This fic contains eating disorders and anorexia as a major theme. Please take a step back if you don't think that's for you. It's written for several of the prompts for Zutara Drabble December 2020.
Katara is a very confident girl. She has always been a very confident girl— her mother had died when she was a child, and she had lifted her entire family up so they could stand, had tried to be everything to her entire tribe, everything her mother was. She fought against the sexists of the Northern Water Tribe for the right to be allowed under law to get an education, and she kicked Pakku's ass. And she has run over all of the obstacles she has met at university.
There had been her failed relationships— with roguish Jet, and after him, soft and sweet Aang. There had been the nights of crying over grades, the days of missing her home, and then . . . and then the tumultuous beginning of her relationship with Zuko. It has been hard, and she has cried more than a respectable amount of tears, but all this time . . . she's been strong, and resilient. She doesn't take shit. She doesn't care what anyone thinks about her but herself.
She has spent her life defying norms, working towards a medical degree to aid her community, spending time in the gym with Suki on the side. And yet . . .
As she scrolls through Azula's Instagram page, her head on Zuko's lap— he's watching TV above her— she frowns.
She knows Azula. She'd known the intelligent and strange girl before she'd known Zuko. Azula isn't exactly easy to get along with— she is awkward in a way which makes her rude, and she doesn't know how to talk to many others, so she sticks to her own circle of friends Katara doesn't quite know. Azula and her have verbally sparred plenty of times during class, and sometimes the conversation has erred past polite.
She doesn't quite understand how Zuko and Azula are related, but the fiery girl is still a part of her brother's life, and she's recovering from abuse that he still struggles with as well. So Katara is trying to bring herself up to speed with her boyfriend's sister before the dinner they're attending at Uncle Iroh's tomorrow.
The picture she is staring at is Azula in freshman year, her hands around her girlfriend, Ty Lee, and another girl. Zuko is at the edge of the picture, his moody glare downcast and his hand casually— tightly— on the girl's waist. When Katara squints, she can see two backpack straps on his shoulder.
"Who's this?" The girl is tall, dressed in black, and very, very thin. She doesn't look like Katara at all.
She flips the phone and Zuko quickly glances at it with his scarred eye before turning back to Omashu's Master Chefs. "Oh. That's Mai. I told you about her."
He has. Katara swallows. "I didn't know that she was friends with Azula."
"Yeah," he sighs. "She's a year older than me, so they don't spend a lot of time together. I think she went back to the Fire Nation after she finished college."
He's talking flippantly, which makes complete sense. They've talked about Mai before, briefly, and Aang— and Jet, who they both had brief flings with. And yet this picture is grating on her. Zuko dating her after Jet . . . they did not look the same, were certainly not the same gender, but Jet shared her rough skin and sense of adventure, her belief in good. This girl, Mai, looks absolutely nothing like her. She is long and waify, dressed in stripes and black, and tall, Zuko's height. She is very, very . . . thin.
Katara looks down at her stomach, relatively flat as it is, with her lying down against her boyfriend's warm body. Zuko is uncomfortably hot, so Katara tends not to wear many clothes around him. Today she is in a comfortable and slightly lacy bralette and sweatpants, light and casual. The swell of her breasts and slight rise of her stomach is visible from this angle, and it makes her feel sick.
"Seems like your type has really changed, hasn't it?"
Zuko frowns. "I mean, I guess it has? But c'mon Tara, let's not talk about the past . . ."
Katara, confident Katara, feels sick to her stomach. She shifts her face into Zuko's chest and then slides off of him, throwing her phone onto the side-table and rising to the bathroom. He complains from behind her.
"Hey Kat, what happened? Did I say something—"
"No," her brain is moving sickeningly fast. "No, Zuko. It's fine. I just need to pee."
"I—" she knows that he's worried. He's always worried. "— okay."
The sound of knives hitting chopping boards sings through the air again, and Katara slides into their bathroom, closing the door behind her with a dull thud. She doesn't move to the toilet— instead, she pauses by their floor-length mirror, tracing her entire body.
Her long, thick, brown hair— not like Mai's, dark and straight, hair which has a mind of its own. Her eyes, blue and deep. Her face, not sharp edges, round water tribe cheeks with a permanent blush. Her breasts, far larger than Mai's, taking up a significant part of her upper half. Her stomach and her waist— she presses her hands to her stomach and feels the skin give underneath, not taught and tight, not the way it should be.
She has love handles on her waist, down her thighs, covered with stretch marks, muscular thighs— not like Mai and the gap at hers. Her back, her butt relatively large— not at all like Mai's figure, straight up and down, the way Zuko likes. Like Jet's, skinny and lithe.
Zuko knew them— he dated them— he was seen with them, and now he's with her, someone so different, someone so much worse.
She wants to choke. She won't cry. She won't. She moves away from the mirror and pulls on a t-shirt, runs the faucet and places cold water against her eyes.
"Katara? Is everything okay?"
She nods resolutely at the mirror, her heart heavy. Everything is going to be okay. Zuko is going to get what he wants, even if that isn't her. She can be everything for him.