Ozai's Vengeance

Fandomme

T for Teen

Summary: Twelve years after the final battle, Zuko summons Katara to heal the victims of an epidemic sweeping the Fire Nation.

Notes: Thanks are due to those who have read, reviewed, and added this story to their Alerts and Favorites. Sorry to make you wait so long for this chapter.

≅

Clutching his cup of tea and staring blindly at figures, Zuko could barely remember the events of the past few hours. They blurred together like dancers at a spring festival. He recalled sensations, not facts: the dried-blood smell of the refinery, the sickening horror, remorse, and rage as they discovered that yes, those were lead bars just sitting in the water, his barely-contained wrath when the villagers said that the new overseer -- Tizo was his name -- had said it would be good for profits to eliminate a few steps in the refining process, Katara's hands bunched in his clothes as they rode down the mountain toward the overseer's house, his fury mounting as the rhino crashed through brush and bracken and finally exploding when they burst through Tizo's door and found…nothing.

Just junk. Just dust and furnishings and a few odds and ends lying on their sides, doubtless hastily-discarded during Tizo's escape days ago -- that was all that remained of the treacherous Tizo. "Refinery overseer is a municipally-appointed position," Zuko had said, standing inside the empty, creaking house. "Great sages, why didn't I come see him sooner?"

"You didn't know," Katara had said. "Neither of us did. We thought it was a normal illness, or a different kind of poisoning." She slapped her forehead. "Damn, but my theory was stupid."

Zuko didn't correct her. Instead he gathered what he could -- futons and old sheets and the odd brushwork portrait -- in the middle of the sitting room, and lit it. He watched and waited for the blaze to spread. It licked along the floorboards and climbed upward. When the house, the finest on its street, was a crumbling inferno he said to those assembled: "Tizo the overseer is a traitor to the Fire Nation. His practices at the refinery in Tetsushi poisoned every man, woman, and child in the village. His cheap lead, bought with the lives of innocent people, has tainted the water, the fish, and the land. Through his greed and his refusal to assure quality of product and life, he has exiled himself from this nation. If he returns to this port, he is worse than a foreigner, he is unwanted. If I discover that you have harbored him, the burning of your home will be the least of your worries. There will be no place to hide."

He had stepped away and the crowd had parted for him. He ignored the fear and reprimand in Katara's eyes. He was yelling orders to his men about finding Tizo, commissioning wanted posters, sending dragon-hawks with messages demanding that engineers be sent to Tetsushi to fix the refinery safely and properly. He was looking at the crowd of refugees from Tetsushi and opening chests full of precious emergency gold and ordering that food and water and blankets be bought, and he was commandeering the town square and describing a tent city for the ones who would be staying behind. He was rousting apothecaries who knew something about liver-cleansers from their beds -- or ordering that it be done, at least. It was being a leader and it felt good because it meant doing something and he'd felt worse than useless this whole trip.

And now he sat alone in his cabin -- Katara's cabin -- holding tea and staring at grids of tiny numbers without truly comprehending them. Katara pushed through the door. Her face was puffy and red. She sagged against the door and twisted it shut. The wheel squeaked. They regarded each other in the candlelight and it came rushing back to him: her hand on his face, their almost-fight about when and why and for how long.

"Su-Lin's dead," she said, and suddenly his cringing confession felt very small and meaningless in the larger tide of death and despair that had swept one corner of his country.

He stood. "I'm sorry."

"She fell during the evacuation. She rolled down some rocks…" Katara blinked and tears slid down her face. "I wasn't there."

Mute, Zuko opened his palms and held them out. His fingers plucked the air -- an invitation, if she wanted it. He saw her make the decision. She pushed away from the door and crossed the room and slid her arms around him. Why is it always death that brings us together? He held her tight and pressed his cheek to her hair. It smelled of smoke. Her breath shuddered.

"The child?" he asked, and his voice came out rougher than he meant it to.

"In my cabin," Katara said, sniffing. "I'll take him to the temple with me when I return."

Her words settled in his gut heavily. He pulled away. "And that'll be soon, won't it?"

Her gaze fell. "I don't…"

He swallowed. "It's all right," he said. "You don't owe me anything. How I feel -- how I felt -- doesn't suddenly lift your duties from your shoulders, you still have to-"

Her hand brushed his face, the fingers tracing the lumpy mass of his ear. He quieted and watched her. "Why can't you be different?" she asked in a hushed voice, staring at his mouth. "Why can't you be the boy who chased us?"

"I haven't been that boy in a long time." As before, he reached up and pressed her hand to his face. "Are you still the girl I tied to a tree?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure who I am, any longer." Her other hand worried the fabric of his shirt, twisting one frog clasp between two fingers. "I've been so confused, lately. I used to know the right thing to do all the time. I remember what that felt like." Her face pinched. "I never thought I'd say that life was easier during the war, but…"

"But you had an enemy to fight," Zuko said. "And you had your freedom."

"When did you get so smart?" She blinked. "I turned around, and you grew up."

"So did you." His other hand covered hers on his chest and held it to his heart.

"What's happening to us?"

He let his other hand drop and leaned their foreheads together. He felt a rush of gratitude when she didn't pull away. "We're moving on."

Katara smiled softly. "Is that what it's called?" She enlaced their fingers over his heart. "I think maybe we're still growing up."

"Is that why my stomach is full of sparrowkeets?"

She bit back laughter and then both of them were laughing quietly just to each other, their lips almost touching. "Maybe," she said. "But being a grown-up does have its advantages."

His heart squeezed. "Oh?"

"Mm-hmm."

He moved their tangled hands to his lips and kissed each of her knuckles carefully, reverently, watching her blue eyes darken. His hand shook inside hers. "Would you show me?"

≅

Many times, Zuko had imagined what this would be like. His approximations were always fleeting, disconnected, lacking in the narrative that actually unfolds between two people: this, to that, to those, beginning and middle and end. Rising action, falling action. His adolescent self had seen only what it wished for in the moment: Katara's hair curtained around him, her necklace catching the light as it moved in time to the rhythm they set. He had imagined what her lips and hands and skin and tongue would feel like. He had thought he heard her voice catching inside his good ear.

He had not pictured laughter or scent or the way she said I'm not as pretty as you remember, I'm older now, or the way he said I'll be the judge of that, and Leave the necklace, in my dreams you wore that necklace. He had not known she would bite down into his shoulder or tell him exactly what to do (no, slower, lighter, like that, please, like that) or cling shivering to him, just as surprised by the intensity of her reaction as he was.

He had not imagined himself adopting a Toph-ism and saying Thank you, Sweetness, between kisses or the hum of exhaustion in his limbs afterward or how tightly he molded to her when she rolled away from him.

"I should check on Kurzu," she said, on the edge of sleep.

"Bring him in here with us," he said, but he curled an arm around her and she didn't move.

≅

Zuko's eyes opened to dim blue light. Dawn birds cried outside the porthole. A giddy, spent, warm feeling suffused him. He turned -- he must have shifted in the night -- and looked at Katara. He sighed in relief. She's still here. Her hair covered her face. She had twisted free of him. Now her shoulders shook gently.

Oh, no. "Katara?" He reached for her, but pulled his hand away at the last second. "Sweetness, what's wrong?" Fear spread through his stomach. He pulled the sheet aside and looked for blood. "Did I hurt you? Are you all right?"

She only cried louder. "I'm fine," she said between sobs.

"Then why are you crying?"

She curled more tightly into herself. "There's something I have to tell you."

He slid one cautious arm around her. "Then tell me, so I can fix it," he said.

"You can't fix this," she said under her breath. "It's about Aang."

Zuko's skin went cold. She still loves him. She feels guilty and she's going to leave. It's over before it began. "Yes?"

"I really loved Aang," Katara said.

"I know."

"The other men who tried to get my attention just wanted the Avatar's waterbender, you know? They didn't care who I was before the final battle. Aang treated me like a real person."

"He loved you." Zuko stroked her arm. "You're very easy to love."

He saw the corner of her smile. "Thank you." She sighed. "He also needed me. And I guess I like being needed by somebody. Before he mastered the Avatar state, I had to bring him out of it. I had to wrap him up and hold him while he cried, until he stopped glowing." She sniffed. "I liked being the person who could do that for him. It made me feel special."

"You're already-"

"Let me finish," she said. "What I'm trying to say is that sometimes, it felt more like I was Aang's mother than his lover. And that didn't change during our marriage." She turned over so that she rested on her back, and stared up at the ceiling. "Do you remember when Aang when to look for more airbenders?"

"Of course."

"He didn't find any. He really was the last. And that hit him really hard. I think that deep down he'd always hoped to find a few. So when he found me again, I think I responded to how sad he was. All my old instincts came back. He was mine again. The world had returned to normal."

"Because you had an Avatar to look after."

She nodded. "Right. So it was easy to agree, when he asked me to marry him. Because he had these big projects planned -- refurbishing the temple, organizing the orphanage -- and he was like his old self: boundless optimism, endless energy. And I got swept up in it."

Zuko frowned. "What are you saying? You loved Aang. You just told me so."

"I know. But being married to him was like being married to my best friend -- if my best friend wanted to have kids, because he hoped they would be airbenders. And he thought that I would be the perfect mother to them, because he'd experienced it first-hand."

It was Zuko's turn to roll over onto his back. He lay there breathing and digesting the information. "I had no idea children were so important to him."

"He didn't have much of a childhood. None of us did, I guess. But he wanted to make up for lost time, and the only way to do it was to surround himself with other kids. I think that's part of why he started the orphanage. But even that didn't get at what he really wanted, which was more airbenders."

"But bending isn't transmitted by blood," Zuko said.

"But it is more likely in bending families," Katara said. "It's not like Aang wouldn't have loved them if they weren't airbenders. He wanted children. He wanted them with me. It's just that I couldn't give them to him."

Zuko turned. "What?"

She blinked. A single tear rolled down her temple and into her hair. "I miscarried," she said.

"You were pregnant?" He propped his head on an elbow. "Uncle never told me…"

She shook her head. "No one knew. Not even Sokka. I wanted to wait until the three-month mark. But the baby didn't make it." Her face crumpled and he reached for her hands to cover them. Katara took a deep breath. Their hands rose on her stomach. "It hurt. A lot. Not just in my heart, but my whole body. It was like being turned inside out. I was in too much pain to bend, and I couldn't even heal myself."

"Dear sages…"

"Aang saw how much it hurt me, and he swore never to put me through that again. He said children weren't important if they were going to put me in danger. I told him that we could see other healers, try to figure out what had gone wrong, but he wouldn't hear it. He could be so stubborn, sometimes." She shrugged. "And after that, we stopped sharing a bedroom."

Zuko blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I told him that healing benders can control conception. We can move the fluids higher and lower inside ourselves. It's complicated, but it's still bloodbending. So we could still sleep together. But he didn't want to."

He found it in himself to be wry. "Trust me. He wanted to."

Katara shook her head. "No, he didn't. I know that over time, couples drift apart. Sometimes it's just hard to find some privacy, especially in orphanage filled with kids. But it wasn't like that with Aang. It was like he just blew out a candle. It was that simple. I couldn't believe how easy it was for him. He just dismissed that part of married life the way he refused meat."

"Then he was an even bigger fool than I ever thought."

She smiled. "Thanks for saying so. But that's the difference between you two. Aang was the Avatar. It takes that kind of strength to reject temptation and keep the chakras clear. It's worth it if it means that another Avatar can take his place. As his wife, I had to accept that." She sighed. "At least, that's what I thought."

"And now?"

"Now…" Katara looked into Zuko's face. "Now I'm not so sure." She blushed. "Because for as much as Aang loved me, and as much as I loved him…" Her eyes welled with tears. "What you and I had last night was something Aang and I never shared. And I missed out on that because I didn't know it was even possible, and because your stupid honor held you back." She poked him in the chest feebly. "Part of me feels really guilty, you know? I shouldn't even compare you with Aang in that way. It's not fair. People are different."

He traced a line from her belly to her knee and back again. "And the other part?"

She bit her lower lip before answering. "The other part feels very liberated."

≅

Afterward, she sat in bed watching him shave in a small mirror angled to best catch the sunlight. "I never saw this when we were on the road together."

"I did it every morning before you woke up."

"Oh, right. Firebenders rise with the sun and all that."

He swished the razor in a basin of water. Iroh had taught him to shave. It was harder when they were on the road and they had no mirror. He used the smooth, gleaming side of a teapot. That was one of the few things he actually liked about their place in Ba Sing Se: the washroom. It was a dingy little shared place at the end of the hall, but it had a mirror and he could heat the water as much as he liked when the door was locked. Funny, he hadn't thought about that place in years.

"Do you think anyone knows?" Katara asked.

He watched her in the mirror. "Would you care if they did?"

"I would have thought that you would. You're the Fire Lord, after all."

He pulled the razor down through warm foam. "At the moment, I feel more like Lee."

"Who?"

"Never mind. Do you want breakfast?"

"That sounds wonderful." She slid out of bed and picked up her dress. "I really should check on Kurzu. I'm sure he's hungry, too."

"Hey. Stop." He toweled off the last of the foam and crossed the room. He took the dress from her and enfolded her in his arms. Their bare skin pressed together warmly.

"What's this for?"

"I want to." He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled. "Mmm…"

Katara giggled. "You're holding me like I'm going to blow away any minute."

"You might."

She pulled away. "I'm going to get dressed now, and then I'm going to get Kurzu, and the three of us are going to have something to eat. I promise." Grinning, she stepped into her clothes. "You can send out a search party after five minutes."

He smiled. "See that I don't have to."

"Hey, I don't take orders from you." Her grin broadened. "Quite the reverse, in fact."

"It's always a pleasure to serve."

≅

The next two days were the finest Zuko remembered since the three-day festival following his father's death. They moved at a much slower pace, although sometimes it seemed that he turned around and the whole afternoon had passed in a blur of sun and waves and feedings. It's going to end when you arrive home, a voice within him said. It sounded like Azula. Nothing this perfect can ever last, especially not for you. But he ignored it and paced the length of the boat with Katara and Kurzu. He held the child at arm's length as Katara bent water up from the sea to bathe his small, squirming body. Now that he received regular servings of untainted congee and mashed mango, Kurzu's color had improved and he seemed to constantly push away from Zuko and Katara to crawl around the room on his elbows like a soldier doing stealth drills.

"He should really be walking by now," Katara said, shifting weight and tilting her head as she watched Kurzu make his clumsy rounds.

"Plenty of late-bloomers go on to great things," Zuko said. "What he lacks in grace he makes up for in eagerness."

She turned to him and slid an arm around his middle. "You sound like Iroh."

"Thank you," he said, and kissed her scalp.

Katara's more intimate hungers continued to surprise him, as well. She was like a starving child let into a bakery. She cornered him during Kurzu's every nap, and between his late-night crying jags. Not that Zuko had any objection -- although he did wonder if the Avatar's spirit would be arriving anytime soon to mete out punishment. It was as though she had uncovered a wellspring inside herself. That energy, desire, and pleasure overflowed into him and left him feeling young, if a little depleted. His skin hadn't tingled this way since before Ozai's death. And his spirit had not burned with such hope since the moments just after it.

The night before they arrived at the capital Kurzu simply refused to sleep. He cried if put down, and clung to Katara's legs if she walked away. "I think he finally understands that his mother isn't coming back," she said, hefting the child for what seemed the thousandth time. Kurzu squalled into her neck and twisted in her grasp. He pulled her hair, causing her to bite back a curse. "Can't you order him to quit, or something? He's Fire Nation, after all."

Zuko looked up from the scroll he was reading. "Kurzu, your Lord orders you to stop giving his Lady so much trouble."

"Your Lady, huh?" Katara asked. Her voice teased, but her eyes smiled.

"I'm simply trying to instill good citizenship," Zuko said. He stood and circled Katara so that he stood behind her. He pulled her hair back from her neck and kissed her there. "He should learn that this Fire Lord is very happy to reward loyalty."

"Loyalty, hmm?"

"Indeed."

"What about foreigners?" she asked. "How does this Fire Lord reward them?"

"Eagerly and often," he said, kissing down her shoulder. He heard her breath catch and smiled. "I think a bath is in order."

"We already-"

"I meant for us."

She half-turned. "Come to think of it, I am feeling a little dirty."

≅

That morning as dawn lightened the room, Zuko's eyes opened to see Katara on the other side of the bed, her body forming a defensive wall so that Kurzu could not roll out. The child lay asleep between them. Zuko's heart twisted and swelled with a feeling too large for him to encompass. Feverish warmth overtook him, as though he had just summoned a great tide of fire. His vision blurred and the breath left his lungs. It's the change, he realized. It happened after Lake Laogai, and again when the comet came and gave me the strength to defeat Ozai. It's an omen, a burst of power to do what's necessary.

"But what must I do?" he whispered. Katara stirred, and he reached for her face. "This is right," he said, tracing his fingers over her jaw. "I know it is. Just tell me how to keep you, and I'll do it."

But she made no reply, and he fell asleep with dreams of two fish who circled one another without touching.