ZW 2015 Day 2: Vigil

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Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

As the fires burn outside and the battles rage, Katara keeps watch over Zuko's broken body and prays to everything she can think of that he makes it through the night. She has something to tell him.

Azula had banished all of the servants, and Katara, despite having never in her life been waited upon by a servant, was missing them. She and Zuko hobbled out of the palace arena, his weight heavy on her much smaller shoulders, and he'd made halfhearted grunts when she needed to turn. It was slow going, and Katara would have given nearly anything for someone to help her hold him up. By the time they made it deep inside the palace, to an enormous bedroom covered in dusty burgundy silk, she was as ready to collapse as he was.

"We'll be safe here," he rasped. "For a while."

"Zuko," she had whispered. "What do you want me to do about Azula?"

He had winced. "I don't know. Where did that Fire Sage go?"

She knew the one he was talking about. "He snuck out when he realized you were going to win."

Zuko groaned. "I don't know."

"Go to sleep," she offered. "I'll figure it out."

Struggling to sit up, Zuko had tried to protest, but it was quickly obvious to both of them that he needed to rest. "A man needs his rest," he intoned, sounding oddly like his uncle. It hadn't taken him long to drift off.

Which is how Katara now finds herself wandering the palace, carrying a torch that she's ready to snuff out in one hand, water ready in the other. When she finds the Sage, it's been at least an hour, probably more, and he's stuffed himself into the messenger hawk brood, frantically scribbling letters. He recoils when he sees her. "Leave me alone! I only want to warn the other sages."

"Why," she asks, tone dripping with acid. "So they can come up here and attack us."

The sage is impossibly pale. "If the Phoenix King returns, it is safe for no one."

Katara knows a bargaining chip when she sees one. "I'll let you go. On one condition." The water in her hand crackles as it turns into a long, deadly spike. "Take Azula with you."

"Princess Azula," he whispers.

"Princess Azula," she amends. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of to crown her, and take her with you. If the 'Phoenix King'-" and here Katara can hardly keep from scoffing "-returns, it will be better for you to say you took his daughter to safety."

The sage seems to be deliberating. "And if the Phoenix King does not return?"

"I'll convince Fire Lord Zuko to thank the Fire Sages for taking care of his sister." Fire Lord Zuko. The words feel strange on her tongue.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Katara decides to channel her brother. "Guess you don't." Something strikes her, in the moment, something about how explicit the sage is about the terms of their agreement. Something about how he insists on establishing the outcomes of each choice. Something, she abruptly realizes, she had done in Ba Sing Se. Silently, in her mind, as she stood in front of Zuko, vial of spirit water dangling from her grasp. But now is not the time to think any more on that; she has a Fire Sage to move along.

In the end, the sage, whose name she can't be bothered to remember, leads her back to the arena, ice spike at his back. Katara knows she's taking a risk-the sages could very easily pull together and come back to attack them, using Azula as a figurehead, but there's nothing else to do. They can't babysit her until either the Fire Lord (Phoenix King?) returns or Aang defeats him. There's nowhere in the palace to lock her up, or nowhere Katara knows about, and she's not about to try to drag a screaming, crying girl out to the prison tower.

This is their only option.

By the time she's seen the sage and Azula off (and had the ringing screams of the defeated princess permanently burned into her ears), the moon is high and a cold breeze whistles through her bones as she stumbles back to the palace, hoping she can remember the way to Zuko's room. When she finally slips inside the door and collapses into a chair, he is deeply asleep, chest rising and falling rhythmically. It reminds her of meditation. "Zuko," she sighs. "Do you ever wonder how things would be if I'd healed your scar in Ba Sing Se?"

There is no answer; not that she'd expected one.

"I think maybe we could have been friends. We are now, but you know, better friends. Or maybe this is just me wishing I hadn't been so awful to you."

Not that he hadn't deserved it. He betrayed her, didn't he?

"You did betray me. I offered to heal you, and you threw it back in my face."

The words ring hollow, now that there's some time and distance between the pain of Ba Sing Se.

"It wasn't about me, was it?"

Zuko's chest rises. Falls.

"You barely knew me."

Suddenly feeling very alone, Katara crawls out of her chair and onto the bed, gingerly laying herself down, gently, praying she doesn't jostle him. They are barely an arm's length apart, and her voice drops to a whisper.

"I didn't ask you to join us, did I? I made you an offer, and I expected…I don't know what I expected."

Her hand fiddles with her necklace. Zuko's chest rises and falls.

"Would you have come with us if I'd asked?"

His breathing hitches and in the dim light of the moon, she thinks she sees his brow furrow.

"Zuko?"

"Father, no, please," he whispers, and a hand comes up, clutching at his face, at the dark red burn seared across one side. "I only had the Fire Nation's best interests-Father, Father please no don't." Sweat beads on his forehead.

"Zuko!" She hisses. "Zuko, wake up. You're having a nightmare."

He doesn't wake up, but she can feel the blood lurching in his veins as his heart struggles to beat faster, pushing and pulling and bursting out of the ragged muscle.

"Zuko!" Katara is shouting now, sitting straight up and pulling water to her hands. "Wake up! You need to wake up!"

As the water begins to glow, the frantic beating slows, evens. Zuko's face smooths and his muscles relax, and Katara remembers to breathe. Keeping one hand on his chest, lightly healing the scorched edges of his skin, she lies back down. The glow of her water is blinding in the dark, so she closes her eyes. Just to rest. Just to keep the light out.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry."

His chest rises, falls, and Katara drifts away, her hand falling from Zuko's chest and landing in the short space between them.

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She jolts awake a few hours later when he stirs.

"Katara?" He moans. "I didn't think you'd come back." She feels a little funny inside when, in his sleepy fog, he reaches over and wraps an arm around her, like a halfhearted, uncertain hug.

She brushes hair out of his eyes with the hand that had fallen on the mattress. "Why wouldn't I come back?"

"You hate me. You've always…hated me."

"I don't hate you. And I was wrong, about Ba Sing Se. You never betrayed me."

This wakes him up, and the arm over her waist tenses, like he's not sure whether to move it and admit it's there or leave it and pretend he hasn't noticed.

Zuko smiles weakly. "You seemed pretty sure."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

He laughs, and the sound is as harsh as a razor's blade. "I betrayed my Uncle. I sent an assassin after you. I chased all of you around the world and tied you to a tree and kept your mother's necklace like some kind of bargaining chip. What was one more thing?"

Katara pulls him close and squeezes, forgetting the wound in his chest, and she holds him there until his eyes flutter closed again, just as the sun begins to turn the clouds red and gold and the silhouette of an airship breaks over the horizon, White Lotus flag dangling from the bottom.

"I'm so sorry, Zuko. I never should have treated you that way."

But he's already fast asleep, and his chest rises, and falls.

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A/N: I've read a few fics where someone realizes Katara and Zuko were basically civil to each other but somehow Katara expected this to completely convince Zuko to join her and Aang, I guess? So this is my version, wherein Katara manages to be a little self aware ;). Thoughts always welcome.