a/n: Just a one-shot. Read on and see for yourself what I've got in store for you guys today.
Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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'I did not know any better. Moths are not supposed to know; they only come to the light. And the light looked so inviting, there was no resisting it. Moths are not supposed to know, one does not even know one is a moth until one's wings are burned.'
-Arturo B. Rotor, Zita
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She couldn't distinguish between the pain anymore; from the feral agony welling inside her, much like as the forest collapsed in ashes.
She only saw red, and her own screams were inaudible to her amidst the thunders of clashing metal and howls of defeat.
She couldn't tell anymore if she was crying blood, or bleeding tears.
She gazed reproachfully once again at the young boy she held too tight, too dearly, in her aching, weary arms. He looked so tender, so tranquil, so eternally at rest as he lay there, still, unmoving, the moonlight reflecting on his face, with scarlet blood drying darkly on one side of his tattooed head.
He was dead.
The thought made her bite her lip in hopeful uncertainty; of course, this must not be it. There must be a way she can pry open those kind eyes and bask again in their playful grayness. Surely, there is a way she can force the very breath from her own living chest and into his motionless form.
He couldn't have been killed in one mere battle.
The cruelty of reality, and of life, was that it was now departed from him.
But it can not be Aang. Aang, the Avatar. Aang, the hope of the world and its dying nations. Aang, the boy she rescued from the frozen confinement of the iceberg. Aang, the boy whose eyes sparkled with sincerity and trust in his actions. Aang, whom she's been with all this time. Aang, whose careless voice and hesitant laughter rang audibly in her ears when she reprimanded him so.
No, not Aang, not the Aang who was the best thing she had ever had to both a friend and a companion…
How easily the realization dawned on her stung her torpid-stated mind; like the cold air when it meets a wound, torn and sickeningly bleeding like some everlasting ruby river; like a spilt-second prick from a thorn on a deceivingly exquisite red rose.
She wanted to cry some more, perhaps to wash away the grief and the sorrow by the shimmering water that fell from once-shining cerulean eyes. But she couldn't, as the wind had dried the tears on her unusually pallid skin, and as her loosened brown hair swept over her downcast face and wiped away the lingering moisture.
She clutched his body closer to her, a last, frail shard of a dying wish, a desperate grip on something that was once so beautiful and active and real but was long gone, so unmercifully snatched away from frantic, weakened hands…
The torrid skirmish heatedly raged on, not even meters from where she was brought down to her scalded knees, but she had never before cared less.
Those damn pirates and Earth warriors and Fire soldiers can fight as much as their wicked and greedy hearts may desire.
Aang was dead; and she will never fail to remember how his innocent blood stained the brittle ground of the battlefield.
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A shadow suddenly loomed over them; its darkness temporarily blocking the dreadful sight of death and blood and pain, and, most noticeably, the ever-consuming crimsoned bullion flames of fire.
She warned herself she wouldn't; but it was instinct that caused her to crane her neck upwards to meet the glinting golden eyes of Zuko, the banished one, the Prince of the Fire Nation.
Instantly, she expected hatred and revulsion to burn in those fiery amber eyes and penetrate her very soul, right down to her innermost core and unravel her bit by bit, but he only stood there, as if willing himself to take in the sight before him and painstakingly believe it.
Finally, after a long, hesitant silence, he spoke in deep, gravelly tones that barely hid the tinge of fear that mingled with them.
"Is he… dead?"
The tentative inquiry of this should-be proud, unblemished royalty (she would have laughed at the bitter irony if not for the highly inappropriate circumstances) took her aback. She guessed she was expecting something… quite different, something other than that doubtful pitch that told her he was just as saddened by this as much as she was.
Nevertheless, something wild inside of her wanted to lash out at him, to scream in his arrogant face and bury the harsh realism in him as painfully as destiny did to her.
"Yes…" the truth made its way out of her chapped lips' in a voice barely above a whisper's, not raising higher than the mere slight blow of the wind; an eerily haunting reminder of the angelic voice she would never hear again.
His eyes widened; shocked as if he had not known that fact before and that only the cemented severity in her words could make him believe it.
His fists clenched hardly at his sides, beneath the battered armor and the bruised mortal frame, and he barely managed to disguise the shudder that erupted throughout his body as he shook in deliberation.
"I… failed."
Her head snapped back up to look at Zuko again; his scarred face held a mask of weakness, the sight made even more pitiable by the injuries and dirt he'd managed to accumulate while fighting. Pity was something she never thought she would feel for her enemy, one of the very reasons why she was in her wretched position right now, but something about the sight of him tugged at her heart…There was a wavering emotion in his eyes, something she'd only seen in…
Aang.
It was the sentiment of pure and utter disappointment; a shame-filled sensation that trembles deep within you when you realize you've lost something you can never embrace again.
She became conscious of the fact that anyone who had bothered to glance at her only a few moments ago would have seen the same thing in her own azure orbs.
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"BASTARD!"
A yell of fury and rage tore through the quietness of the trance the two souls had brought themselves into, a world that consisted only of thoughts of regret and indecision. Zuko and Katara broke their gazes to the heaving boy that had appeared.
Sokka took ephemeral looks at the two of them; first, at the blasted scum of a Fire Prince; then at his seemingly undermined beloved sister; and lastly at the broken body she held so in her small arms. Understanding suddenly came to him in splintered thoughts, and something mad and frightening and hideously animal blazed in his navy blue eyes.
It scared her to see her brother this way.
He bowed his head, staring at the beaten soil for a moment, then his viselike grip on his ax, his only weapon, tightened. His fixed his glare on the Prince and only the Prince, raising the lethal object high above his head and as far as indulgence could make him soar.
She saw what he was about to do. The Prince!
"Sokka, no!"
First Aang, then her brother… no, no, no!
But it was too late. He swung the ax downwards and let his vengeance perform the rest.
"YOU MURDERER!"
He shouted ferociously, tone deep with anger and malice, just as the razor-sharp end of the heavy blade connected with the Prince's shoulder, burying itself deeper and deeper until it met bone.
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Zuko never had a chance.
He'd spun around when he heard the Water Tribe boy come, and only an instant later an ax had sliced its way into his blistered flesh.
It had taken seconds for the pain to register, and when it finally did, he wished it never came. It arrived like swift bolts of searing lightning, then vertigo hit and his mind, and, along with the rest of him, it whirled in confusion and hurting. He screamed in tragic agony as he clutched at his bloodied arm, falling to the ground with the ax sticking up from his shoulder.
Like some horrible piece from some sadistic, brutally honest jigsaw puzzle, it was so very fitting.
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"What have you done."
It was not a question of insecurity; it was an accusatory statement that he knew would never leave his memory as long as his life may progress, however long that many be. It was critical; silently asking him why he had done something he knew he shouldn't have.
He knew; oh, he knew. It was a transgression that defied all the morals and dignity he prided himself for owning; a deed so iniquitous he deserved it more than the person he had inflicted it upon. He was filled with disgrace for his own self and stepped backwards, horrified at his actions.
He looked at the Prince who was bleeding slowly and excruciatingly on the earthen ground, and then at his hands. Despite the little dirt on them, they looked almost clean; but his mind's eye saw them dripping with blood, the Prince's blood, which was now literally discoloring the brown soil with a bright, deadly crimson.
'What have you done what have you done what have you done…'
But in the very middle of it all; what hurt the most was that the sentence came from his precious baby sister.
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Her eyes were like two nearly perfectly round sapphires; dulled by sorrow, but still twinkled from the tears that threatened to stream down each side of her tanned face, like trickling waterfalls whose last drops, which could have quenched the thirst of a dying man, was wasted as they spattered against obsidian rocks.
"Sokka…"
It was not disgust; he was still her brother, after all. But present in her voice was antipathy, not directed at himself, but perhaps at the act he had just committed.
"Katara…"
He locked his gaze with hers, eyes pleading and hopeless, 'I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it… I'm sorry,' they told her…
She really wished she could believe him.
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"Thank you."
The hoarse words averted the attention of the Water Siblings to the bleeding Prince, who by now had been surrounded by a burgundy pool of dried blood, breathing shallow, limbs spread-eagled, and skin turning awfully like the pale white of a new corpse. His face was no longer contorted by anguish, and his eyes were strangely grateful and the ghost of a peaceful smile danced on his face.
"What… what did you say?" Sokka stammered, brain refusing to believe what he had just heard. Even after all the atrocities the Prince had cost them, what he did tonight was far more unforgivable, far more fatal… It simply cannot be!
The Prince's smile stretched a few centimeters. "I want to thank you… for killing me." He spoke like a saint, without laying blame and not a tone of sinful luxury in his lush, smooth voice.
Sokka's jaw dropped in obvious disbelief. It didn't take a second, but Katara knew he missed the moment.
The Prince's labored inhales and exhales staggered for an instant, then stopped permanently, and though he lay like he was before, motionless and inert, she saw it in his eyes.
Tentatively, the fires that burned from behind those enthralling golden eyes flickered and thoroughly vanished. And they were shining.
There was a contented smile on his face that looked dissonantly out of place with his now-blank hazel eyes, but Katara knew that the honorable Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation has finally breathed his last.
It was a small relinquishment of what little mercy she had left to tune out her adamant brother's sobs as he selfishly wept over his diminished innocence.
Her own eyes smoldered from unshed tears, but she fought them, saving her strength. As she pressed Aang's quiet head to her breast, she kissed two of her fingertips, reached over to the Prince, and closed his tawny gold eyes forever.
She breathed deeply, not even gagging from the stench of blood and smoke and death that remained in the air. She leaned back into the tree trunk, even as the bark scratched her already cutup skin and matted in her hair. She blocked out all the terrible sounds of violent chaos and fighting, the fighting that would never stop, the world who would never tire of fighting on and on and endlessly extending their troubles and heavy burdens…
As her mind drifted to sleep, she wished she could sleep as easily into the sweetness of oblivion, like Aang and Zuko had (she even prayed the same for Sokka), because she knew that they would not wake to see the next morning sun.
Even the kindest have their limits.
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a/n: If it did anything to/ for you at all, please do
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NOTE: For those who are curious, 'Kamatayan' is the Tagalog word for death. I'm a Filipina, after all.