Zutara Week 04

By Lil Black Bird

aka Shin Yuy

4- Manipulative

He stood in shadow and watched the scene before him. He felt like one sometimes… a shadow… even if he was now part of the group. She knelt before the sobbing child, hands aglow with the light of her healing as she mended the skinned knee. Playing too rough and running too fast amidst the ruins The Duke always ended up hurt but this time he had gone down hard and fast. He couldn't hear her from this distance over the boy's caterwauling but she was speaking softly, that motherly expression on her face.

She was good at that… being exactly what someone needed at the moment. A mother, a friend, a fighter, a confidant, a pal, a doctor… she was as malleable as the water she bent. He attributed it partially to just being a girl. However, of all the girls he had known she was the best at it.

Azula always had this… dangerous air around her. Even when she was being nice you knew she had a reason, or want, to do so. She always wanted something from you in return for whatever little thing she did for you. Even when he had chosen to side with them and not the Avatar, she knew the airbender could still be alive so pinned his death on Zuko. She was manipulative as hell and ever so good at it. Nevertheless, you could always see it on her face… like a snake waiting for the time to strike.

Katara was different. She was hard to predict beyond knowing she'd protect the weak and never let anything happen to the Avatar. Sure, he mused, there were the ever-predictable fights between them and with Sokka. The ever present tension between the young avatar and his crush that she would giggle off and keep stringing him along. There were the times she was a mother hen and a nag but when it came down to a one-on-one moment, a singular situation she melded into what was needed or defied it entirely.

He heard a laugh and turned back to the two kneeling by the fountain. The Duke got up, hugged Katara before putting on the 'tough guy' routine and ran off to rejoin the others who had moved down to the all day echo chamber for a laugh. He watched the boy go before returning to look on Katara's still kneeling form.

She sighed and slumped a bit, looking a bit worn out. The others sometimes didn't realize it but Katara did so much to keep things together. He wasn't surprised to see her expression go blank, her body to just deflate a bit before he watched the struggle in those clear blue eyes to pull herself back together.

His feet moved without his order and suddenly he was crouched behind her, a heat burning in his palms and his good ear. She was startled when he began to run his hands over her shoulders, the heat working to relax tired muscles. She turned a glare at him, another face he had seen, but she stopped. He wasn't sure what his face looked like, he couldn't see the reflection in her eyes. He focused instead on easing her aches. They stayed like that for a while, his hands ghosting over her back and shoulders, over her hair which covered her neck letting his inner heat soak into her skin. He felt the small smile more in his scar than on his face, the way the tissue crinkled and made it harder to see out of his eye when he smiled just so for no particular reason.

"Why?" she muttered, her voice had lost the edge it had with him and for once he was surprised.

"Just seemed like the right thing to do." He murmured; removing his hands and straightening back up, offering a hand to aid her too. "Water can only bend so much." He said cryptically and somewhere he knew his Uncle would be proud. "Sure you can manipulate it, push and pull it any way you want but in the end it can only go back to whatever the shape its vessel is."

In the end you're human too…

She regarded him in a confused way, unused to his cryptic speech and got up on her own. She had retorts, she always did when it came to him, but the words unsaid between them... the truth she could see in his eyes the color of the dieing western sun, held her tongue.

They weren't the Fire Prince and the Blood Bender

They weren't the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady

They weren't even Zuko and Katara

They were human. Simply human.

When the others returned from their fun to find the two of them just standing there, looking at each other in a peculiar way they didn't notice. When The Duke described what he saw to Toph they were almost daring to cross that line both had sworn not to cross but was right there waiting for them.

"ZUKO AND KATARA SITTING BY THE SEA…K I S S I N…"

"TOPH!" Katara was the first to break it off, blushing crimson like the sunset and turning to stand irate at the earthbender. The others were laughing and jeering in an instant and the noise filled the silence they once shared.

She turned to ask Zuko what he had been up to skulking in the shadows but he was already walking off, heedless of the cat calls from Sokka and Toph. He slipped into the shadows as if he was one, gone again off to wherever he went. She was sure she'd never figure him out. On again was the facade she wore as she tried to argue her way out of the scene she'd been caught in. Only a few feet away, in the darkness of the halls of the temple Zuko watched his Katara fade and become their Katara.

One day if fate would allow and he was cunning enough… there would never be a difference.

fin