004. Rainbow
"Tell me about colors, Sparky."
Her voice is soft, contemplative, unusual for someone normally so raucous. The two of them are sprawled on a grassy hill overlooking the beach, captured in a rare moment of relaxation between training Aang and fighting a war. She faces away from him, her electric but sightless eyes turned toward the ocean. He's so used to her not looking at him that he doesn't question it; he simply watches her small profile thoughtfully.
"Here," he offers, "give me your hand—I'll show you."
She holds out her arm, palm up and fingers spread expectantly, as though she presumes he's going to give her something. Taking the small drinking flask he has beside him, he pours water over her skin. It streams through the wrinkles in her palms and drips down her forearm; she laughs like it tickles.
"That's blue," he mentions. Then, without warning, he clicks his fingers and a spark ignites; fire glitters in his palm. Instantly, the water droplets on her hand wither in the heat; holding it close enough so she can feel the heat, Zuko takes care to be sure it doesn't burn her.
"Ah! It's hot," she yelps, but she's beaming into the distance, delighted with their experiment.
"That's red and orange," he replies; the fire vanishes and he takes her hand again gently in his own—he can't help but be delicate with her, even though she's tougher than he'll ever be—and presses it to the moist grass beneath them, smoothing it over the soft blades. She buries her fingers in it, holding, touching.
"This is green. The dirt beneath it is brown."
Enjoying their game, she smiles into the ocean wind. "Colors make a rainbow, right Sparky?"
"Correct."
"Are rainbows beautiful?"
He's taken aback by her question. Glancing at her through the corner of his eyes—even though she's still facing the salty breeze, which tousles her dark hair in and out of the line of her unseeing vision—he says slowly, "That depends on what you mean by beautiful."
"What is beautiful, anyways?" She sounds innocently curious, and it occurs to him that she might actually not know.
"Beautiful." Contemplating the word, he runs a hand through his hair wistfully. "Beautiful… It's pleasing, I suppose. It makes you happy."
"I don't get it." One tiny finger touches her temple in confusion; her dark brows furrow. "You can see colors and they're all one definite, unchanging thing—like, the color red doesn't just become blue all of the sudden—but you say beauty is happiness and happiness can change. Sight doesn't change, right? So why should something you see change? The things I feel don't change."
"Beauty is different to everyone," he explains, but he's becoming uncomfortable. She's got so many questions; he doesn't want to answer them wrong, and she's looking at him like he lied to her and even though she can't distinguish a thing before her eyes it feels like she can see right through him. "It's in correlation with what you personally find appealing."
She digests this for a moment and then asks, "Well, what's beautiful to you?"
For a second he doesn't know how to respond, but then a shout from camp behind them awakens him.
"Zuko! Toph! Dinner time!"
He twists around just in time to see azure stones glinting at him from beneath long eyelashes; he sees dark skin, like mocha, and slender arms and hips and legs; he sees long, flowing brown hair that touches the lower back of a woman with the body, personality, and aura of some rare, picturesque goddess.
"Oi, Sparky. Sparky? What happened to you, man? Your heart rate just sped up." Toph leans in toward him; he figures she felt his heart through the odd ability allowing her to feel vibrations through the ground. "What's so beautiful that it does that to you?"
His mouth runs very dry as Katara bends low to retrieve a fallen plate from the ground, her hair cascading off her shoulders like a waterfall of brunette. She glances up and catches his eye, startled for a moment that he's watching her, before she turns rather pink, stands, and looks away quickly.
"Hell-ooo? What's beautiful to you, Sparky? Answer me."
He doesn't respond, and not because he doesn't want to admit something embarrassing—just because explaining the way he feels about Katara is like—well, explaining colors and beauty and rainbows to a blind person.
Sometimes it's just impossible.
Author's Note: AVAST! AN UPDATE! I have been meaning to get around to this, but I've been listening to Artemis Fowl audio tapes non-stop the past few days, and now I read everything with a Irish accent in my head. So it was quite the challenge to go through all my one-shots and stop speaking like Artemis long enough to proof-read a few times. But, at long last, here you are. This one isn't actually due until the third update after this chapter, but I wanted to give you all something I'm really proud of. I personally love this one-shot, for reasons unknown even to myself. I just find it one of my better pieces, not to toot my own horn or anything.
Review please! (:
