ZUTARA WEEK 2010.
DAY III PROMPT: PAIN

(Takes place during either Into the Inferno or Avatar Aang)

(Warning: the rating goes up after this for some harsh language)

Pain.

Fire filled his every nerve as Zuko tried to stand. He had just attempted to redirect the lightning bolt that his sister, the now apparently insane almost-Fire Lord, had shot at Katara in an attempt to distract him. And the worst part was that her plan had succeeded. Although the Fire Sages in the wings knew that Azula had broken the rules of Agni Kai, they were completely terrified of her. Zuko could only watch weakly as Azula blasted flame after flame at Katara. He saw the beautiful waterbender, his beautiful waterbender, barely managing to deflect the blast of superheated fire.

He had no formal claim on Katara, of course, but after that fateful kiss on the way back from Yon Ra, there had been plenty of sparks between them. Toph had picked up on them, and Zuko had had to threaten her with death by tickling if she didn't keep her little trap shut until they figured out what do to with this thing they had. His breath caught painfully in his side as he tensed, watching Katara ducking behind a pillar to avoid Azula's latest attack.

They were both true prodigies: had the odds not been heavily stacked in Azula's favour, he had no illusions that Katara could have beaten her already in her current state. But Sozin's Comet, that mass of fire that was ripping through the atmosphere at an incredible pace, was filling Azula with power as surely as it was filling Zuko, along with every other firebender on the planet. With its enormous power, it was only a matter of time until Azula burnt Katara to a streak on the courtyard ground. Zuko managed to wedge himself up onto a pillar as the battle continued, the two females exchanging blasts of blue in between them.

Zuko's heart stopped for a split second as one of Azula's fire blasts finally overcame Katara's defences and his waterbender was thrown against a pillar, leaving her helpless against Azula's next attack.

No. A cold fury shot through Zuko's veins as rage overtook him. 'You may have taken my honour, my mother and everything that was good and pure from me, but I'll die before I let you, or my thrice-damned sister, take my woman away from me, Ozai!' Ignoring the screams of protest from his beaten body, Zuko pushed himself off of his pillar and threw out a hand, channelling all of his rage and righteous fury into a powerful plume of flame.

A massive blast of white-tinged fire erupted from his hand a blasted Azula off her feet and halfway across the courtyard. Chest streaming blood, Zuko stood blew a plume of white hot flame into the air.

As Azula got up from the ground and watched Zuko roar in rage, she felt the faintest twinges of something in her heart. Watching Zuko like this, all bloody and positively burning with rage, actually intimidated her. He was a silhouette of black against a fiery backdrop of the burning Imperial Palace. As he looked straight at her, that fear increased as she swore that his eyes literally glowed with barely contained fury.

"Azula!" Zuko's voice, broken and raspy beyond belief, sent shivers up Azula's spine. "Don't you even think about taking another step towards her, or it'll be the last thing that you do, I swear by Agni's eternal flames."

Shaking her head to clear it, she scoffed at herself. 'Scared? Of Zuko? True, she'd never seen him this angry, but she was always the better firebender. Always was, always is, and always would be.' She smirked as she sent a blast of her distinctive sapphire flames at Zuko's right, noticing that he was favouring it slightly. The smirk dropped right off her face, however, when Zuko merely waved his arm at her fire blast and it dissipated before it came within a half-dozen paces of him. She shot blast after blast at him, knowing that he wouldn't be able to keep this up, if the trail of blood behind him was any indication. But he kept going beyond all her expectations. He kept moving towards her, limping and deflecting fire blasts as he came closer and closer, leaving a bloody mark of his progress. When he was within forty feet, she set her stance and began to separate the positive and negative energies in the air surrounding her.

- - - oOo - - -

Katara's vision slowly returned after her head impacted the pillar. Expecting Azula to be right on her, she cringed and pulled her arms up to protect her face. Feeling no burning sensation nor hearing any maniacal laughter, she slowly lowered her arms and her jaw dropped at the sight that she saw.

Zuko, who had looked to be mortally wounded when he took the lightning for her, was up on his feet and not only firebending, but apparently winning, against all odds. Then she noticed the stream of thick, dark blood running off of his body.

- - - oOo - - -

Zuko no longer thought in such terms like pain, surrender or even honour. All that and other petty concerns were burned away by the cold flames of his anger. Dissipating blast after blast of Azula's flames, he noticed when she stopped blasting flame and began to charge a lightning bolt. He continued in his unstoppable march across the courtyard, stepping closer and closer to his goal with every second.

'That dragon-bitch. She who had hurt what was his. Dragons protect what is theirs, whatever the cost.' When the flash of lightning raced for his heart, he snatched it from the air and brought it down to his sea of chi in his stomach, avoiding his already injured heart, and led it up his other arm. Feeling it travel down to his hand, Zuko flicked his wrist at the exact moment that it left his body and Azula watched in horror as her lightning bolt not only failed to kill him, but was heading straight towards her. Seeing the momentary indecision on Azula's face, Zuko broke into a run, distantly feeling a searing pain in his chest as he picked up speed on his way towards the thing that had hurt his mate.

- - - oOo - - -

Azula managed to throw herself to the ground before the lightning slammed into the pillar a ways behind her, shattering it. 'Where in the hells did Zuko learn to redirect lightning? It had to have been Uncle Fuddy Duddy... guess that I'll have to order his execution after I kill Zuzu and Father defeats the Avatar'. Staggering to her feet, Azula was more than slightly surprised to see Zuko standing over her, waiting for her to get up. Staring at her brother, she barely recognized him as human.

His ribs, visible through the rent in his skin that her first lightning bolt had wrought, matched the paleness of his skin, gone bone-white from blood loss. But it was his face that had undergone the greatest change. Gone was the typical indecision and weakness that Azula had learned oh-so-long ago to prey on and exploit. Gone was the slight softness of his eyes, and the subtle smile that threatened to break out. His eyes, once his feature that broadcast his inner kindness, were now molten gold, furious and itching to burn. His mouth was marked by a feral snarl, and his every breath was licked with flames. Before she could even react, his heated hand was around her throat, closing off her air supply, and the hand was getting hotter and ohAgnihewasburningherthepainthepainthe-

Azula's pain didn't diminish, but her brother's hands where no longer around her throat. Looking to see who her saviour was, she was surprised to see that it had been the waterbending wench, the one that Zuko had so foolishly risked his life to save, that was standing in front of her, blocking Zuko from his sister. Grabbing a stream of water from the nearby grate, she froze Zuko solid in a glacier of ice.

- - - oOo - - -

Katara had been shocked enough by Zuko's seeming transformation, but when he had grabbed Azula by the throat and started burning a hole through it, Katara knew that she had to step in and save Zuko from himself. Grabbing as much water as she could trust herself controlling, she slammed it into Zuko, knocking him away from the sister that he seemed dead-set on killing. As Azula fell to the ground, Zuko rolled with the force of the blow and before he could re-orient himself on his sister, Katara stepped in the way and froze Zuko solid in a block of ice. Unfortunately, it worked about as well as it had all hose months ago in the North Pole: she heard a muted roar and then the interior of his prison began to shine for a second before it shattered, blowing Katara off her feet.

Without giving her the chance to get up and try to stop him again, Zuko raced towards Azula again, and Katara did the one thing that she could think of to stop him. She threw her arms around his and locked her wrists.

- - - oOo - - -

Zuko was angry, betrayed and confused. As he thrashed about, trying to escape, he kept asking himself: Why was his waterbender stopping him from punishing the one who had hurt her? Why was she stopping him from claiming the justice that was so rightfully his, not only for this transgression, but for all the years that he had had to put up with her? Gradually, he realised that Katara was talking, murmuring words into his ears.

"Zuko, you can't do this, I can't let you become the same monster that they've already become... I can't let you, I won't!"

Suddenly, the magnitude of what he had been doing and what he had almost done hit him.

"Oh Agni... Katara... what have I done?"

- - - oOo - - -

Pulling herself back, she saw that the fury had left Zuko's eyes and instead, in its place, there was horror and a bone-shatteringly deep well of guilt. She only caught sight of his eyes for a second before they rolled into his head and he finally collapsed for the final time.

- - - oOo - - -

Three days later, at Fire Lord Zuko's funeral pyre, Iroh was holding Katara and Toph as they cried onto his shoulders. Iroh had known how Zuko had felt about her ever since they had been rejoined at the White Lotus camp outside of Ba Sing Se before the final battle. In Iroh's pocket was the betrothal necklace that Zuko had carved and had kept with him, tucked into his tunic during the final battle and recovered by Iroh before the Fire Sages embalmed the body. He would give it to Katara before she left for her home in the Southern Water tribe beside her brother and father. It was only after the Avatar had arrived after the final battle, exulting in the fact that he didn't have to kill the Fire Lord, when he had tried to kiss Katara, that she had truly broke down. Everybody save Iroh and Toph had been shocked when she screamed at him to leave her alone, saying that although he might be the most powerful bender on the planet, he wasn't 'her' powerful bender. After a few minutes of ranting at a fortuneteller called Aunt Wu, she had disappeared into the Imperial Palace and no one knew that she had snuck into the Royal Mortuary and broke down over Zuko's cold body.

Iroh looked down onto the pyre that had, until recently, held the boy that he had all but adopted as his second son, the boy that had been not only an older brother, but a best friend to the girl on his left, and the one true love of the girl on his right.

As the last embers died on the pyre, everybody save the three crying benders left, leaving those three who had been closest to him in life to try and comfort each other in the pain of his death.

Oh Gods, please don't kill me *hides* Zuko's death came out of nowhere for me too. And the prompt WAS pain, so if anyone is to blame, it's not me. Nor GreenifyMe, or the other wonderful staff at Zutara Week. No, the person who you should blame... is YOURSELF. You are the one who helped select the themes for Zutara Week. I actually started to tear up as I finished this. Why did I have to write a tragedy at the flippin' START of Zutara Week? Zutara week is supposed to be happy, dammit...

Credit where it's due:

Vathara, for the "Dragon Rage" in her fanfic Embers (in my opinion, a must-read for ANY fan of the show/Zuko)