Hey guys! As promised here's chapter 26. Quick authors note and a reminder. This story is rated M there are scenes in this chapter that are for mature audiences only. I'll post chapter 27 by the end of the week. I'm working so it probably won't be until Friday. Anyways this is one of my favorite chapters so far and I hope you enjoy it too!


Chapter Twenty-Six: Zuko

She stood with her back towards me.

Her skin a cold bronze, washed gold by the flickering of a candle. She was certainly a sight to behold.

The orange and red hues that were bouncing off her mocha skin had her glowing. I hadn't seen her since our kiss and here she was in my bedchamber a week later.

She didn't seem to notice my loud entrance. I watched as her fingers languidly danced across the flame of the candle. Katara lingered long enough that the fire should have burned her. My eyes catching on the steam rising from her hand. She must've coated it with water before she began.

"Katara?" My voice bounding around the room before she turned to me. Her hand was ghostly blue and I realized she didn't protect herself from the candle's flame with water, but with ice. I wondered how long she left it like that. How long she battled with the flames.

I instinctively reached for her hand. The resounding hissing noise we both made slipping from our mouths. The bitter cold from her palm made me flinch, but her eyes never left mine as I willed heat to flow from my palm into hers.

"Show me." I didn't know what she meant. Or what she wanted. Her eyes glanced to the candle again then back to my empty hand before I understood. "Only if you show me." She nodded and I held my palm up to her.

My bending produced a larger flame than the candle she had been studying. She bent down so she was eye level. "It's beautiful." I thought I misheard her. It was astounding to me that she would say those words. Fire had taken so much from her. Yet here she was looking upon it like it only brought life to her instead of death.

I watched breathlessly as she inhaled deeply, calling to the water in the surrounding air. It obeyed, flowing like liquid gold, reflecting back my own flames pigment. My eyes followed the water's path as it slid down the bronzed skin on Katara's arm, curling along the length of her fingers and the expanse of her palm.

She finally exhaled, her golden water turning as pale as the moon as it froze over. Katara wasted no time slipping her hand directly into my flame. Her ice didn't waver or even melt. I had never seen anything like it, ice that could bare the brute heat of true fire. Even when the North Pole was under siege it succumbed to the flames.

"Duel me." My eyes jumped down to hers but she was still admiring the flame. "What?" The thought of sparring with Katara was thrilling, I loved watching her bend. Her ocean eyes glinted with mischief and a challenge.

"What do you call it here? An Agni Kai?"

The room bristled as I failed to hide my displeasure of the word my flame cutting out, her water evaporating into nothing. "No, Katara. You can't challenge me to an Agni Kai. It's only for firebenders.."

She shrugged. "Fine. It's nearly midnight anyways, I'd beat you in a sparring match easy right now…"

Neither of us said anything for a long moment. Then Katara perked up, "Zuko, let's go outside the palace walls! I've been feeling so cooped up lately. The ocean isn't far either, I want to feel the sea, she's calling to me." I watched as she looked forlornly out the bay window imagining the water that was just beyond the walls.

It must kill her to be far from the ocean. My mother's pond was a small comfort, but it wasn't enough. I thought briefly about the men that attacked us. It had been more than a month since their threats, and we haven't heard anything or seen anything since.

"Alright, fine. But we go in disguises again. We don't need people recognizing us." Katara smiled and ran off into her adjoining room. I hadn't given the traitorous bandits any thought recently, we've been safely secured by the walls of the palace.

Since the last attempt on Katara's life I've increased security, my guards patrolling more often and in higher numbers, but it did nothing to stop me from worrying about her.

My mind raced and I was surprised when Katara came bursting into my room ready to go, frayed hat in hand. Her cheeks flushed furiously, and I wanted to smirk as her eyes wandered my bare chest. I decided to save her from the torture and donned a shirt and my doa swords.

We didn't speak.

We navigated the palace walls and the Crescent City without as much as a sound. Katara was deathly graceful, everyone of her movements calculated before she executed them flawlessly. She moved like a thousand year old spirit ought too.

I guided us to a remote part of the city as far away from the trading ports as I could. It was as close to seclusion as you would get. The high brick walls kept the tide from drowning the entire city. Ordinarily, the beach was washed away but it was the low tide season; it gave way to about twenty feet of opal sand.

The moon's rays beamed across the ocean bathing it in a silver glow that was as ethereal as Katara appeared.

I stared almost transfixed by the colors as Katara sprinted by me in nothing but her pure white bindings. She dove head first into the water and it almost seemed to embrace her. I lifted my mask, letting it drape across my back and sat on the dry sand to watch her bask in her element under the crescent moon.

I started a fire.

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I fed the small flames with kindling as she finally emerged from the water, caramel skin glowing.

She was every bit the celestial spirit she portrayed not an hour ago. The full moon's rays surrounding her in an otherworldly gleam. I forced myself to glance away and back on the fire in front of me.

She sat next to me on her knees, thighs almost touching, before she said something I never thought she would. The words sounded small off her lips, almost as though they were only meant for herself.

"My mother would have loved you..."

Heat grew in my cheeks as I whipped my head in her direction. But her eyes stayed transfixed on the smoldering wood. My own element reflecting back a warm light blushing her skin a warm copper.

"I never thanked you; for helping me find who took her from me." She turned to me. The sight of her almost had me trembling. Tears streamed down her face. The left side, closest to the fire, flowed bronze, the right shimmered silver from the moon.

"It's nothing you wouldn't have done for me." I said as nonchalant as I could manage.

She wasn't smiling. Wasn't frowning. She just was. "You're wrong." Katara reveals, voice laced with malice. "I wouldn't have." She glanced away looking back at the ocean, back into our past.

"I wouldn't have done a damn thing for you. Everyday I prayed to Tui and La that you would mess up. That you were an inherently bad person and you couldn't help but deceive, and lie, and cause me pain. Cause the people I loved pain. That you were your father's son. Even when you told me you'd help me find my mother's murderer I wouldn't have lifted a finger for you."

I hung my head. Unable to deny the man I was at the time wasn't who I wanted to be. Wasn't who I should have been for my country. I was fighting so desperately to please everyone that I failed to find my own way. I tried not to be offended by her bluntness, her honesty.

"But you said you forgave me?" I remembered her embrace on the docks once we returned back to the rest of the gang.

She didn't respond for a moment as though she was thinking of the exact moment she realized she could rely on me.

Her bottom lip wobbled with impending tears as her arms went from being securely wrapped around her chest to bracing her body on the sand; she gripped the small granules until her knuckles turned pale.

I watched as she lurched forward, half expecting her to be sick, Katara's damp hair swinging with the force of the movement shielding her face.

"I have never been so disgusted with myself. I...I-I bloodbended. I reached inside that man. I felt the water in his blood and it was mine to command. I felt everything, every vein, every artery. I sensed his panic upon discovering he was at my will. I had never been filled with so much dread and shame and...power."

Her body now shook so violently I knew she was sobbing.

"But you didn't even react, you didn't look terrified or disgusted. You didn't say anything at all, almost as though you pretended it never happened. For a while I wondered if I was grateful for that or not. Sometimes I yearned for you to ask me about it. Just so I could justify my actions to you, as though they were even justifiable."

She paused. Taking deep breaths, wiping away her hot, angry tears. "This was about your mother, Katara. I understood your reasonings, and I'm certainly not going to make you talk to me about anything you don't want too. Especially at the time you were finally talking to me again. I didn't want to pry."

She shook her head vehemently, "It's not what she would have wanted. My actions made me no different than the man who murdered my mom." She cried openly now. Tears that could only be summoned from the loss of a parent.

I instinctively reached for her. My hand gripping her own, freeing it from the sand. It seemed to be the only thing holding her up.

She crumbled in my grasp.

I hugged her tightly, the wet fabric from her bindings seeped into my own clothes.

Releasing a deep breath, I produced enough heat to evaporate the water on us both. The moan that escaped her lips shocked me more than anything she just revealed to me.

"Katara," I cupped her cheek, pushing her hair out of her eyes forcing her to look at me. "You're nothing like the man who took your mother. Nothing."

Her lips were on mine seconds later. A slow, gentle kiss that had me questioning my sanity. She pulled away, her eyes never leaving my own.

"You're nothing like the man who took yours either." Her lips were back on mine with more force. We moved together. It was like nothing else I've ever felt as she backed me onto the sand below, my back hitting the ground with a heavy thud.

I felt like I couldn't breath. Like this spirit was taking everything I had and I willingly submitted. Her skin was icy cold but she didn't shiver, I couldn't help but place my hands on her petit waist once she straddled my own.

Katara's fingers danced devilishly across my chest until her knuckles gripped my obsidian locks between her fingers. With a slight tug she had me moaning in her mouth. I sat up, taking her with me, reluctantly stopping the kiss.

Her eyes were sinfully sultry. As though she was going to eat me alive. I gulped audibly as the fire grew larger behind us, mirroring my heart. "K-katara, what are you doing.."

She didn't respond. And I watched as her hands fell from my hair, clutching my black sweatshirt at the waist band before pulling it over my head. Her lips were on mine again before it hit the sand.

She tasted like fireberries and the ocean. The salt water from her swim earlier making her skin, lips included, deliciously decadent.

I forgot who I was when her tongue traced my bottom lip before sucking it into her mouth and biting harshly. The pads of her fingers tracing the scar on my abdomen almost lovingly, maybe even apologetically.

My arousal was evident. I could feel it straining against the confines of my pants as she tormented me. No doubt she could too. This needs to stop.

I pushed her back once again. "Katar-..." but her name died on my tongue. This woman. The look in her eyes and the smirk on her lips. I flipped us. Unable to stop myself. The fire roared to life at our feet.

My hands held her wrists, my thighs were inbetween her own as she instinctively wrapped them around my waist. Smirk still on her lips that border lined amusement.

My lips met her collarbone, teeth nibbling slightly before my tongue licked the length up her neck. The breathy gasp she made spurring me on. My mind flashing back to the dream I had months ago. Her naked body writhing beneath me.

"Quit fucking with me, Katara." I rasped in her ear, her back arching off the sand just from my voice.

"I've thought about taking you many times. Pushed against the balcony overlooking the city in my bedchamber, maybe beneath me writhing on my sheets, or splayed out on the table in the war room, never on the beach, however. But you know what's always the same?"

She shook her head violently, smirk gone as her chest began rising and falling rapidly. The oceans waves crashing against the shoreline, much closer to us now.

"Each, and every time, you scream my name so loud the spirits can hear you. Is that what you want, Princess Katara?"

She didn't speak seemingly lost in my words, or perhaps my bluntness. I wasn't sure which.

Her smirk now graced my lips. "That's what I thought." I moved to get off her, my hands releasing the grip I had on her wrists. Her legs falling from my waist. She sat up as I did.

My lips captured hers again, gentle as ever. A parting gift of sorts. My ears perking up as I heard a soft thud, thinking we had been spotted. Snapping my head up I searched the desolate beach. Seeing nothing I returned my gaze back to Katara.

My breath catching in my throat. The fire flickering but it's warm glow still ever present as it burned hotter than ever against my back.

"Agni.." I breathed.

They looked similar to what I had envisioned in my mind, but it was absolutely inconceivable to have imagined the perfection that they were.

She had removed her upper bindings.

Slightly tanned skin and dusky hard nipples greeted me. Almost begging me to touch.

"Please, Zuko. Please touch me." She barely whispered. I threatened to stop existing. Waiting for my body to blow away like the sand; pieces of me scattered across the world in locations only she knew about.

I reached out slowly, completely conscious of my trembling fingers as I encompassed the surprisingly warm skin. I exhaled and she leaned back on the sand as my fingers selfishly roamed her soft, supple skin.

The mounds were hardly contained by my hands as my fingertips ghosted across her nipples. Her eyes were snapped shut and I decided that simply wouldn't do.

"Katara, I want you to look at me." She seemed to be steadying her breathing before her eyes fluttered open. My lips met hers unable to contain myself. I kissed her gently, slowly as my fingers teased her chest, until her breathing became heavy.

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Despite her darker complexion, I still picked up on the rose colored blush that peppered her cheeks.

I kissed my way from her lips, down her neck, past her collarbone. I supported my weight with one hand, the other gripping her chest as I enveloped the neglected nipple in my mouth. She arched into me again, like she was trying to force more of herself into my mouth. I almost wanted to chuckle, I nipped at her in return.

"...Zuko.." She gasped. It was music to my ears. I sucked harder.