ZW 2011 Day 7: Caught

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Love Conquers None

Caught in the tangle of destiny, Zuko and Katara deliberate the future.

"We're caught, Zuko. We can't run away anymore."

He fiddles with the betrothal necklace in his hand. "I know," he rasps, lowering his eyes. "But I want you to keep this anyway."

It's getting harder to keep the tears from slipping from her eyes. "Zuko, don't."

Rising from the floor, he startles several turtle ducks he'd brought in out of the violent rain. She stands still as he steps behind her and holds the pendant at her neck, and she shivers when his fingers brush her nape as he moves her hair out of his way. "You're so beautiful."

"I wish we could," she says, and her cheeks feel wet. But they can't, because he's going to marry a Fire Nation noblewoman and have firebending heirs, because they need to be firebenders, because she wasn't good enough for the Avatar and it would be a terrible political move for the Fire Lord to marry the Avatar's-in the words of a Fire Sage Zuko nearly banished on the spot- leftovers.

Because the South Pole needs her. Suki needs someone around besides her four boys (plus Sokka). Her father needs more waterbenders to rebuild and train the children.

Zuko fastens the necklace around her neck, and as she feels the stone drop onto her skin she pushes away from him and pulls her hair back around her shoulders. "Keep it, Katara. I want you to have it."

So she'll pine for him for the rest of her lives? So she's burdened with the plans they used to have and the dreams they'll never see? She turns away from him and wraps her arms around herself, wracked with sobs he can't hear. Walking out of the room, her fingertips brush the carved stone, but it's not the comforting pattern of her old necklace, the one she'd left with her father, the one she'd thought she wouldn't wear again. The one she'd given up because Zuko wanted to propose, and they were going to tell the Fire Sages and the council and Uncle, and then they didn't get beyond the sages.

When she returns to the South Pole, quiet and resigned, her father takes her in his arms without a word, and Sokka brings her a blanket and a bowl of sea prunes. Suki babbles about the children and they all try to keep her busy, but a few days later she sneaks out of the igloo and wanders down to Sokka's old wall. His snow tower is just a mound now, largely collapsed by the winds and snowstorms, but the places where the wall had frozen over many, many times through the years are still intact. She can't see the gash where Zuko's ship broke through the ice, but she walks out to the shore where it used to be and unfastens the necklace. It dangles from her fingers for a moment, and then she lets go, and then it drifts into the dark, and she watches the glimmer of stone reflecting the light until it's gone.

How much simpler their lives would have been, had they not been destined for greatness.