"Are you sure we're going the right way? I thought the tunnel was supposed to be around here," Zuko indicates a point on the map that they are well beyond now.
"Well, I don't know exactly where it is." Both men's eyes roll for vastly different reasons, and Katara looks upon the scene with her brows raised. "But if we keep walking, we should be able to find it."
"But if it's behind us, and we keep walking, how are we going to find it?" She can hear the frustration leaking into Zuko's tone despite his best efforts to hold it back.
"Guys." She gently takes the map away from them and rolls it up. "Let's just chill for a minute and cool off. We have to practice anyway." They had been trying to get Aang to agree to adapt his elemental control to a more combative style, but the monk wasn't cooperating as much as they would have hoped.
"I told you both already, I'm not going to fight anyone." She almost feels bad looking into his shining grey eyes and seeing the frustration in them. "I'm a monk, we don't fight."
"But what if you have to? People out here don't treat Othered as well as the people in Yangchen do, Aang. You have to be ready!" Zuko is almost pleading with him at this point. Aang has never left the safe haven of the mountain town before now, and as much as Katara is glad that he grew up being accepted, that comfort is blinding him to the dangers of the real world.
"I'm sure more people than you realize can be reasoned with." Aang crosses his arms and stands his ground; his naivete runs almost as deep as his stubborn attitude.
"Listen, no offense Aang," Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose, "but I've been travelling the world for the past three years. I think I know a little bit more about what we're likely to run into while we're out here than you do. If we could just—"
Zuko is interrupted by the sounds of something crashing through the trees to the right of the path, and the three Othered turn towards the noise to see two men emerge from the brush.
"Look at what we have here!" The first man's voice is scratchy, and as he speaks three more men materialize from the forest behind him.
"Three sets would fetch us a fortune!" A second man speaks, the sound oil slick and low while two more men come out to join the rest who are slowly converging on her, Zuko, and Aang.
"Three sets of what?" Aang is clearly confused as Katara and Zuko fall into firm stances beside him, ready to fight their way through the seven thugs arranging themselves into a circle around them.
"Our eyes." The words pull like a growl from Zuko's throat, and Katara feels Aang stiffen at her side.
"Guys, maybe we can work something out here." Aang puts his hands up in a pleading position, and Katara's heart sinks to her feet.
"Yeah, we kill you, scoop out your eyes, and get filthy rich when we sell them!" The answering man's teeth are browned in spots, his smile crooked and lethal along with the other men's laughter.
"Well, that's not exactly what I was thinking, but—" Aang is cut off when one of the thugs throws a dagger straight at them, the metal glinting in the sunlight as it spins towards them faster than Katara can block it.
"Augh!" The dagger lands in Zuko's shoulder with a sickening sound, and Katara draws her water out of it's skin and smashes it into as many men as she can, the wave toppling them to the ground.
"Run!" Zuko grunts out between bared teeth, and Katara rushes forward to support him under her shoulder, blood already pooling on his shirt. The other men head towards them, faced warped with snarls and violent smiles, swords and knives bared and ready to fight.
"Aang!" The monk seems to break from a stupor at her words, and as he jostles the staff he's been carrying, a fan springs out from the sides at the top end. He swings the staff in a sweeping motion, sending a powerful gust of air at the group of men, knocking them onto the ground and into the trees as they make their hasty escape.
A few of the thugs give chase, but Katara and Aang switch roles, him supporting Zuko while she ices their pursuers to the ground so that they can successfully get away. Katara is simultaneously shocked and unsurprised at how Zuko manages to continue on despite the knife protruding from his shoulder and the blood steadily soaking through his shirt in a dark splotch.
"We have to stop" Katara huffs after what feels like hours. They veer off into the trees and Aang lays a paler than usual Zuko down against a thick trunk. "Aang, get me the first aid supplies out of the pack." Katara rips Zuko's shirt open to reveal the wound, eyes trained solely on his shoulder. "Hang in there, okay?"
"I've had worse." Despite his assurances, Zuko's breaths are a heavy staccato, his skin clammy and dull due to the considerable amount of blood loss.
"Here." Aang hands her the first aid kit and she opens it up, surveying their supplies and devising a plan in her head.
"Okay, I have to take the dagger out. Aang, as soon as I take it out I need you to take this rag and apply steady pressure to staunch the bleeding." Both men nod, and she grabs the hilt of the dagger. Her eyes lock with Zuko's, glowing gold lined with tension, and he nods at her again before she pulls the dagger out in a swift motion.
Zuko barely muffles a pained grunt as the dagger slides out with a sickening wet sound. Aang quickly presses down on the wound and Zuko groans in pain, his teeth bared and chest heaving with labored breaths. Katara throws the dagger to the side and prepares the needle and thread to stitch up the wound before summoning a small amount of clean water to her hands.
"Aang, lift up so I can clean it." The cloth is removed and Katara swoops in with her water, trying to ignore the hiss of pain that scrapes through Zuko's teeth. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts."
"I'm fine," he grates. He definitely isn't fine, but luckily it's a clean wound that won't be too difficult to stitch up.
"Aang, there's a dark bottle in the first aid kit—" the bottle appears before she can even finish her sentence. "I have to use alcohol to clean it out properly." Zuko nods, his eyes screwed shut against the pain. "Pour some on a rag," she tells Aang as she continues to swirl the water around Zuko's wound, the younger man's posture stiff with tension.
In the moment it takes for her to switch her water with the alcohol soaked rag, blood wells to the surface of the wound and spills over, trailing down Zuko's chest in a thick rivulet. He groans again when she presses the rag to the deep gash, his other hand fisting in the dirt, knuckles white and veins pronounced. With gentle strokes she wipes at his injury to clean out any dirt that had come from the knife or had rubbed off from his shirt when they ran.
"Almost done." She hands the blood stained rag to Aang and reaches for the needle and thread. "I'm going to stitch it up now, okay?" She wastes no time before plunging the curved needle into Zuko's skin.
"Any chance I can drink some of that alcohol?"
His joke falls as flat as his tone, drained of energy and any humor. The adrenaline wears off as Katara stitches his shoulder up, worry rising in her throat like bile that she has to keep swallowing back. She thanks whatever spirits are watching over them that the attack hadn't been fatal; she hasn't known Zuko very long, but he's made a home in her heart, created a nest out of her emotions and curled up in their warmth. What would she have done if he hadn't made it? Would she and Aang continue on the mission? Would she go back home alone, back to her empty life stuck in a place where she didn't truly belong? Would she—
"Hey." His voice is a gentle rasp in her ear, and she lifts her head to look into his eyes. The affection in the glowing gold melts the icy fear around her heart, the water manifesting as unshed tears that she tries desperately to blink back. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" He really doesn't know. She's not sure how he hasn't realized how deep her feelings for him run, how he doesn't know that his smile is branded onto the backs of her eyelids, that his glowing sunrise eyes greeting her every morning is her favorite part of the day. "I'm just glad that you're okay."
"It's gonna take a lot more than a bunch of ugly punks to take me out." Her laugh is watery and fragile, and she wants to kiss that tired lopsided smile right off of his face.
"You're gonna have to get good at using your left arm for a while." She's finally finished sewing him up, and is fashioning a sling for his arm out of the parts of his shirt that aren't permanently stained with blood. "If you pop the stitches I'm going to be mad at you."
"Good thing we got that extra set of clothes in Yangchen. Can I, uh, have a shirt, maybe?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry." She has no doubt that her cheeks are a bright crimson as she goes through his bag to find him a shirt. It's not that she had gotten distracted by his toned, pale chest. She had just forgotten about his shirt after she had cleaned the blood off of him. Yeah, that's totally it. God help me.
She helps him into the rusty colored shirt that had been gifted to them in Yangchen, dutifully ignoring the heat spreading far from her cheeks from the intimacy of the gesture, and rewraps the sling around his arm. In the awkward silence that follows, she realizes that she hasn't heard a peep from Aang the whole time she's been working on Zuko, a stark contrast to his usual peppiness.
"Aang?" She turns around to find him leaned up against a different tree, his knees pulled into his chest and arms resting on top of them. A guilty look is painted onto his face, his shining grey eyes hooded and sad. "Are you alright?"
"This is all my fault." He still won't look at Katara and Zuko, his eyes trained on something intangible off in the distance.
"Aang—"
"No," Aang interrupts Zuko before he can console the younger man. "It is. If I hadn't tried to talk to them, they wouldn't have attacked you."
"You don't know that." Zuko tries to console him. As much as they butt heads sometimes, she knows that Zuko really cares about Aang.
"It doesn't matter." Steel grey eyes finally meet gold and blue. "Monk Gyatso always told me I had a problem with running away from things. If I had just accepted the responsibility that this quest requires of me, we wouldn't have been left so vulnerable." Katara's face falls with sympathy, unsure of what to do or say to soothe Aang's guilt. "I can't run away from my destiny any more. And if that means learning how to fight," he looks right at Zuko, "to protect the people I care about, then so be it." He gets up and walks over, sitting down again on Zuko's left side. "I'm sorry Zuko."
"It's alright Aang." Zuko puts his hand on Aang's shoulder, who lets his head fall onto Zuko's shoulder in turn.
Zuko looks at Katara with confusion in his eyes; her insides warm with the open show of affection between the two men, and her smile grows as Zuko unconfidently moves his arm to wrap around Aang's shoulders. She misses her family more with each passing day, but she feels like she has a new family growing right here in the shade of a towering tree.
Xx
The next day they set off again, deciding that it might be a good idea to backtrack just a little to see if they missed the probably-real tunnel. Katara and Aang had done their best to split Zuko's belongings into their bags, but he's still left carrying a few things in the pack that's slung over his uninjured shoulder. The sun is high and the sky is bright, the balmy air of late spring blanketing the world in it's warmth. They're careful to listen for other people, knowing that with Zuko's injury they won't be able to fight and will have to resort to running if they're attacked again.
"Do you guys hear that?" Zuko stops them in their tracks, and Katara strains her ears.
"Is it… music?" Aang and Zuko look at each other, confusion mirrored on their faces as Katara starts to hear the faint sound of music too. "Do you think it's a travelling band or something?"
"Travelling bands exist?" She knows that she's been sheltered, but a travelling band sounds like something you'd read about in a story book, not something you'd actually run into out on the road.
"It doesn't sound like they're very good." Zuko's grumble rises over the growing noise of the band, the distinct sound of a lute and an out of tune voice emanating from somewhere beyond the trees.
"What do we do?" Aang asks. The three of them turn to look at each other, trepidation and resignation mixing on their faces. "I mean, if they have instruments and stuff, they're probably not violent. Maybe we can ask if they know where the tunnel is?"
"If they do turn out to be aggressive, at least with instruments they'll be less likely to run after us." Katara shrugs her shoulders, turning her questioning gaze upon Zuko.
"I guess we can ask. It doesn't really seem like we have a choice at this point."
They all turn to the forest as a man and woman emerge. The man carries a lute and the woman a tambourine, and two others holding more instruments stumble out of the forest after them.
"Oh, hey there!" The man with the lute's voice is a little slurred, but none of them seem to be holding bottles. "Are you all travellers too?"
"Yeah!" Aang steps forward a little bit. "We're trying to find the tunnel that goes through the mountains. We need to get to Omashu."
"Oh, we know where the tunnel is!" The man nods, a dopey smile sliding onto his face.
"Chong, look—" the woman points at the three of them, her voice dreamy and steeped in wonder. "Their eyes."
"Ohh, you're Othered, huh?" His reaction is not at all what Katara was expecting; the man looks more intrigued than anything. "I'm Chong, and this is my beautiful wife, Lily." The same dopey smile returns on his face as he looks at the woman behind him.
"You said you know where the tunnel is." Zuko keeps his voice even, even though she can tell by his face that he's confused by the group's reaction to the three Othered as well. "Can you tell us how to get there?"
"Oh, we'll do you one better than that! We'll take you there ourselves!" Chong moves forward and slings his arm around Aang, forcing him to crouch as the strange nomad leads his lanky, bent over form down the path without so much as a second thought. "We're heading to that side of the mountains too— we can travel together!" She turns to look at Zuko, shrugging her shoulders in defeat as they follow after the musical group.
The group explains that they're nomads, travelling through the countryside and playing music wherever they please. They're led along the path back towards Yangchen, confirming Zuko's suspicions that they had missed the tunnel on their first journey through. The group bursts into an awful (yet somehow catchy) song about said tunnel, outlining the myth that surrounds it.
"So, is this tunnel real or a legend?" She can't help but feel skeptical of the nomads, even after their quirky song.
"Oh, it's a real legend, alright!" Chong replies.
Aang turns around from where Chong still holds him hostage under his arm, a sheepish smile pulled across his face. Zuko groans and pinches the bridge of his nose as a headache starts to form behind Katara's eyes.
Soon they turn off the main road and onto a smaller path, one half concealed by branches and overgrown bushes. That explains why we didn't see it before. They walk for a short time, Katara trying to block out as much of the nomad's persistent blathering as she can, before coming upon the entrance to a large cave.
"Well, here we are!" Chong throws his hands in the air excitedly, and Aang walks up to the entrance to read some characters etched into the stone.
"What does this say? Something about a curse?"
"Great, just what we need," Zuko grumbles next to Katara. If Zuko's eyes keep rolling like that, she's sure that they're bound to get stuck in the back of his head.
"Oh, the lovers that built the cave cursed it so that the only way you can get through is to trust in love. Otherwise you'll get lost in the labyrinth."
"And die," Lily chimes in unhelpfully.
"Wait, labyrinth? You said it was a tunnel!" Zuko's frustration is starting to show, and Katara doesn't really blame him.
"Well, it's both!" Chong sounds much too relaxed about the whole thing. "Don't worry, with our combined brainpower, I'm sure we'll be fine!" He ambles towards the cave, leaving a confused and slouching Zuko behind him.
Without having much choice, Katara, Zuko, and Aang follow the nomads into the tunnel, the temperature dropping significantly as they continue on. Zuko lights a small plume of flame in his palm, which the nomads "ooh" and "ahh" at. He looks absolutely miserable, and Katara has to stifle a laugh at his expense. They travel through the cave for what feels like a while, eventually lighting a torch so that Zuko doesn't have to lose more energy by feeding his fire.
"Do you have a map or something? How do we know if we're going the right way?" Aang turns to the nomads, asking a question that she realizes they probably should have asked much sooner.
"We don't need a map! We just have to trust in love!" Chong pulls Lily into his shoulder and plants a sloppy kiss on her head.
"What does that even mean?!" Zuko is clearly at the end of his rope, and his voice echoes through the tunnel.
"Wait, what's that noise?" A sound almost like water catches Katara's attention and she listens intently, trying to decipher the origin. It's not water… "It's wings." She turns to look at Aang and Zuko, both of their eyes wide and glowing in the darkness of the cave as the noise gets louder.
Suddenly, a swarm of bats flood towards them from the other end of the tunnel, darkening the area even more so than before. A rumbling sound joins the chaos of the bat's shrieks and the group's shouts, and Zuko has to pull Katara out of the way as part of the roof crashes to the ground. The dust clears, leaving the two of them coughing and dirty, and cut off from the rest of the group.
"Aang!" Katara runs back up to the rubble, unable to move the giant boulders that have come down between them.
"I'm alright!" His voice is muffled, but he sounds unharmed. She lets out a breath at his words. "But we can't move these boulders. What should we do?"
"I don't think we have much of a choice," Zuko mumbles behind her, a flame once again nestled in his palm.
"Just… keep going. There's a path on this side too, we'll meet up with you."
"Are you sure?" Aang's voice is tinted with fear, and Katara is feeling her fair share of it as she tries to console him.
"We don't really have any other options. We'll be fine, just focus on getting out of the tunnel." Silence befalls her and Zuko as the air grows stuffy around them.
"Let's go." Zuko's warm voice pulls her from her anxious thoughts, and they head down the only path available to them.
She doesn't know how long they walk for, but it can't be more than an hour before the tunnel spits them out in a massive cavern. The ceilings are incredibly high, and there's art drawn along the walls leading up to a huge carving on the far side. Zuko shoots his fire out to the handful of sconces around the large space, throwing light onto the artwork and illuminating a huge relief of a man and woman, kneeling across from each other while sharing a kiss.
"What is this place?" She's mystified by the huge room, immediately going over to inspect the drawings on the walls.
"It's a tomb." Zuko's voice is low and rumbling behind her as he walks towards the large back wall. "These must be the two lovers Chong was singing about."
"These pictures tell a story." She walks around the room, reading the characters under each drawing. "They met on top of a mountain that divided their two villages. The villages were enemies, so they couldn't be together, but their love was strong and they found a way. The two lovers were gifted by The Source, each able to manipulate the earth so that they could see each other. They built elaborate tunnels so that they could meet in secret; anyone that tried to follow would be lost in the labyrinth. But one day the man didn't come— he'd died in the war between the two villages. Devastated, the woman unleashed a powerful display of her gift, strong enough to destroy them all. But instead of wreaking havoc, she declared the war over. Both villages helped build a new city where they would live together in peace. The woman's name was "Oma," and the man's name was "Shu." The great city was named Omashu as a monument to their love." The end of the story places her in front of the large effigy next to Zuko.
"Love is brightest in the dark," Zuko reads the characters carved between the two lovers. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not sure." They poke around the tomb for a while before moving on, exiting through another tunnel leading off from the other side of the cavern.
Katara is sure that it's been hours since they entered the tunnel, and they haven't seen any signs of a way out. Zuko's fire is growing dimmer in his hand, and he looks exhausted, his already low energy being sapped by the flame in his palm.
"How are we going to get out of here?" She hates to hear the defeat in his voice, the sound foreign and worrisome. She thinks back to the images in the tomb, the huge relief of the two lovers kissing on the wall…
"I might have an idea." Her cheeks are burning even thinking about it, but this is their last resort.
"I'll try anything at this point." They stop walking and turn towards each other, Katara having to tilt her chin up to look into Zuko's eyes.
"It's probably dumb, but…" She wrings her hands together in front of her, unable to look into his eyes as the words come out of her mouth. "What if we kissed?" The silence following her question makes her look up at Zuko, who's face might be comical if it wasn't for the circumstances.
"You…" His gold eyes are wide, disbelief clear in his features.
"I mean, because of the story, you know? And the big people…" Her blood is boiling under her cheeks, the heat spreading down her neck and up to her ears. "It's a stupid idea, nevermind."
"It's not stupid.," he whispers, so soft that she doesn't think she would have heard it if he wasn't standing right in front of her. Her heart beats like a rabid animal in her chest, so fast she'll be surprised if she doesn't have bruises later.
"Oh." She wasn't expecting him to agree, and his willingness throws her through a loop. "Okay." She's breathless, the small tunnel closing in on her as she braves looking up into Zuko's eyes. His cheeks are rosy just like hers, the dying light of his fire exposing them both.
The silence in the tunnel is stifling, the foot of space between their bodies seeming to expand and shrink with every breath she takes. She clears her throat awkwardly, trying not to notice the incessant pull she feels towards Zuko dragging her in, her muscles begging her to succumb to the undertow and let herself drown in him. The space between them has definitely shrunk, and when she tilts her face up to look at him, he's much closer than she thought he would be. She stares into the gold of his eyes, the glow bright and sunny in the dark tunnel. She licks her lips and watches as his eyes flash down to follow the movement, and musters up every ounce of courage she has before bringing her hand up to cup his face and pulling it down to meet hers.
The flame in his palm winks out just before they touch, but the heat that courses through her body when she feels his lips on hers is enough to light up the darkest of spaces. Zuko's lips are soft, softer than she had ever imagined them to be- and she's definitely imagined this before. It's barely a kiss, his lips feather light on hers, but nonetheless it leaves her yearning for more, feeling like she's been parched for days and his lips are a much needed spring rain. The kiss is short, too short, and when he pulls back she gives in to her basest desires and presses her lips into his again. There's more pressure behind it this time, and Zuko responds immediately, brushing his calloused thumb along her jawline and making her shiver. It's the kiss she's been dreaming about for weeks, and she doesn't want to stop, not even if it means getting out of this stupid cave. It's obviously more than what would be necessary to find their way out- if this was even the answer— but it seems like Zuko doesn't care, and she definitely doesn't care as their lips come together again and again and again.
Her nerves are on fire, and to her dismay they eventually break apart, breaths hanging heavy in the infinitesimal space between their faces. She waits as long as she can before opening her eyes, trying to stretch this moment out for as long as possible before coming back to the world. The first thing she notices when she opens her eyes is the strange green glow around her, but she's considerably distracted by Zuko's kiss reddened lips and the soft blush tinting his cheeks. He opens his eyes, stunning gold staring into ocean blue, the heat in his gaze sending a fresh wave of something addicting and heady through her body.
"I think it worked." She feels his jaw move under her hand when he speaks, his own still laid gently on her neck. She nods dumbly, willing her voice back as she tries to recover from what was the single best kiss of her entire life.
"Yeah." She wants to tell him everything, to spill her guts all over the floor and just hope that he's willing to mop them up, but a paralyzing fear stops her and forces her to pull her hand away from his face. They break apart, the air thick with awkward tension, and she looks up towards the green glow. A stripe of luminous green crystals line the roof of the tunnel, winding down along the path. "There's crystals on the ceiling." Zuko looks up, and she has to tear her eyes away from the smooth pale skin of his neck.
"Oh." His hand comes up to rub the back of his neck. "I guess that's the way out."
They stand in a painfully awkward silence for a moment more before following the crystals, quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop save for the sounds of their shoes hitting the stone floor. The walk is brutal, and Katara can't even bear to look at Zuko. What am I afraid of? He agreed to kiss me. That's good, right? But what if he only agreed out of necessity? I really fucked things up, didn't I?
She internally beats herself up the whole way through the tunnel, and the sigh that escapes her when they finally see daylight lifts a hundred pounds off of her shoulders (there's still another hundred on there, but she knows that weight isn't going away for a long time).
"Hey! You guys made it!" Aang bounds forward and hugs them both. "We were starting to get worried. How did you get out?" Katara clears her throat and Zuko rubs the back of his neck, neither meeting each other's eyes.
"We followed some glowing green crystals," she manages to choke out, trying to stifle the hot blush that seems to be a permanent fixture on her cheeks. Aang raises a single brow, looking between the two of them before answering.
"Okay..." he draws out the word in a way that makes it clear that he knows something's up, and Katara groans internally.
They split from the nomads and camp for the night soon after, Katara crawling into her tent while Zuko and Aang retreat to the one they share. She wants to regret it, she really does. She hates the awkwardness that has dampened what had been an easy friendship with Zuko, but the memory of his lips on hers makes it hard for her to think about anything else. She lies awake on her bedroll for hours, unable to scrub the feeling of his thumb on her jaw or his cheek under her palm from her brain, and falls asleep hoping that she hasn't ruined the only real friendship she's ever had.