ZUTARA WEEK 2010.
DAY VI PROMPT: ALTERNATE UNIVERSE (AU)

(-)

Katara was shaking as the man that she had saved her placed a woollen blanket over her shoulders. Part of her was still in shock and denial about what had happened, but the rest of her knew that what she had seen hadn't been a hallucination, or some movie-special effect. As Zuko kneaded her shoulders in an attempt to soothe her nerves, she thought back to the events of an hour ago that had completely changed her life...

- - - oOo - - -

She had been walking home after her evening shift at Gaoling General Hospital, where she worked as a triage nurse. She had gotten off work at just after midnight, and was walking the seven blocks to her apartment. She had never had trouble walking home before: she lived in a fairly decent neighbourhood of the newly thriving city, and she was always armed with a can of mace and her brown belt in karate. But on this night, a man had swaggered up to her from the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere, and introduced himself as Jet.

More amused than frightened, Katara had firmly told him that she wasn't interested in a relationship, and tried to sidle her way around him. Faster than she could blink, his arm was in her path, and his face was cracked into a grin. It was then that Katara had started getting angry, and looked him in the eye to give him a piece of her mind. But the moment that her blue eyes met his cold, hard eyes, all of her resistance faded away, and she willingly let him throw his arm around her and steer her towards the darkened alley way.

The strangest part was how completely normal it seemed for her to enter a dark alley with a man she had met only moments ago, as if it was something that she did every other day. In the dark recesses of her mind, she heard a voice screaming at her to snap out of it, that something wasn't right, but this was easily drowned out by the comforting weight of Jet's arm on her shoulder. The next instant, when he had shoved her up against the wall and started kissing her far rougher than she liked, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to respond enthusiastically, no matter what that tiny voice was screaming away in the back of her mind. His mouth slowly moved from her lips to her jawbone, trailing oddly cold kisses down her face until he came to her neck. There, he stopped and gave her neck a long, slow lick right above her carotid artery, and she ignored the odd coldness. When she started to feel an odd pressure against her neck, she tried to look down but all she saw was a small trail of blood leaking down her shirt.

'He's biting your neck!' The voice inside her screamed 'Get away get away get AWAY!' In a flash, her free will reasserted itself and she began to struggle, trying to break free of his oddly cold hands. But his thin build held an immense strength, and his arms remained unmovable. She could feel herself growing weak as she lost more and more blood to this fiend, and just as her vision began to fade, she smelt an overpowering odour of pine and old growth forest and Jet was torn away from her and slammed into the other side of the alleyway. She looked at her rescuer and her breath caught in her lungs. He was easily the most gorgeous creature that she had ever seen, blowing all of her fantasies about men out the window. He was lean, almost willowy in build, but she could feel the raw strength and grace that he seemed to exude with every passing moment. He was wearing a cloak that seemed to shift between gray and green at any given moment, and his long, black hair reached his shoulders. His finely crafted breastplate was inlaid with traceries of gold and he had a sword pointed at Jet in one hand, and a wooden stake in the other.

"Jet." She thought that she imagined the frostiness in his voice until she was shocked to see his breath cloud in front of him.

Getting up, she could see the recognition on Jet's face. "Zuko... how nice to see you after all these years. How long has it been this time, eh? A hundred forty years? You remember, that cute asian girl, from Japan, what was her name? I think that it was Mai..."

Zuko snarled and brought his sword down on Jet, but Jet had already moved by the time the blade reached the space that he had just occupied. Twirling around, she finally got to see the other half of his face, and she was shocked to see his angelic features marred with an ugly scar. She also couldn't help but notice his pointed ears as his hair parted around them. Then her eyes met his and a feeling much like the one Jet had made her feel washed over her, except this time she was completely in control.

'I want him' came the completely unbidden thought, rising to her mind. 'Even with the scar, he's the most spectacular looking man I've ever seen. Hell, the scar adds to it.'

Zuko kneeled down next to her with concern in his eyes. "Hold on, you've lost a lot of blood." Holding a strange looking leaf over her neck, he crumbled it with murmuring something in a language that sounded like moonbeams dancing across a waterfall's spray. She caught a golden glow from the corner of her eye, and all of a sudden pain lanced through her system as she finally felt where her neck had been violated by Jet's fangs.

"I'm sorry" Zuko murmured, taking a roll of soft white material from beneath his cloak. Wrapping it around her next a few times, he quickly bound her neck. "I should have gotten him before he go to you, but I want sure if it was him..."

"He was... he couldn't have been..."

"A vampire? Oh yes. He got turned by one of the few remaining Elders nearly three hundred years ago."

"But... those are just legends... and what ARE you?"

"I'm sorry. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Zuko of the Jiulong Baguazhang lineage, High Warden of the Feywild."

"The... Feywild? What's that?"

"The Feywild is the shadow of what you would call your world. It's what connects your earth and my own realm of Faerie."

"So... you're a fairy?"

A flash of amusement darkened his eyes briefly. "Do I look six inches tall to you? No, I'm one of the álfr, what you would likely call an elf"

"But why did you save me?"

"In the absence of light, darkness prevails. There are things that go bump in the night, girl. Make no mistake about that. And the High Wardens are the ones who bump back. It is our ancestral duty, handed down since time immemorial."

- - - oOo - - -

Yes, Zuko's an elf in this one. Not too happy with this one, but... meh. I couldn't figure out how to end this. More specifically, an Elven Prince of the Faerie Court, and High Ranger of the Feywild, the buffer between our world and the world of the Fey. My entry for Storm is going to be late – my sister is coming from out of town to a surprise visit. I'm lucky that I managed to get this out before she came.

Credit where's it's due:

Feywild/Faerie: blame my Dungeons and Dragons skillz. Feywild is from 4e, and Faerie is from 3.5 Forgotten Realms

Ending quote is from Hellboy, possibly one of my favourite movies EVER.