A/N: Wow, you guys! I was not expecting this much love from this fandom. I'm so overwhelmed by your kind words. Thanks ever so much for all the reviews and the love. It means more than you know. Much love! xx-Kitten.
Brightest Nights or Darkest Days
By Kittenshift17
CHAPTER THREE
Katara woke feeling like she was enveloped in a toasted marshmallow – warm and comfortable and feeling better rested than she had been in weeks. Without opening her eyes she writhed slightly, yearning to stretch her warm and pliant muscles.
"Don't," someone suddenly hissed against the back of her neck, warm breath caressing her skin and making the tiny hairs there stand on end. She knew that voice too well with its cold, controlled and angry tone.
"Zuko?" she gasped, wiggling more.
"Stop moving," he practically groaned. He gripped her even tighter and Katara became aware that she was curled up in his arms and pressed very intimately against him. Or, more appropriately, intimate parts of her were pressed dangerously close to a rigid and pointed part of him.
Katara's eyes flew open as she realised what it was. She'd been foolish a while ago when she'd met Jet and the Freedom Fighters. Not to mention she spent all of her time camping with two teenage boys. She was no stranger to just what was poking at her behind.
"That better not be what I think it is, Zuko," Katara bit out. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment even as she said so, knowing exactly what it was even as she scooted her bottom forwards and away from him.
"I've told you once before that I rise with the sun," Zuko retorted in a tight voice. Katara nearly choked on the gasp of shock she sucked into herself at his blunt admittance and his crude words. He'd said the same thing to her at the North Pole during the lunar eclipse just before he'd bested her in a fight. The reminder now in reference to his erect body part was not a welcome one.
"Let me go," she demanded when she found that his arms were tangled around her intimately. His palm was flat against her sternum, his arm deliciously warm and pressed to her taut stomach.
"It's not even dawn yet, and another blizzard kicked up during the night," he informed her. "Just… stop squirming and go back to sleep, Water Bender."
Katara raised her eyebrows wondering how he could possibly know what it was like outside.
"How do you know?" she asked. She frowned as she began trying to roll towards him. She was careful to keep from brushing against the cause of their shared mortification, even as she had to fish his arm from between her breasts and drag it over her ribs and to her back so she could face him.
"I'm a fire bender," he replied. His eyes were squeezed closed and a tight frown marred his face. "I wasn't kidding about the sun. I know when dawn breaks. I can feel it. And I know about the blizzard because it knocked something over downstairs and blew something from the alley in through one of the windows during the night. I checked."
"I didn't know you got up," Katara frowned.
"I know," he said. His frown lessened slightly and Katara wondered how deeply she'd been sleeping that she hadn't woken when he'd struggled out of the tight bedroll they were sharing. She was uncomfortably aware of him suddenly, including the way his essence seemed to have wrapped completely around hers. She felt like she was being pressed with heat on all sides.
She also realised that he was right about how cold it was as she felt a stray breeze blow under the door and kiss across her flesh. Suddenly Katara felt no desire to leave the warmth of the sleeping bag or Zuko's presence.
"You realise this means there's little use trying to go anywhere today?" she asked him quietly. She slipped her arm over his hip and kicked her outer leg over both of his. She burrowed her face into his warm chest, not even really thinking about how intimate and inappropriate it was as her fingers teased the hem of his shirt until she could snake her arm up his warm back inside his shirt, pressing more of her flesh to his and marvelling at how warm he was.
"You realise you're not helping?" he countered from above her head since she'd burrowed into his chest, the tip of her nose pressed to his neck. She could feel his pulse racing beneath it.
Realising with a jolt how intimate a positon she'd just initiated, Katara sighed against his collarbone and decided that the awkwardness could wait until she wasn't so cold and wasn't trapped in a sleeping bag with him. Curling her leg further around him, Katara scooted a little closer to him, using her heel to draw his warm thigh between both of hers and biting her lips at the feel of how warm he was.
"Just be quiet and go back to sleep, Zuko," she said. She used her arm against his back to pull herself closer to him until her front was flush against his and tried to ignore the prodding heat of his problem against her stomach. The key word was 'tried' because Katara was having trouble ignoring it when that part of him was even hotter to touch than everywhere else.
She pursed her lips, her eyes closed as she tried to get to sleep again with him prodding her. She could feel how tense he was from the way his nails were digging ever so slightly into her back where his warm arm was inside the back of her shirt. She also found that beneath her own hand inside his shirt, there were several scars under her fingers. She could feel them on his back. They were silky and soft like burns, and the skin didn't feel tight or puckered – suggesting they were old burns.
Without meaning to, Katara found herself tracing their patterns with her fingertips.
"Try thinking about all the villages you've burned," she said when she felt a twitch against her stomach.
"Try not doing that," Zuko retorted angrily. He twitched his shoulders away from her and clearly not pleased with her suggestion.
Even as he said it Katara imagined she could feel his essence sliding teasingly against her own, brushing against hers in what felt almost like a caress. She bit her bottom lip and nearly laughed when she realised it was most likely as a result of whatever he was thinking about – which most certainly did not seem to be the villages he'd burned to the ground as he hunted Aang.
Despite the terrible history between the two of them and the fact that he'd been her enemy as he'd chased her and her friends all over the world, Katara couldn't help the little giggle that escaped her and the utter absurdity of the moment.
"Bitch," he accused angrily when she laughed. Katara responded by nipping his collarbone. She didn't even think about it before she did so and her breath caught in her throat when his hips bucked slightly against her, bringing his warm thigh higher between her own until it reached their junction.
Katara felt his chi respond when hers squirmed at the suddenly blinding heat pressed intimately between her legs. Her insides clenched and Katara suddenly didn't feel like giggling anymore. She felt her fingers press insistently against his back without conscious thought to do so and she realised with a terrible jolt that the intimacy of their essences so interwoven and entwined was messing with her body and with her mind.
If she was being honest, Katara was no stranger to acts of depravity. When she'd run into Jet, she'd been enamoured with him and she'd surrendered her virtue and her body to him in a wild fit of defiance and need. And right then as she laid so entwined with Zuko, Katara could feel that need rearing its ugly and depraved head again. The very thought unnerved her.
When she'd encountered Jet, Katara had been swept up by his story of losing his people and his yearning to strike back at the Fire Nation for all they had done to him and to the world. Katara had known the feeling and been overcome to find similar feelings in as charming and handsome a package as Jet. But there was a big difference between Jet and Zuko.
And unfortunately she couldn't say that it was that one of them was less ruthless and more conscionable than the other. The only difference was that while she'd believed at the time that Jet was a good person with the best of intentions, she knew Zuko wasn't. His nails dug into her back and Katara bit her lip, trying to get a hold of herself. It wouldn't do to be attracted to Zuko, even passingly.
She was using him to find her friends and that was that. They weren't friends. They certainly weren't going to be lovers.
"Don't do that again," he warned her in that cold voice of his. Katara marvelled at his ability to sound so in control when she could feel his control slipping.
"You're supposed to be thinking about the people you've slaughtered and the villages you've burned and all the terrible things you've done," Katara replied coldly, trying to think about other horrible things too. "Not about whatever it is you're currently thinking about."
She didn't dare mention the feel of his chi entwined with hers as it seemed to caress not just her body but her very soul. She didn't think either of them would survive acknowledging that strange occurrence.
"Stop caressing me and nipping me then," he spat. He jerked back from her far enough to glare into her face furiously.
It was a mistake. The minute she could see his face, Katara found her eyes straying to his lips, suddenly recalling the way they'd felt against hers the day before and she knew then that she needed to get away from him. Otherwise they were going to do something they would regret.
Jerking back from him further, Katara hissed at the feel of his nails and his hot hand on her back sliding over her skin as she moved back from him.
"Let go of me," she demanded, glaring at him when he held onto her a bit tighter.
"No," he snapped. Katara marvelled at his ability to say so much while uttering so little. His many meanings behind that one word came through loud and clear. He didn't have to argue with her about it still being the middle of the night. He didn't have to mention the blizzard raging outside their small haven. He didn't have to mention that it was freezing right outside their shared sleeping bag and that if she got out, she'd just climb right back in a few minutes later when the cold proved too much. He managed to say all that and more with one annoyed facial expression and one uttered word.
Narrowing her eyes at him in frustration, Katara knew she really needed to get away from him. She didn't trust Zuko one bit and, more importantly, she was no longer sure she could trust herself around him. She didn't at all like him, nor was she attracted to him. He was cruel and cold and terrible. But unfortunately he managed to be all of those things inside one terribly warm and rather attractive package.
Silently cursing her own stupidity and her own rotten luck to have been separated from Sokka and Aang only to instead end up with Zuko, Katara did the only thing she could think of the alleviate the tension between them. Burrowing right back into him, her nails digging into his back just a bit, Katara buried her face in his chest and slotted herself right back into his warmth. She could swear she heard him snort even as the sound of his teeth grinding filled her ears but Katara ignored him. Pretending he was a warm pillow, she snuggled into him wrapping her arms and legs around him tightly and refusing to lift her face from his chest.
"You're insane," he informed her matter-of-factly several tense minutes later but Katara ignored that too. She closed her eyes tightly and focused on trying to go back to sleep, even if she could feel the effect her feminine body pressed against his masculine one was having. His teeth grinding a little louder, Zuko squirmed slightly against her, his thigh sliding back between both of hers and pressing against the radiating warmth she could feel between her legs. Katara bit her lip at the intimate position, trying her hardest to hold completely still and not writhe against the sensation.
When he did it again, slower this time, Katara got the feeling he was tormenting her on purpose.
"Stop it, Zuko," she hissed against his chest, digging her nails into his back again.
His cruel chuckle ruffled her hair slightly but he stopped moving. Katara laid there tense in his arms for what felt like hours, listening to the sound of the wind howling outside. She didn't know how she'd slept through it in the first place. It howled and whistled through the house they'd broken into. She could hear signs and other things being blown about outside their room, tossed wildly on the wind.
She could also feel the driving snow on the wind – her element calling out to her. With her eyes closed, Katara felt the tension drain out of her body, her mind sweeping away with the howling wind driving the soft wet snow. Her fingertips began to swirl against Zuko's back in nonsensical patterns in time with the snow on the wind. The desire and tension that she'd woken to drained away in favour of the familiarity and simplicity of her element moving with the wind.
Katara's mind drifted with it, carrying her back to the long years she'd spent at the South Pole with the Southern Water Tribe. Days spent chasing after Gran-Gran and wrangling the younger kids she'd been charged with caring for. Mornings spent racing Sokka to the canoes to go fishing or seal hunting. Afternoons spent feeling the stirrings of her bending ability coming to life. Late evenings beneath the full moon when she'd snuck out of their igloo to stare up at the pale orb and feel the power flow through her limbs.
Lost in her thoughts and carried on the wind with her element, Katara drifted away.
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Zuko's breath hitched when he realised she wasn't really there anymore. Oh, she was solid and warm inside his arms, wrapped in his embrace and curled against him in his sleeping bag. But Katara wasn't there anymore. Her essence swept against his own like raindrops down a window, but the familiar and strangely intoxicating feel of it being completely enveloped inside his own – as it had been all night – suddenly receded.
The wind howled outside their tiny, secluded room and Zuko shivered when he felt another sensation instead. Unlike the curled feel of her chi wrapped insider his, brushing lightly against his as though from within its embrace, Zuko suddenly felt instead the water bender's chi outside of his own, flowing over and around his, like water being sloshed about inside a bowl, only with much more precision. It felt cool, but not cold. Much like the way her fingers caressed his back in nonsensical patterns, her chi flowed against his, brushing and swirling.
He'd never felt anything like it before in his life and he didn't know what to make of it. It was as though she was there, her chi and her body against his, but her mind was elsewhere. It was dancing on the wind and shimmying amid the snow. Zuko realised with a start that despite the cold, this was her element. She might be a water bender, but Katara had been born and raised in a world of driving cold and swirling snow. She would be as at home in the blizzard that raged outside as he was on hot summer days in the palace gardens.
Closing his eyes, Zuko let the patterns of her fingers against his back and the feel of her chi moving against his carry him back to sleep. When he dreamed, the dreams were not his own. Zuko knew that immediately as he found himself inside the strangely bright world of dream. He knew, because it was a world filled with snow and laughter. A world where a boy he didn't know but vaguely recognised ran about with a funny little ponytail and shaved sides of his head.
Where an elderly woman with kind eyes instructed him on ways of the world and brushed her hand lovingly over his hair. Dimly, Zuko was aware that these must be Katara's dreams or memories but he felt no pressing urge to pull away from them. Truthfully, he didn't know if he could. He'd never experienced anything like it before in all his life and he would need to ask his uncle about the notion of one's chi rushing out to brush against another's and sharing dreams like this. He was sure it must be some Spirit World effect.
Lost in a world of snow and ice amid faces he didn't know but strangely felt connected to, Zuko let her dreams carry him through his slumber and for the first time in a long time Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation didn't suffer the same nightmare of his father burning his face and disgracing his amid an Agni Kai before stripping him of his title and his honour and banishing him.