chapter: out with the tides
setting: the fire nation, seven years after the end of the war.
disclaimer: I own nothing.
author's notes: make me a bird of prey, so I can rise above, let it all fall away. -florence
Sokka is cursing, loudly.
He's off his game; gotten soft, he thinks. It has been so long since he's fought in an actual battle, and the strange, dark clad benders that circle him are not going easy on him. Flanked on either side by Kyoshi warriors, Suki at his elbow, he moves with them as they dodge and weave through the attacks as they come.
All of a sudden, a crackle of lightning splits the sky in two and Sokka hears a scream tear through the humid air that he would have recognized anywhere. He nearly drops his weapon, horror paralyzing him for a moment as he chokes on his sister's name, bile rising thickly in his throat.
"-Katara."
Ozai's bending is weaker than before, Zuko notes, feeling the weight in his movements, the struggle his father shows in shifting between movements. The once-Phoenix King doesn't speak - unusual, he usually spouts such eloquent, hateful words.
Aang must have just regifted his bending to him. can he do that?
It barely even seems like his father; it seems like a hollow body with the echoes of his father's bitter fury rattling in its bones. Zuko focuses on the flow of his breath, on the sturdiness of his movements; he moves through his stances almost automatically. There is no challenge in this battle, no struggle; he feels as if he is fighting a puppet.
The grand plan to overthrow his new rule seems so incredibly, insultingly simple all at once. Gather followers, train them for battle. Raise a coup. Place a broken, empty Ozai upon the throne.
Eliminate the Fire Lord.
Become Avatar and Fire Lord, controlling Ozai on the throne.
And then what?
Zuko feels nauseous as he realizes Aang's intentions were to try and acquire Katara in any way possible - that all of it was simply to remove the things she cared about from this world so that he would be all she had left.
He knew her family would be here. He knew the Kyoshi Warriors would stand with them.
He just wanted them all gone in one swoop - one murderous, awful night.
A sudden gust of wind nearly knocks him over as he lands from a spinning kick. was it chance? was it Aang, hoping to watch as his desires were made real before his eyes?
Even so, the gust is enough to knock Zuko out of his base. It's enough to trip him. It's enough for Ozai to aim a killing blow directly at his son's heart. Zuko scrambles as he realizes the precariousness of the position he's fallen into, and he tries to prepare.
Zuko knows his friends are fighting below him, he knows they're burning, dying - all for him. How is he deserving of such loyalty? He has to make it through this so he can help them. He has to make it through this so he can save her. He has to make it.
He curls inward to protect himself from the blow, ready to redirect the flames, ready for the agony that accompanies the blow, ready to meet whatever end awaits him, but it never comes.
Katara is standing over him, hands cracked in blood bending poses; Ozai's eyes wide with shock, with utter horror. There is a crunching, snapping noise and Zuko watches as his father's neck snaps in two and he collapses, dead weight upon the ground, eyes dimming as he falls.
At first, Zuko wants to laugh with exhausted relief at the sight of his wife; but the sound slowly ebbs into a tearing, awful sob as he realizes the blow meant for him has hit her.
her; his beautiful, fiery wife that he has barely been able to tell how much he loved her.
Katara's eyes slide to her Fire Lord as he reaches for her, a smile curving up the corners of her mouth; blood stains her teeth. Her name is ripping from his mouth, over and over and over again and he can't move quickly enough to get to her before her body begins to crumple to the ground.
a thousand memories are spinning through his mind then, every moment he has shared with her, every glimpse of her eyes flashing before him.
There is a black hole where Ozai's fist has connected with her torso, and Zuko nearly vomits at the sight and the smell of burning flesh.
He catches her before her head hits the ground, his hand cradling the back of her skull gently, gathering her small, limp body into his shaking arms.
"Glad you're safe." She murmurs from flaking, cracked lips, a drip of dark blood slipping from her lips.
"Katara, Agni, I had him, why did you do that -" Zuko is barely able to speak, his chest heaving with hyperventilating, deep gasps, frantically clutching her as close as he can manage. He is so afraid he is hurting her, holding her too tightly, fingers gripping her with a bruising, white-knuckled strength.
Her eyes are oddly serene.
"Love you, always." Katara's voice is as thin as spidersilk, rasping through wet, sticking lungs and he can hear the blood in her words. Her fingers are grazing his cheeks with the lightest of motions before her eyelids slide closed and her hand falls limply to her chest.
The world falls silent.
The Avatar's cry of agony rattles the world, then, a howl that shatters the windows in the buildings around them.
Zuko can't breathe. He is staring without blinking at the body in his arms that suddenly feels so cold.
"I never meant - " Aang begins, falling to his knees, slipping on the blood stained flagstones beneath his feet. He lifts his hands to his eyes then, horror engulfing him as he realizes the deep carmine blood on his palms is Katara's.
"-never meant for the girl to die?" The sudden, firm voice comes from thin air and Aang jolts in surprise at the sound. Fear is flooding his face, and his fragile, lithe body is quivering.
"Roku, I'm sorry, I had no intentions -"
Zuko is ignoring the cacophony of sounds that are beginning around him. He is moving the hair out of Katara's face with bloodstained fingers, his tears falling on her cheeks.
love you, always.
Roku materializes beside Aang, his head bowed in obvious distress as he looks upon the scene before him. Zuko does not notice. He gently disentangles the waterbender's body from his own, swallowing hard against the rising bile in his throat; he lets her rest against the stone as he gets to his feet.
The Fire Lord wordlessly bends, scooping the broken body of the girl he loved so into his arms as he stands; her blood stains his skin, drips from the ends of his hair, following the pair like a length of crimson ribbon. The edges of her clothing are singed, burns flecking every bare inch of skin.
There is a black, faintly smoking wound over her heart.
"Avatar Aang, you have brought a deep shame to the title you bear today." Roku's voice is commanding - but weary.
Aang falls heavily to his hands, then, a scream tearing from his lungs, unaware as hundreds of his past lives appear alongside Roku in a never ending sea of faces.
"You will face punishment for your actions in the spirit world. We've tried to caution you countless times and you have upset the balance of the world by pursuing your own selfish desires."
Zuko casts one long look at the Avatar, eyes empty, mouth wide with gasping, panting breaths.
"I won't kill you, Aang," He whispers, and the monk does nothing but stare.
"You'll have to live with what you've done."
With those words hanging between them, Zuko begins the slow descent into the courtyard below, his legs shaking with exhaustion, Katara's body heavy in his arms.
"You accounted for every detail, Aang. Everything except that perhaps, she loved him more than she cared about her own life." Roku's words are just loud enough for Zuko to hear as he walks away - and he wants to hurl his aching body off of the palace walls at the sound of them.
her life was always worth more than his.
Every step he takes is heavier than the last.
The air smells like rust, he thinks; with every painful breath he draws, he wants to throw up. He can hear the battle raging below him, the sounds of his friends fighting all around him; nothing matters now, nothing except the girl in his arms. He can't tell if she's breathing. He can't tell if her heart is still beating.
But he has to keep her alive, somehow. He has to keep moving forward. He has to get her to safety.
He should have taken that blow.
He can hear the wild wails of the Avatar behind him, cries that tear the world in two. He can hear the clash of metal all around him, feel the rumble of the earth beneath his feet. He can hear the vague, far off sound of someone screaming.
"Zuko, look at me."
His eyes focus suddenly, snapping to as he realizes his arms are empty and Iroh is standing before him, his hands on his shoulders as he shakes the Fire Lord roughly.
were the screams coming from his own mouth?
"-Uncle." He swallows thickly against the bile in his throat as he catches a glimpse of the blood staining his arms, his skin, his clothes -
"She's with the healers, now, Zuko. It is out of our hands. We must help our friends now." Iroh's voice is oddly calm, given the circumstances, Zuko thinks offhandedly. He is numb.
"Zuko, we must join the Kyoshi Warriors. They're outnumbered." Iroh's voice is gently firm as he shakes Zuko slightly on the word outnumbered for emphasis.
"Outnumbered. Yes, we should help them." Zuko's tongue is heavy in his mouth, his throat closing with panic as he opens and closes his hands a few times, stunned.
"People are dying, Zuko! Now is not the time for hesitation!" Iroh's tone has changed, and the snap of his rebuke is enough to spur Zuko into action.
Dutifully, he follows the Dragon of the West into the fray of the battle in the courtyard beyond his palace. He hardly even remembers a weapon. He wonders dimly if he even needs one - if she dies, so does he.
He simmers with a quiet rage that is more than enough to fuel his bending, more than enough for him to see the enemy as a faceless entity that has done nothing but take his wife from him.
At first, Suki is relieved to see the Fire Lord; but when she sees the expression on his face and the merciless way he lets fire pour from his palms, she is suddenly more afraid than anything.
Even Sokka is somewhat frightened by the emptiness in his friend's eyes - the hollow way he stares confirms the worst possible outcome.
she must not have survived.
It is nearly dawn before Zuko sees his wife again.
They have a small collection of the Avatar's following in chi blocking chains. There were few that survived, and those that live are staring with haunted, horrified eyes. The ground is littered with bodies; many are charred remains, the aftermath of Zuko's arrival on the battlefield.
Ozai's body has been recovered. The Avatar sits in a meditative pose, arrow glowing, obviously not in their world for the time being. Zuko supposed he was meeting some sort of punishment in the spirit world.
For all intents and purposes, they have won.
Zuko feels nothing like celebrating.
Sokka is sitting on the marbled floor of the throne room with his sword draped across his lap and his arm hanging limply about Suki's shoulders like a shroud. Neither of them can meet the Fire Lord's eyes. Blood is matted in their hair; the salt from their tears drying on their cheeks. They are staring blankly at the ground, unable to speak, unable to move; paralyzed by grief and exhaustion and fear.
When Iroh leads his nephew to his chambers, he is afraid of what Zuko will find. Afraid that the grief will envelope him like a tidal wave, afraid that she will not wake; that he'll have to do this alone.
He hardly recognizes her; pale, drawn, her small body swimming in the stark white sheets of his bed. Burns marr every inch of her almond skin, and Zuko feels sick, flinching as he surveys the scarring with an eye that knows the pain of such things.
The healers tell him she hasn't yet regained consciousness, that she screamed his name; they pull him aside to tell him that she has lost her child in hushed, painful whispers.
Did he know, they ask plainly, concern etched into their faces. He nods hollowly in response.
Their child had been a waterbender.
All of a sudden, the room tilts on its edge and he can barely stand. It takes all of his willpower to move, to sink into the chair by her bedside, overcome as he traces the blueish veins on the back of her hand with his pointer finger.
He can feel his shoulders shaking with convulsive sobs, but no tears come.
He remembers begging her to stay put. He remembers the finality in her tone when she defied him, the frantic brightness of the revenge she desired (no - needed) burning in her eyes.
He remembers when she first told him she was with child. His throat tightens at the memory, at the recollection of the feeling of his hands on the soft swell of her stomach; the hopeful gleam of her eyes.
Zuko wonders, distantly, if there is anything he could have done to have saved his little family.
His mind reels in the sudden quiet of the royal suite and he thinks for the first time he is feeling the full enormity of loss; his chest aches, his eyes too dry for tears at this point.
Hours pass, and the Fire Lord is vaguely aware of the nurses drifting in and out of the room, placing cold compresses on her forehead, feeding her lifeless body spoonfuls of broth; he can do nothing but sit and stare emptily and wonder if she will ever wake again.
will he ever feel whole again?
The nurses comment on his state of dress, his torn armor, his bloodied hands; they try to convince him to get up to bathe, at the very least - he shakes his head at them listlessly, waving them away one by one.
her chest rises and falls; she is breathing, but she is not alive.
Sokka visits once but does not address Zuko at all. He does nothing but sit by his sister's side, gathering her limp, scarred hands into his and cradling them to his heart as if he could wake her with his own heartbeat.
Suki cries silently over his shoulder, unable to even touch the girl she calls a sister. Zuko watches her wide, liquid eyes drip tears onto the crimson coverlet, her hands clutching at each other in obvious, painful distress.
Sokka stays there for several hours until Suki pulls him away with a half-hearted demand that he rest. Neither of them even so much as speak to the exhausted Fire Lord pooled in the chair by Katara's bedside.
Fitting, he muses to himself, that they blame him for this. He was the Fire Lord, after all, and Sokka had entrusted his only sister to his care.
He should have died in her place, he thinks, he should have taken the blow to the heart.
He refuses the food that the nurses bring him, refuses the tea they attempt to place in his hands.
Fire Lord Zuko does nothing but stare at the woman in his bed with a quiet agony and pretends that perhaps, she is merely sleeping peacefully.
He isn't sure when he falls asleep.
The next thing he is aware of is light streaming across his face as someone opens the curtainsand he flinches, throwing his arm over his face. It takes him a long moment to realize that he is not sleeping in his own bed. It takes him even longer to remember why Katara isn't by his side.
His hand reaches for her instinctually, searching the cold sheets and finding nothing but silence and emptiness.
"How long?" Zuko rasps into the room, expecting no response. He feels the tight bindings of bandages around his torso, realizes someone has bathed him; but he can smell the blood in the air as if he had just staggered off of the battlefield.
"You've been asleep for two days." Iroh appears at his side, his face pale and drawn with distress. Zuko shoves himself messily upward, attempting to sit before dizziness slams him and he curls back into the pillows behind him. He hates this, hates the weakness that infects his body, hates the trembling of his limbs and the shaking of his hands.
"Is she -" He starts, his cheeks flaming as his eyes smart with tears. He is not able to finish the sentence.
Iroh reaches for his nephew comfortingly, but the way he grasps his hands only feels like a confirmation of Zuko's worst fears.
"She's awake, Zuko. But I warn you - she is not the same."
thank you for reading my little story, one chapter at a time for the past six years.
we're close to the end now! I appreciate all of you so much.
-nightfall26