Day 5: Soulmate Marks
"One Touch and I'll Ignite"
Katara has known for her entire life that her soulmate is out there somewhere, waiting for her to stumble upon them.
She has memorized the facts of Soulmate Touches since she had first learned about them when she was young: she would know her soulmate instantly, for when they touched her, it would leave a distinctive mark on her skin, almost like a tattoo. Her skin would tingle lightly before the mark would appear. Her soulmate would have an identical mark where they had touched her. If she touched them first, it would be vice versa.
For her parents, the mark is a snow-covered mountain beneath a full moon. The mark had appeared as a faintly-blue color that had appeared on the inside of their right biceps when her father had caught her mother by the arm as she had stumbled in the snow.
For Sokka and Yue, it was on the palms of their hands, the delicate outlines of a white koi fish with a black mark on its back.
For Gran-Gran and Pakku, it's ocean waves on their shoulder blades, where Gran had rested her hand.
Katara has dedicated hours of her time to reading other peoples' stories, looking at images of the various marks soulmates leave on each other. Every mark is unique. No one expects it. But it happens to everyone at some point, sometimes as early as childhood. Sometimes it doesn't happen until much later in life, like with Gran-Gran and Pakku.
She thinks that Sokka is lucky. He'd met Yue during his senior year of high school. They were captains of their respective debate teams, and, after a competition, they'd shaken hands. And bam, they were soulmates. Katara had watched their relationship blossom from friendship to something more, the whole time waiting longingly for her own soulmate to appear.
Katara has waited in anxious impatience. Each stranger she meets, she can't help but brush her hand against their arm or back and wait for that tingling sensation to break out across her skin like Yue had told her about, the feeling that would tell her she'd found the one.
But it doesn't come, not throughout her childhood, not through high school, heck, not even in college. Katara watches plenty of her friends find their soulmates. She's happy for Aang when he meets a girl named Toph and suddenly there's the outline of a badgermole on the back of his shaved head (Toph's first touch had been to slap him upside the head for something silly he'd said). Even though Katara and Aang had gone out for a while back in high school, they'd known they weren't meant for each other.
Katara goes out into the adult world without a soulmate, constantly looking. She tries not to let it consume her, but as Sokka and Yue welcome their first baby into the world, and six months later, Aang and Toph tie the knot, she can't help but feel a little disheartened. What if she's like Gran-Gran and she doesn't meet her soulmate until she's old and gray?
It's not that Katara can't date other people. She can, and she does. And some of them, she even loves. But it's hollow. She can feel that something is missing. That they just aren't meant to be. She doesn't feel that it would be fair to the other to stay in the relationship for too long when she knows her heart belongs to another. So she always ends it when that feeling becomes too strong.
She goes through the motions of her life, and as time passes and adult responsibilities take over, she finally loses her focus on finding her soulmate.
Katara's busy schedule has her picking up the habit of stopping at a particular tea shop every day after her shift. These days it seems to be the only thing that allows her to stop for a moment and actually breathe.
She sits at the table in the corner by the window and reads her book. She orders a vanilla chai tea with whipped cream on it, and she remembers the barista from then on because he'd made some joke about how strange it was for her to want whipped cream with her tea.
The barista is cute, with dark hair he always wears pulled into a messy knot on the crown of his head, and warm honey eyes. He has a scar on the left side of his face, and Katara knows from her medical textbooks and schooling that it's a burn scar. She wonders how he got it, but they never get more friendly than customer-and-employee. She does, however, learn that his name is Zuko.
He's there most of the time when she comes in, and eventually, it gets to the point where he has her drink waiting for her at her table. The first time he does this, Katara meets his gaze across the tea shop with a surprised half-smile. He just gives her a shrug in return, his own lips curving upwards into a crooked smirk, busy with other customers. But it becomes routine for them.
She realizes after a while that she's grown a bit of a crush on the barista. They've never touched, ever. While she doesn't believe he might be her soulmate (mostly because she's given up hope), she can't help but notice how he seems to avoid all personal contact with any customers that come into the shop. He sets their drinks on the counter instead of handing it to them, and he gingerly accepts their money, always careful.
But Katara decides that, regardless of whether or not he's her soulmate, she wants to ask him out. So after a few weeks, she finally gets the nerve to ask him out to dinner. To her surprise, Zuko tells her no. He's polite in his rejection, which almost makes it worse. With his, I appreciate it, but I'm sorry still echoing in her head, she leaves the tea shop.
Katara doesn't go back for almost a month, still embarrassed. But she eventually gets over it, and she really does miss the tea. So one day when she's particularly stressed and tired, she decides to go back.
Zuko sees her come in, and she can tell he's a little surprised by the way his eyes widen, but then he smiles at her as she walks up to the counter.
"Vanilla chai with whip, coming right up," Zuko says to her, the corner of his lips still pulled up in a half-smile.
"Thanks," Katara says with a returning smile of her own.
She pays for her drink, noting the diligent way he avoids brushing her hand when he takes her credit card, and goes to her table to wait. After a few minutes, Zuko brings it out to her. She's surprised when he lingers by her table for just a moment.
"I'm really sorry, about last month," Zuko says, his husky voice quiet. "You seem like a really nice person, but I don't...really date."
Katara looks up at him, surprised. "Oh. It's...okay. I'm not upset." Anymore, she thinks but doesn't say. She clears her throat. "Um, can I ask why?"
He chews his bottom lip for a moment, and Katara thinks it's adorable. Then he rubs the back of his neck. "It's just...the whole Soulmate Touch thing, ya know? It...I've seen it not work out so well for some people, and I just don't wanna go through the whole thing."
"Oh," Katara says. She offers him a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I understand. Thank you...for telling me."
But she doesn't understand, not really. She's never heard of it not working out for anyone, ever. But it's clearly something that Zuko believes in, and she can't help but wonder if there's more than he's letting on.
She doesn't press him any further. She takes her tea to her table and tries not to feel the sting of rejection yet again (she's over it, really, she is).
And that's that, at least for a few more months. Katara wonders who he was talking about. She's never heard of anyone's soulmates not being a good match. It just doesn't seem possible. But she respects what Zuko told her, and she politely backs off.
One day, after about three months, with the rain pouring down, she hurries into the tea shop. But she doesn't see the caution: wet floor sign just inside the door, and her shoes slip on the slick tiles. Katara falls onto her backside, the air leaving her lungs in a rush.
Thankfully, the teashop is empty, so no one sees her embarrassing fall. But Zuko must have heard the bell above the door when she came in, and he comes out of the back room, his eyes widening when he sees her on the floor.
"Spirits, Katara, are you okay?" Zuko hurries out from behind the counter and comes over to her.
"Other than a bruised ego, I'm fine," Katara says as she pushes herself into a sitting position.
Suddenly Zuko is there to help her. He takes her wrist in one hand and her elbow in the other and pulls her onto her feet. Katara meets his gaze and then she feels it: a tingling sensation on the inside of her wrist where he'd first touched her. She can see it in Zuko's widening eyes that he's felt it too, and he quickly lets her go, stepping back as if he's been burned.
Katara pulls back the sleeve of her jacket and she sees something that wasn't there before. It's her Soulmate Touch. There, on the inside of her wrist, is the depiction of a lunar eclipse, with a crescent moon laid over the sun.
Katara looks up at Zuko again, searching his face. He's looking at her with a mix of shock and trepidation. He swallows hard.
"It's you," she breathes.
A/N: I didn't skip the day 3 and 4 prompts. I'm doing a mix of art and written prompts (mostly written). You can find the art for those prompts on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Deviantart.
Deviant art links:
Day 3: Cuddling for Warmth - the-savage-daughter/art/Zutara-Month-Day-3-Cuddling-For-Warmth-875177828
Day 4: Bending Practice - the-savage-daughter/art/Zutara-Month-Day-4-Bending-Practice-875322933