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Glacier ice shifts and rocks beneath his feet. Echoes of battle howl with the raging winds at his back, battling Zuko through his trek across the Northern wasteland. No matter where he goes, no matter how far from conflict he tries to flee, war dogs his heels like a starving wolf-jackal. Screaming wind sinks its teeth into the spaces between his body and the Avatar's, trying to rip the unconscious boy from his slumped place on his back.
Zuko plods on, into the wind, daring it with each step to stand in his way.
Katara's open hand strikes the grass hard and insistent, becoming a fist when her rage refuses to ebb. Sokka doesn't bother to try and stop her, letting this episode burn itself out before he intervenes. Yue watches her without a sound. As usual, her silence speaks volumes.
"He took him!" Katara's fist strikes and clenches the singed grass. "Right out from under me! Zuko took Aang and I couldn't do anything!"
Fingers close over her shoulder, too weak to hold on when Katara throws them off. But they come back, gripping without being insistent, until she finally wilts under Yue's pale sympathetic eyes. They wait until they know they have Katara's attention, then cast around them. "This doesn't look like nothing," Yue whispers of the ruined Oasis.
Katara would feel bad for the desecration if she weren't so furious. "It wasn't enough."
"Enough to push a master firebender to the brink, under an incomplete moon no less."
Katara looks at the destruction she and Zuko caused. Ruts in the ground, burnt grass, craters in the earth filled with water and her growing, disastrous power. Jeong Jeong thought fire only burned and water only healed. Let him see this and still be so naïve. She stands amidst it now, and Sokka stops his surveying to look over at her.
"Zuko better pray we get Aang back before the moon rises."
"Never thought I'd fear for that moody ashhole's life," Sokka quips, void of his usual humour. He puts his hand on her shoulder. "You did everything you could, Katara, and now we need to do everything we can to get him back." He squeezes. "Zuko can't have gotten far. We'll find him. Aang's gonna be fine."
She can't say the same of Zuko. Not when she gets her hands on him.
Wind battles him. The ice beneath his feet caves in and tries swallow him. The cold sinks into his bones and threatens to freeze him. Katara made him feel seen then betrayed him. His father's war dog raised him then tried to kill him. The Avatar weighs his steps into snow that grips and drags at his legs.
But Zuko knows how to fight. He knows what it means to struggle until each breath feels like it's trying to choke you. Limbs so heavy with fatigue even thinking of lifting them is too much.
He drags them now, through the deep snows to the black maw of gaping stone. It's shallow, barely sheltered from the wind, but the only shelter for miles. It's a draft or death, so Zuko sets about the next fight. It's the only thing he knows.
She's too angry to be of any real use, so Sokka steers Appa. Through howling winds and punishing snows, her brother puts years of idle time trekking southern tundra to use. Even from the hight Appa soars, Sokka's eyes don't flinch as the winds change and blast sleet into their path. She doesn't know how he spots it, but in a blink of snow blind and stinging air, he's lowering them to a scar across the land.
Yue waits atop Appa's saddle as Sokka jumps down and runs full steam to where the ice gives way to open space and deadly black rock. Katara freezes in the saddle when she sees the extent of the damage. Aang's prone body would smash apart on those rocks before the Avatar state could save him.
Before she can fall into despair, Sokka stands and shakes his head at her.
No bodies. No trail. Aang… where are you?
Remember the basics. Breathe life where there is none. In. Out. Life. Death. It's a difference separated by his lungs ability to pull in air, push out flame.
Zuko tries not to dwell on the irony. Hard, but not impossible. But he's used to fighting everything in his life. His own mind was something he thought mastered long ago, but a splinter of ice forced its way in, undermined years of work, then melted to leave a gaping hole. Life, like many fights, doesn't pull its punches. In and out. Push and Pull. It's all the same yet thinking of it as one-way grants spurts of warmth into his cupped, shaking hands. The other rends his heart, stutters his breath before it can keep his fingers from turning blue.
Spirits, he hates blue.
His eyes drift to the unconscious boy against his will. There's nothing in this wasteland, but he can't stop. Pinpricks of pain lance the back of his eyes if he tries to resist. Exhaustion? Paranoia?
"I finally have you," he gives life to one half of the thought. How long until life finds out how much he wants this, needs this, and conspires to take it away. "But I can't get home because of this blizzard."
He stands to approach the mouth of his cave, staring out into the mocking storm. As if sensing his presence, it rises, bellows at him. "There's always something. Not that you would understand. You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her."
I don't, the storm seems to whisper. Come, step into me. You'd be shocked how warm you can feel in the snow.
"My father says she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born. I don't need luck, though. I don't want it." He'd spit in the face of the storm, if the spit wouldn't freeze to his lip. "I've always had to struggle and fight and that's made me strong. It's made me who I am."
And brought him here. The worlds end, battling until his end rushes up to meet him, because this is the only way life has shown him to be. To survive.
The storm rises. It's been rising for some time.
"Try not to worry." Yue has to yell to be heard over the screaming winds. "Prince Zuko can't have gotten far in this weather."
Katara shakes her head, neck cricking. Spirits it's so cold, and it's that ice which creeps through her heart. It's been freezing over the flame of her rage since she first looked into the yawning depths of the chasm. "I'm not worried they'll get away in the blizzard. I'm worried they won't."
And even as Aang holds onto the last shred of warmth left in her heart, it gives a weak, pulsing ache at the thought of Zuko stiff and frozen. Abandoned or forgotten by all the people he's ever loved except his uncle and the ice.
"They're not going to die in this blizzard," Sokka scoffs. He can't know where her fears lie, how her hearts treachery baffles even her, yet exists. "If we know anything, it's that Zuko never gives up. They'll survive, and we'll find them."
He gave up on me, she thinks. The second I stopped being useful to him. A waterbender who couldn't save her own life or drag the Avatar those last few inches into his trap. He'd rather cut her chains and feed her to the ocean.
And still, every dark clump of rock, every uneven drift in the snow, causes a stutter in her heart she'd be lying if she said was only for Aang.
Eyes burning with exhaustion, Zuko stands as the veil descends over the Avatar. The light in his eyes, across the top of his head where the arrow descends into his shirt collar, fades. When they open, they find him easily and without surprise to his location.
"Welcome back." He's already planting his root, pulling the fire up from his belly.
"Good to be back."
He's blasted back with a gust of sharp air before he can summon his breath. The same breath propels the Avatar's body back, out into the snows. They cushion his fall but ultimately hinder his worming across the wasteland, slowing him so all Zuko has to do is walk out and snatch him up by his collar.
"That won't be enough to escape."
He opens his mouth, and an inhuman bellow blasts the sky. Once the sound would have, did, startle Zuko. Now he knows to look to the sky. He picks out the shaggy beast from the rest of the falling the snow the same instant an exultant "Appa!" bursts from the Avatar's mouth. It cuts off into a yelp as Zuko tosses him aside, quickly setting his root as the beast lands.
A blue clad figure slides down its flank, dispersing the snow around her with a wave of her hand.
All his mistakes rush into him as she clears her area of attack, piling the snow up around him by default. Or tactic. Why did he ever take her up onto the deck to watch the Fire Nation dancers flex their forms and leap in the style of the Caldera? Why did he ever share with her how he'd bested opponents like Zhao by staying true to his basic forms?
Why did he ever let this girl walk into his heart and hope she wouldn't leave like all the rest?
Not again. She doesn't get to kick the door in and rob him of his destiny. He roars, letting loose a barrage of flame to melt the snow she piles up. Let her see the consequences of turning turn her back on wildfire.
"Here for a rematch?"
His arrogance astounds her. Everything is owed him, him and his precious destiny. How could she be surprised? Fire Nation law, Might equals Right; he's embodied it the whole time she's known him, while she foolishly hoped he could be better.
Steam rises between them. It obscures him, his ghostly white form rippling in and out like a spirit descending from the veil. "Trust me, Zuko." She rolls onto the balls of her feet. Lifts her hands. "It won't be much of a rematch."
He takes and step towards her. It's the only move she allows. A swooping arc of her arms launches him into the air. For a blink he's lost amongst the blizzard, surprised scream snatched by the howling wind. For a heartbeat she entertains the idea of leaving him up there. He slams back down in a drift of ice and limp limbs.
Moonlight ripples through her body, pulling at her blood for more. But the flood of power gives way to a sour taste in her mouth as adrenaline fades.
Sokka rushes to untie Aang. She should be moving, getting back on Appa. The spirits are in trouble, Aang insists, until he, too, stops to look at the downed prince. He moves past Katara, making the call to bring Zuko to Appa's saddle. Her and Aang have always been of one soul, though his heart is so much kinder than hers. Zuko is of the legacy that wiped out the Air Nomads, his people. All Zuko did to Katara was use her, yet Aang can let go, see a man in need.
She can't. She can barely look at him as they fly back to war.
Face awash in bloody light, Zhao gapes at him. The red light of the moon casts his face into deceitful angles, shadows long beneath his eyes as his former teacher stares at him with shock and loathing. "You're alive?"
There was a time Zuko would have done anything to have the Dusk Bringer notice him. "You tried to have me killed!"
Fleeing the scene, leaving his men to die at the hands of the vengeful water spirit laying waste to his navy. The fire he used to cull the moon spirit's not even cold yet. Spirits, the years Zuko wasted desperately wanting to impress this vile man.
"I did." No remorse. A cold declaration as he wields his legendary grasp on the Snapping Willow to slice through Zuko's press of flame.
Zuko loses his high advantage, rolling away when his gambit fails. Now, both standing on the ice bridge, he faces Zhao head on. Something his uncle warned him to never do outside the honour of the Burning Place. And Zhao showed how little honour meant to him there. There are no eyes on them now. No Uncle to guard the threats aimed at Zuko's back.
"You're the Blue Spirit," Zhao spits. "an enemy of the Fire Nation. I had the Avatar in my grasp, and you freed him."
"I had no choice!" Zuko fires a volley of flame behind the words. Zhao continues to block his attacks. He's fresh, barely scathed from the battle, from the rage Uncle dispatched his men with. Zuko's two days without sleep, frozen, fresh from unconsciousness. Pretty sure two of his fingers are frostbitten.
Zhao bats his spinning leaf manoeuvre aside, steps in and tries to slash Zuko's core with the side of his hand. He growls in frustration when Zuko dances back, the tips of Zhao's fingers nicking him through his white parka.
"You should have chosen to accept your failure; you're a disgrace!" Zhao presses him furiously. It's always been his way, a direct violation of the Snapping Willow's fluid mastery. Zhao would never debase himself to anything he considered running away. "Then, at least, you could have lived."
"Like you give a shit!" Zuko spins and launches off his backfoot. Zhao expected the mauver, steps to the side, and kicks him between the shoulder blades.
"I only tried to kill you after you turned traitor." Zhao doesn't press. He stands in the centre of the bridge. While Zuko heaves air into his lungs, Zhao's barely broken a sweat. "After your desperation, your self-pity, made you turn against the Fire Nation to save your precious honour."
"I lost my honour a long time ago, Zhao." He's able to drag his body upright. "But so did you when you watched a child have half his face burned off and smiled."
The smile the Admiral gives him now is a cold, cruel impression. Did Zuko's admiration ever matter to him? Did he even know it existed? No. Why would he care, when Azula, the prodigy, the favourite child, was right there?
"It seems your father failed to burn all the weakness out of you. Looks like the honour will be all mine."
They meet in a clash of armour, limbs, and soft flesh. Zuko's rage blinds him until the first impact nearly crushes his sternum. He flies back, loops around a pillar and comes at Zhao from the side. The Admiral spins to meet him so Zuko propels off one foot, changing his angle so he's forced onto his back.
Sliding beneath Zhao's stabbing flaming knife, Zuko looses a scream as the flame sears across his right eyebrow. Zhao bellows, tries to bear down on him, but Zuko's failed lunge is already taking him beyond Zhao, almost to the other end of the bridge.
When he breathes it sounds like twigs snapping in his chest. Zhao spins to meet him, expecting a quick burst of retaliation. His foot almost goes out from under him in his haste.
Scrambling up, Zuko sets his feet as best he can. But ice is treacherous to a firebender. Unforgiving, nothing can grow, roots dying before they so much as see the sun.
Zhao comes at him like the Dusk Bringer of legend, his fury hot and wild. The bridge beneath their feet gleams fresh tears from the weeping ice. If they keep this up much longer the structure will dissolve beneath their feet.
And Zuko can't go on. He can't match Zhao's fury, his skill. Not in the state he's in.
He can't face Zhao as a firebender.
He skids back, sucking in his gut when a mad swipe of the Admiral's arm threatens to boil his guts from his stomach.
"Face me!" Zhao roars. "Stop running away!"
Zuko never runs away. His training, his struggles, his destiny. All things he runs towards. As he does now, coming at Zhao.
His opponents face splits into a triumphant sneer as Zuko comes to him. He sets his feet. Draws his hands back. The air sizzles as he builds the flames, vengeful flowers blossoming in his palms. "Turn your face to the sun!"
Zuko turns towards the moon.
Leaping to the side, his feet hit the ice and he flies. The warm soles of his feet shred through the mess of slush and water, kicking it up into Zhao's face. He sees the shock before it pelts him. Zuko bears down through the wave of sludge onto the blind man to kick him in the chest.
Zhao grunts as he slams back into the bridge rail. Zuko leaps on him, holding the flame against his neck. Grey hair sizzles on Zhao's chin. His hateful eyes burn up at Zuko, barely noticing. It's Zuko's right as victor to claim anyway. "You cut your own root. That was a disgrace to the Snapping Willow."
"It's called skimming." Zuko's throat feels clogged. It's a struggle to speak. "Yield, Zhao, and-"
Horror descends upon them like something out of Zuko's nightmares. Blue and translucent, the spectre detaches itself from the cannel below, rears twenty feet above them and strikes like a viper bat at its peak.
Zuko throws himself back. He hits the other side of the bridge and curls in upon himself. Unspeakable cold ravages his nerves. His vision whites out.
It slams back into focus when Zhao screams. The monster has him in its translucent grip. Frost eats into the Admiral's armour, cracking the plates, snapping the whiskers on Zhao's chin.
Knees lock in and out as Zuko forces his legs to move. Rushing for the rail, he grabs for Zhao's boot. But this creature, this thing, has already dragged him too far. Still, Zuko reaches. "Take my hand!"
His old teacher strains against the fingers holding him for one desperate moment. Then Zuko sees the decision cross his face, and his reaching hand drops. The creature takes him down, down, down towards the water.
The stalk the creature is attached too shatters. It throws Zuko back again. His back hits the rail, his head thunks into ice so solid it may as well be stone. A scream. Is it his? Zhao's? He tries to blink but can't lift his eyes.
Until a hand touches his chin. Fingers like ice. It tips his head back, bringing him face to face with a pair of bottomless blue eyes.
"Katara?"
Her name hasn't sounded the same in months.
Confused golden eyes blink up at her, pupils blown wide. His right eyebrow is bisected by a blotchy red burn. Her fingers leave his chin to touch it. He hisses, but when she pulls back the burn is gone. The only evidence of it is the blood staining her fingertips.
The head injury she can't help, though something in her, something never explored, begs to be loosed under the weight of the full moon. It thrums in her blood. No, she realises when the beat pulses slow, moving as if half frozen, synced to the heavy blinks of Zuko's eyes.
Not her blood.
Zuko's still looking up at her like he can't believe she's there. She can't believe it herself. One moment she's watching the Ocean Spirit lay waste to the Fire Navy, the next she's flying down the palace steps. She only stopped when her next her head was almost taken off by an errant flame. Pulled in because she knows the one person she'll find. There and now, always barrelling into each other. She followed the pull that dragged her from Sokka, Yue, the safety of the palace, to the destruction on the bridge.
"You saved him." Zuko's looking past her now, to the body sprawled out on the bridge. Despite everything the hateful Admiral's put him through, Zuko's good eye crinkles in pain, voice forlorn. "He would have rather died than accepted my help.
He moves to collect him, but Katara steps in his way. "I claim him as prisoner."
"What? Katara, you can't be serious." Zuko moves to push past her, but he's so exhausted, far too easy to push back. "You help me just to-"
"I didn't do it for you," she cuts him off, voice hard with cold truth. "If Aang ever knew he took a life, even out of control, he'd never forgive himself. If it were up to me, one less Fire Nation Admiral in the world makes it a better place."
But Aang's devastation would be insurmountable. It would consume him.
Zuko's gold eyes go cold. "Right, and you can't abide anything that might hurt his feelings."
"Shut up." She prods his chest with a finger. "You beat Zhao. I beat you. He is mine by right."
He looks down where she's touching his chest. It heaves, heart pounding under the narrow point of her touch. "What does that make me?"
Mine. After everything he's put her through, it's the least she deserves. "Free."
His head snaps up. Twin suns burn with confusion, surprise, and unbearable hope.
She squashes it before it can consume her too. "Get off this bridge. Find Iroh. Leave before the Watertribe find you."
Her palm opens to press into his chest when he takes a step towards her. "Katara-"
"Get out of my life." Impossibly, his heart pounds harder. It matches the desperate thumping in her own chest, her heart threatening to dash itself to pieces against her resolve. "Take your uncle, and never let me see you anywhere near Aang, my brother, or me, ever again."
She must be able to feel his heart. A thousand shattered pieces pound mercilessly beneath her hand.
Gone. It's all everyone ever wants of him. It's a physical pain he can't supress. He has to look away lest she see it.
It's the last time she'll ever have to see him. If it's all he can have, he'll maintain the cold, cruel visage she has of him. Hopefully one day it will finally consume him, if it means he never has to feel this horrible pain again.
He pulls back. But he can't move.
Katara looks at where her gloved hand grips his collar, screwing up the front of his parka, as if she can't figure it out either.
All she has to do is let go. So why doesn't she?
Agony strangles his voice. "Katara?"
Her fathomless blue eyes dart to his lips before meeting his.
If he ever sees her again, it's going to be across a battlefield. If he ever sees her again, he's going to have to forget the embers of feeling she ignited in the cold forge of his soul. And she'll have to forget whatever he sees in her eyes. A flicker of something he's too afraid to name.
He might never see her again at all.
He's not sure if she pulls him in or he's the one pushing into her world. They meet in a tangle. Foreheads brush. His fingers cup her jaw and bury in her hair. Hers pull on the parka and clutch desperately at his back. They stop a breath from each other, eyes exploring each other in unspoken questions.
She studies his lips, but he has to know she wants this as much as he does.
"Zuko…"
He falls into her. She tastes how she smells. Smoke and hunger. They push deeper into the other and do not pull apart. His fingers wend through her hair. Hers trace along his jaw, his neck, and scrape along the back of his scalp. If he had hair she'd pull, and he almost moans at the thought.
The waning hours of the night spare a few for them, and there's a hunger building in him the longer he clings to her. It's been building since he read those first scrolls to her, the fist time they stole moments from the world just for them.
He knows he is impetuous. Rash. And he is full of many things – passion, regret, guilt, sorrow, longing, rage. At times they rule him, but not now. Not here. He wound up banished from his home because of his passion. He ended up in the snows because of his sorrow. He would have killed Zhao at first sight because of his rage.
But now he is here. He knows nothing of what his future will hold, but he took a part of it back. He took it with anger and cunning, with passion and rage. He won't take Katara the same way.
Love and war are two different battlefields.
So, despite the hunger, he pulls away from Katara. Without a word, she knows his mind. She lets go of his parka, but darts one more kiss into him. It lingers longer than it should. Long enough for him to sink into her.
Maybe…
Maybe never doesn't have to be as long as he thinks.
No sunrise breaks over a North Pole free of the Fire Nation. The black night fades to a steely grey that bathes Katara, sends a clammy sweat across her skin that stands each hair on edge. Keep him safe, she thinks as she stares into the sunless sky. There won't be any fires to burn the prayer in for a while, so she'll keep it in her heart for now.
Sokka's devastation for Yue is a physical force, pushing away anyone who couldn't possibly understand. Even Aang doesn't try, leaving the broken-hearted warrior and the father of the moon to their grief.
Aang knows she attacked the ocean spirit in his name. An action she can no longer reconcile now that she knows he wasn't actually sealed inside when she stopped it from taking Zhao. Even while he's encased in ten feet of ice and under guard, an unshakeable dread fills Katara. It slithers through her veins, freezing her blood.
Master Pakku bestowed her the title of master for her bravery in battle. Aang is a stronger waterbender. The North is safe.
They won today. Tomorrow the Fire Nation will rage against the blizzard.
So why can't she let go of this feeling?
It's the feeling of duty to take hold. Adversity to face outside of her conflicted heart. Grief to come, be worn like a second skin. It's not over. War hasn't loosened its grip on any of them. Its pain will burn them; their love will forge them.
It's the feeling of a night without end, and no matter how much she stares into the eastern sky, there will be no sun to light the way for a long time.
In its place Yue rises, and the Ever Night dawns.
And so ends Part One of the My Heart Burns series!
Please let me know what you thought not just of this chapter but of my whole labor of love! Let me know what worked for you, what didn't, and what you're excited to see as I plough on through Book Two. I don't plan on putting out the first chapter for a while, but who knows. I could be persuaded...
Kudos always welcome, likes, dislikes, comments and complaints. Let me know what you guys think because I love reading them and finding out about you guys!
