ZW 2012 Day 3: Transcend
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In the final battle, the Phoenix King defeats the Avatar. Sokka, Toph, and Suki steal Aang away from the field and retreat to Ember Island in a badly damaged airship. Zuko and Katara defeat Azula, but with Zuko's injuries and the Fire Sages' fickle loyalty, they are no match for the returning Phoenix King.
Katara scratches another mark in the floor of their cell as the sun peeks over the mountains. She had lost count of the marks a long time ago, but it's a habit now. Huddling in a corner, she flicks her eyes over to Zuko, who's sprawled on the ground with one arm over his head. He'd gotten too thin, his muscles spindly, connected to bone by tendons that strained through the skin unnaturally. Katara's brown skin has gone pale and cracked, and she's starting to see long hair on her arms. Despite her initial resistance, she and Zuko have started curling around each other at night to stay warm, and he wraps the blanket around her because he's a firebender and she's not, so obviously you have to take it Katara, I'll be fine; but after he thinks she's fallen asleep she thinks she can feel him shiver. It's like what she imagines Hama's cell must have been. The air is dry and cold, pumped in, if the rattling of machines above their heads when the slight breeze starts is any indication. The guards restrain her when they bring water, but sometimes there are no guards, and no water.
Katara clenches her fists, struggling to keep tears from escaping, and crawls gingerly over to Zuko. His breath comes in shallow gasps, and blood pools sticky and half dried below a crudely bandaged, ragged wound on Zuko's side. A sob escapes from her mouth, and she presses her lips together and lowers her face to his chest, remembering.
She remembers his slight smile when he whispered that he loved her. She had kissed his cheek, hard, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. She'd still been able to count the marks on the floor then, and there were 408 of them. 409 when they'd given up sleeping at opposite ends of the cell. Somewhere near 450 (but she thinks that's around the time when she lost count) when he pulled her against his chest in the dark and wondered if maybe they could have tea when they got out. Or get married. He wasn't picky.
She had giggled and suggested they start with tea.
His gold eyes glimmer as they crack open when she presses her hand to his side. "Katara, don't."
"They gave us water this morning. I can try to heal you."
"No," he whispers. "Save your strength, and the water."
"Zuko-"
"There's not enough to do anything."
"No!" She grasps his face and kisses him, hard. "You've got to make it, Zuko. There will be enough."
"I love you, Katara."
She stops, and looks into his eyes. "Don't say goodbye yet." His eyelids flutter, and with her hand on the wound she can feel the same flutter in his pulse. "Zuko, I love you. Just hang on a little longer. Please." The last of his breath puffs out on her arm and sends chills up and down her spine, and she collapses into him, cursing Azula, the guards, Ozai, honor, and everything else she can think of. Herself.
Would he have held on longer if she'd said they'd get married first, and have tea after?
She's angry with him as the sun gives way to the deep blue of dusk and the light of the moon glows through the window. He could have made it one more day, couldn't he? She bites her lip, hard, as hot tears return to her eyes, and she flings them away violently. Grunts, immediately followed by soft thuds, echo in the hallway, but she doesn't move. Someone has finally come to rescue them, and Zuko couldn't bother to be alive.
(She feels guilty, suddenly. How could that possibly be his fault? But if it's not his fault, then it must be hers; hers for not protecting him, not healing him better all those dirt scratches ago, not making him take the blanket during the night, wanting to conserve water for an escapeā¦)
A short young woman with black hair and pale eyes leads a large man with close-cropped brown hair who carries a flame in one hand. Two men in blue followed them. "Katara!" Toph shouts (it must be Toph, no one else with eyes like those and a scream like that knows Katara's name), the sound ringing through the blackness and pounding in her head.
Toph rips the metal cage apart and Dad-"Dad?!" It's her father, all bone beads and leather and woodsmoke-darts into the cell and falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around her quivering shoulders.
"It's okay. We're gonna get you out of here." Sokka comes in after him and looks with dismay at his sister through the limited illumination of the firebender's flame. Toph steps in cautiously, then freezes. "Where's Zuko?"
The tears, muddled in sadness and anger, fall now; there's no stopping them. The man moves his flaming hand, revealing Zuko with limp arm outstretched, blood sticky beneath him, the other arm draped over his body. Sokka gasps and recoils, and Hakoda sighs deeply and bows his head. "When?" Hakoda asks.
"This morning," she replies.
"629th day," Toph says, toeing the ground near Katara's tick marks.
Hakoda lifts his daughter in his arms, and touches Toph's shoulder. She nods and lifts the earth, carrying Zuko out of the prison, past the unconscious guards and into the cold gaze of the half moon. Katara rests her head on her father's chest and tries not to watch the hovering platform cutting through the air in front of them.
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"Try bloodbending me," he said.
"I can't."
"You can do it."
"Zuko, the moon is barely half full."
A half smile curls his lips. "You could do it with a crescent moon. Transcend." The smile grows on the last word, and he crosses his legs as if preparing to meditate. "You're the most talented waterbender I've ever seen."
"Why do you even want me to?"
"What if you could take my blood, blow open the cell, and put it back in?"
"It would kill you."
"Maybe." She could feel him shrug in the dark. "But if it didn't I'd love to get tea." He stood up and pressed his arms to his sides. "Just try to move my left arm."
So she flowed into her stance, breathed, and pulled, and nothing, and pulled harder, and nothing, and breathed and pulled and pulled more blood, more water, and then Zuko cried out and fell.
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A/N: This just about killed me. I wrote it in 2012, reread it around Christmas 2018 and thought great, here's what I'll post for Transcend, it needs a little workshopping (because 15 year-old Eva thought she was hot stuff and 22 year-old Eva does not agree). Yeah no. I kept the basic, basic plot and some fundamental bones, and then broke everything and put it back together. There are a few sentences that I had written that stayed. Most of it is new. Oh and then I had the whole thing fixed and realized I'd taken out the whole part about transcending. Anyway, if you guys really want to see the hot mess that Transcend was, I can post it somewhere, but I think we're all happier with this, lol.
Hopefully now that I've gotten this out of the way, updates will be back to a higher frequency (I was doing really well with getting stuff out for a couple months there, you know?). Thanks for reading, guys. Love to all.
