A/N: Thank you so much to simplifiedemotions for her keen eye, and much love to the best hype woman in the land, mcal
The first time he sees her, she is inconsequential. A little girl trying to get in his way. The people of this spirits forsaken village look frightened, but he's not here for them. There doesn't need to be more violence. Zuko is in the South Pole for one thing and one thing only: the Avatar. He will take him and leave.
When he glances at the girl clutching her grandmother, it is not fear he sees on her face; she is angry, the look in her eyes so fierce he feels the burn of it in his scar as he boards his ship, his prize in tow.
The fourth time he sees her, she is mumbling to herself, all of her attention focused on trying to manipulate water in the moonlight. She is simply a means to an end, nothing more, and when he circles her wrists with his fingers, leaning in so close he can see the dark freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose, he ignores the zing of something more he feels the moment his skin meets hers.
She puts up a fight the whole time. Even after his men have bound her to a tree, she tells him to go to hell and won't utter a peep about the location of her brother or the Avatar, not even when he dangles something precious to her in front of her face.
To his aggravation, the little water bender is tougher and more clever than he expected, and while he watches from the shore as his boat falls prey to the waterfall and that flying monster swoops in to carry away the infuriating trio, he's certain he sees her glance back straight at him, a proud smirk on her face.
The sixth time he sees her, she blows him away, both literally and figuratively. She's found a teacher and once again surprises him, proving that she is not to be trifled with.
The little girl is now a master water bender.
But then the sun crests the horizon, and he overpowers her, only glancing back at her limp form as he disappears into the snow with the Avatar, a fleeting thought in his mind that he hopes she's not truly injured.
When she and her brother come to rescue the Avatar shortly after, his blind determination in even the bleakest of scenarios gets the better of him, and her deep blue eyes staring at him through the flurries are the last thing he sees before it all goes black.
The eighth time he sees her, her skin is lit with an unnatural glow from the crystals surrounding them. She speaks of her pain, and he can feel it in the air between them. When she allows herself to be vulnerable with him, it makes him want to bare his soul in return.
She can't heal his scar—it's there forever, a constant reminder of his shame—but her kindness to even offer is both meaningful and bewildering. It makes something in his chest twist, and it is almost, almost enough to spur him to explore the invitation of compassion on her face.
It doesn't take long for him to remind her who he is, though. No time at all for that tiny spark of trust to fade entirely from her eyes as he hurls fire at her from his fists. Disappointment pours from her and his uncle, and as he fights, he's wondering if he made the right decision.
When he walks out onto the balcony of the palace behind his sister, robed in royal colors with a crown fastened in his hair, he thinks that if it was the right decision, he probably wouldn't feel like there was a hole in his gut, urging him to realize that he's made an irreparable mistake.
The ninth time he sees her, she is nearly incandescent in her rage as she leans in close to him, her voice steady yet far more impactful than if she'd been shouting at him. When she spits out an emphatic threat to end him, the promise to follow through in her bright eyes, he believes her.
His peace with her little found family is tenuous, and he does all he can to show her that he's genuine, to prove his worth to her.
It is a long road, and he doesn't blame her.
The eleventh time he sees her feels more like the first time he's truly seeing her.
She has power he can't begin to comprehend, that much is clear as she makes a puppet out of the cowering man before them and stills the heavy rain falling rapidly from the sky. She's burning inside, always, and it is a kind of anger he knows all too well.
But it is on that day that he realizes she is stronger than he will ever be when she grants mercy to the miserable old man that took her mother from her. If put in the same position, he is not sure he would do the same.
She is splendid in her mercy. He has only ever known revenge.
Watching her and the others as each day goes by and they get closer to the comet's arrival, he learns what it means to be good all the way to your bones. None of them are perfect, but they are there for each other, no matter what. He learns that there is more than a single reaction when something goes wrong. He learns that allies are far better than enemies, and he learns that, perhaps, he ought to have been listening to his uncle all along.
Destiny really is a funny thing.
The twentieth time he sees her, her eyes are closed. She's clinging to him, arms twined around his neck, kissing him with the fierceness with which she does everything in her life, and he is hot and cold all at once, his world narrowed to her mouth and the softness of her hair clutched in his hand.
When it is over, he expects her to ask him to stay quiet about it; he understands why she wouldn't want her friends to know. He is entirely unused to being anything but a dirty secret, and several days later when she takes his hand in front of everyone, he almost passes out.
The one hundredth and fifty-second time he sees her, she is wearing the ceremonial clothes of her people, and he has never seen someone look so beautiful in so many layers.
Her father, chief of the Southern Water Tribe, performs the ceremony, and Zuko is sure it is lovely and meaningful but he doesn't hear much of it because his pulse is beating in his ears and he refuses to take his eyes off her face, afraid that if he looks away, she'll disappear.
This irrational fear carries over into the celebrating until finally she takes his face in her hands and tells him to blink and breath, and then she smiles at him—that secret, special, perfect smile she only brings out for him—and there is nothing in the world to worry about anymore.
The three hundredth and second time he sees her, her hair is loose and wild and sticking to her forehead. He expects screaming, but there is none, just a lot of profanity spoken between clenched teeth and guttural grunts as she pushes through the pain. The end result is a messy, howling, black-haired baby with her eyes and his nose, and when Katara looks up at him with a tired smile, their baby in her arms, the tears in his eyes make everything shimmer as if in a mirage,
But it's real, all of it.
He can hardly believe it.
The last time he sees her, there is light around her, illuminating her. He can look at nothing but her, the rest of the world going blurry at the edges.
She holds his hand and whispers promises she has already fulfilled several times over.
Every good thing in his life he can attribute to her, and as he lies there at the end of it, he has no regrets.
Except maybe that he hadn't sooner seen her for what she was: a force of nature, swirling through his world and upending it just to put it all back together, somehow better than it had been before.
When his eyes close for the last time, she is all he sees, and he can think of no better way to slip from this life to the one beyond.
Thank you for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts. If you wander the streets of tumblr, you can find me nuclearnik!