Chapter 12: empty shells


Zuko sits in a Japanese-style garden, by a huge pond in the center of the courtyard, and watches baby turtle-ducks splashing in the surface. Their mother turtle-duck keeps dipping her head in the water, lifting it up and swallowing a sip, then dipping her head in the water again. The boy likes to watch a new family, the little turtle-ducks are still yellow, recently hatched, he counted them—five, together with their mother turtle-duck.

Everything around excites Zuko. It's late spring now, summer is coming soon, all nature is blooming. He loves spring when nature comes alive and the garden explodes in a variety of colors. He sits on the stony edge, his feet under his nates, a light wind flutters his black hair tied in a ponytail atop his occiput. The sun shines timidly on Zuko's back. As usual he is dressed in royal crimson-silver clothes, which indicates that he is the son of the Fire Lord Ozai and his wife Ursa.

The mother turtle-duck shakes off the water from her feathers, and it splashes in all directions. The Prince steps away from the stony edge and lies down on the lush grass. His hands go under his head, golden eyes dart to the fluffy clouds. There is a bonsai tree on a small mound, that casts a shadow on Zuko's face. He closes his eyes and listens. He feels like in paradise in the garden, he can hear a purling fountain nearby, which he recently fell into with Mai when Azula put an apple on her head and set it on fire.

He has spent so much time in this garden that even with his eyes closed he can tell all the details. It has a large variety of flora, with many flowering trees as red maples, willows, sakuras, mugo pines and vibrantly colored flowers at the edges of stone-paved pathways, and lanterns that illuminate the garden at night. One of those pathways lead to a gazebo built right next to the pond on the left, and a little further the stairs lead to a tea house built where the pond narrows. Uncle used to sit in that tea house, but now he's gone to war in Ba Sing Se. Zuko sighs deeply, he misses Uncle. Misses him very much.

"Hello, Zuzu, what are you doing here?" Azula's voice reaches his ears and his mood immediately darkens. "You're just sitting in the garden, but you should be learning, you're bad at firebending, you know?"

"I'll set your head on fire, then we'll see which on is bad!" Zuko sits up abruptly, his gentle face features now looking angry.

Azula circles around her still seated brother, her red dress flaunting in front of his face as she stops. He turns his head gloomily into the gazebo, unwilling to look at his sister.

"I know you told Mom I threw stones at turtle-ducklings." She says, leaning towards him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't lie to me, dummy. Mom said don't do that again, but if you don't tell her, I'll give you a fire-choco. I know you like them."

"It's wrong. You can't hurt duckies."

"Yes, I can. Want to see more?" She giggles, runs to the pond, carelessly grabs the baby turtle-duck and lifts him out of the water.

Zuko sudenly jumps out of his resting place. "Stop it, Azula!"

"Why should I?" She raises the duck in front of her face and watches for a while as he wriggles around trying to escape, his short tiny legs move in the air as he tries to find the ground, until he finally decides to hide into the shell.

His poignant quacking makes Zuko burst into tears. "STOP IT!" He yells shaking his head.

The mother turtle-duck gets out of the pond and tries to bite Azula, but she just kicks her away and she falls back into the water, between her other babies. The girl's fingers get into the shell to pull the duckling out, a treacherous smile can be seen on her face. "Come on, you little pest! I'll still scrape you out of there!"

"LET HIM GO!" Zuko commands, tears running down his face. He wants to attack his sister, but refrains, because he knows he'll lose anyway. As always. She is much better than him, smarter, of course, because she is a prodigy. And he is just a scared little boy, as Dad had told him. He can't even defend himself, how can he defend somebody else?

Knowing him, Azula just smiles with her evil smile, and suddenly gasps and frowns in pain—the little turtle-duck probably bit her finger. She runs out of patience and releases fire from her fingertip inside the shell, then drops the turtle in the grass, and he quacks painfully for the last time.

"NO!" Zuko sees the smoke rising from the shell, his eyes fill with infinite horror and he runs to the baby. When his knees with a hard thud fall on the ground, his hands gently lift the shell and what is left in it. The turtle-duck no longer moves. He will never move again. Only an empty shell will remain as a memory. Untouched and hard, unbreakable even by fire.

"Oops, I probably overdid!" Azula giggles, covering her mouth with her hand. "Never mind! That's what happens when you don't listen to me. Dad is right though, the weak die, only the strong survive. Never forget that, Zuzu, it'll save your life one day!"

And she just runs away, laughing. Zuko still kneels on the ground, frozen in pure terror. His eyes are large and full of pain, hands still holding the turtle-duck. It's not fair, he doesn't deserve to die, he didn't do anything wrong! The boy's shoulders tremble more and more every second, he sees nothing around him because of tears in his eyes, but still rises and runs to the Palace, cradling the baby close to his chest, screaming for his mother.

And the turtle-duck no longer moves...

He will never move again...


"Zuko?" Someone leans very close to his face. "Zuko, are you waking up?"

Before opening his eyes, he feels a light creature above. Like a butterfly. But when his eyes slowly open, he sees a pair of blue orbs in front of him. Those orbs remind him of two big lakes, but it's just eyes. They look at his face with curiosity, as if checking if he fully understands his surroundings. Those eyes blink a couple of times, then the face retracts, but before that he manages to see a small smile.

It's Katara, now he clearly understands. He tries to sit up, but she gently pushes him back, her hands presses his shoulders to the mattress and he sinks in again.

"Everything's alright. No one is going to hurt you. Don't rush yourself to stand up. Are you hungry? Maybe you want to use the bathroom?"

"What happened?" He asks in a raspy voice, his eyes wandering around the room. He sees a completely different place, not the one they were before; the room looks much nicer and tidier, freshly brewed jasmine tea and fruit smell lingers in the air.

"Your body was in shock after... an accident." The girl speaks carefully and watches his reaction. "It shut down for three days, apparently to avoid the stress. During that time we moved closer to the city, it was too dangerous to stay there, the house was in poor shape after the storm. You didn't feel or remember anything?"

Zuko shakes his head. "No."

"As I guessed. Even better for you." Katara goes to the chest, which is placed by the window, and opens the heavy lid, looking for something inside. "Now we are here. This house is in use, but the couple living here allowed us to stay for a while. Sokka found a job somewhere on the deck so we have money for your medication." She is silent for a moment. "You better don't move your right hand much. You can move left though. But you'll recover much faster by taking the medicine so don't worry."

She speaks with her back turned to him, Zuko slowly sits up and sees her hands deftly getting in the bottom of the chest and pulling some clothes out. She places them on a cleanly waxed wooden floor, they are neatly folded, but she closes the chest, unfolds them and goes to Zuko. "Here, now that Sokka is working, we have had enough money to buy you this. It's nothing special compared to royal clothing, but you're wearing this ragged tunic all the time, so I thought..."

She kneels next to his bed, clutching clothes and looking at him, waiting for him to say something, but he delays for some reason, his eyes are now facing the blanket, he thinks about something and she tries to guess. Maybe he's thinking about the day he tried to attempt a suicide? Does he regret? Or does he beg for the spirits to allow him to die?

"She used to kill baby turtle-ducks." Suddenly he says it as a straight fact.

"Wha— who?" Katara gives him a confused look.

"Azula. She was killing turtle-ducks when she was very young. She just wanted to hurt me, but still... What do you think, could she kill me as easily as she talks about it?"

The Waterbender looks disturbed a little and tries to understand what he has in mind.

"I kept thinking she was lying. She always lies and I still fall for it. But she can actually kill. That's the difference between us. I may have chased you, but I never wanted to hurt or kill you, I just wanted to go home. But what if you're too weak and she kills you all as soon as she has a chance?" The corners of his lips goes down so he looks like he is about to cry. "What if she kills you?"

Katara twitches. She was wrong, again. He doesn't think about the day he tried to commit suicide, he's probably trying to forget or avoid it. He worries about them now. About her. The girl bit her lip, not knowing what to say. She can't allow him to avoid what is inevitable. She has to know why he wants to die so badly.

"She won't kill me, because I'm strong. I try to fight for myself and for the people who love me." She finally speaks. "You have to be strong too, you have to fight the pain, not to end it by dying."

"I can't fight. I can't even help anyone in such a miserable state. I have no one to support me, everyone I loved is dead or missing, because I'm too weak to protect them. No matter what I do, it's just... never enough, they all leave me, and eventually you will do that too!"

He tries to cover his face with a blanket, hiding his tears, but Katara grabs his wrist and they freeze in their poses. "No, Zuko, I'm not gonna leave you."

"How should I know? You felt disgusted the day I showed up here, you didn't want to heal me, but you were forced to." Zuko pushes her hand away. "How should I know you aren't disgusted to see me now?"

"No, I'm not disgusted at all."

"Why? I should fight but I'm just lying here like an empty shell, because I'm tired of living like this, I'm tired of fighting. I was never good enough. I will never be. I'm not good enough for you... someone else... or even myself. I love my Uncle. I love him more than anything. I thought I'd give my life for him, but I was too weak again, and I left him in danger like a coward. And he loved me, he believed me, but now he is missing because of me. He will never love me again, because if he loved, he would have found me already. But he didn't. Or didn't want to. Or he's dead. I don't know!" He stops for a second to take a breath. "And now, tell me, Katara, how can't you be disgusted with me?"

"Zuko..." Katara tries to control the pain that settles inside her. "You are the strongest person I have ever met. You may not believe it yourself, but I know you are strong, very, very strong, that you have a good heart, because you feel sorry for everything you have done." She gently strokes his arm and tries to smile. "But you can't keep the pain in you. You can't suffer alone."

"Yes, I can." He says firmly.

"No, you can't. My heart breaks when you lie all alone in the dark. Please... I'm begging you, Zuko, I want to understand you more, I want to help you get out of that suffering. I told you, it doesn't matter that you have followed us all over the world, that you have tried to catch Aang and risked your life hundreds of times to accomplish your task, I will never leave you."

"The only thing you could do to help me was kill me the day I asked you to." He says in a quiet voice, unable to raise his eyes and look at her. "Instead, you hurt me even more. Like everyone else does."

"I know, but it was a mistake, you wanted to kill yourself, so I hit you, but I didn't want to hurt you, I wanted to save you. I would never kill a person, never in my life. I'm not a murderer, I already told you that, remember? No matter how hard it is, I will fight for you, we can make it together."

"But you would have done me a favor, that wouldn't be a murder... It wouldn't even hurt... or it wouldn't have hurt the way it hurts now."

"You don't understand, Zuko!" Katara is no longer able to control herself, she gets up from the bed, her breathing becomes frequent and she speaks whimpering, but at the same time her voice sounds angry. "I still had hope that I could heal you, I knew I could do it, but every time you push me away and close yourself in, I feel helpless! And you know why? Because of YOU! You have made me miserable, because I'm not able to heal you! And when you pull yourself lower and lower, at the same time you pull yourself down with ME, do you understand now?! If YOU die, you'll kill ME too!"

She tries to keep her voice angry, but fails, big tears run down her cheeks. She shakes her head, covering her ears with her hands, as if trying to escape from the words Zuko had said, but his voice still echoes intrusively in her head. The girl falls back on the mattress, her fingers disappearing into her brown thick hair. She can't take it any longer.

She used to kill baby turtle-ducks... She liked to leave empty shells. With no souls. Without life. Now they shall rest in peace, buried in the garden by a bonsai tree... but they could move once, because they weren't empty...

Zuko sits in shock. He doesn't want Katara to become that empty soulless shell. To become as miserable as he is now. With hope slowly fading away. She always cared for him, but he was too blind to realize. It's too much for him now. He can't help himself from crying. He wants to apologize, but the words get stuck in his throat like a lump. There is no way in the world for him to recount what he feels. He doesn't want to see her tears, ever again. With a sudden movement, the Prince grabs her by the hand and tugs her closer, and Katara finds herself in his arms. They are both crying.

"I'm sorry." Zuko snivels. "I wanted to suffer alone, I didn't want you to suffer with me. I didn't want to make you miserable. I thought it would be better. But I was wrong."

"Will you try? Will you try not to hurt me anymore?" She asks, sobbing, grasping his shoulders with her hands and feeling his warmth all over her body. The warmth that shows that he is still alive, that he is not such an empty shell.

"I promise." He whispers, retracts slowly, looks into her big azure eyes as if unable to believe that she is real, that she exists. His hands move timidly on her cheeks, brushing her tears away. "She used to kill baby turtle-ducks. She liked to leave empty shells. But she won't break me again."


To be continued...


AN: Aaaaaaaah, I'm crying now! ;_; Zutara wins! I planned Zutara anyway, and you guys voted for this ship too! Sorry, Toko fans, I just can't resist, I resisted long enough! I wanted so badly for Katara and Zuko kiss at the end of this chapter, but decided to stop right there, it's just too soon, Zuko is still broken. ;_;