope u guys understand that I'm not claiming credit for any of Kristin Cashore's story, I just thought it'd be great for an Avatar FF. I'm not making any money of this FF, and only using it for the purpose of recreational reading and writing. ALL CREDIT BELONGS TO KRISTIN CASHORE!