characters: aang, katara, zuko.
etc: zuko and katara are not very good at this thing.
…
ii. i've been down this memorial road before
of learning enemy tactics
…
Katara doesn't realize that five minutes have passed until a cool breeze tickles the back of her neck, Aang's voice filtering through her head slowly. "You guys are still sitting here?"
She cranes her head to the side to look at him, her hands pressed onto her thighs, and sends him an uneasy smile (there's something about the softness in his voice that keeps her calm, but she's not quite sure what that is, exactly).
It does catch her offguard, however, when Zuko speaks up behind her.
"I don't know what to say," his voice is heavy, heavier than even its trademark rasp, the way he always seems to inflect the weight of the world with his words. Aang's eyes widen from curiosity to shock before he moves over to sit beside the firebender, floating past her. Zuko seems to squirm in Aang's presence, as if it's impossible for the two of them to inhabit such close quarters, what with them being so different.
"Something important," Aang's eyes crinkle in the corners and Katara has to smother the smile from her own lips, because it is not an appropriate time for it, "Share something that means a lot to you."
A thousand thoughts seem to crawl across Katara's mind, thoughts of relics long lost in the snow, of the way she used to hop in her father's footprints (and how huge the world had seemed then, standing in boots that were ten times the size of her own), things that weren't really things at all.
"That sounds great," Aang says to Zuko, his hand fastened on the older boy's shoulder, and Katara realizes she's zoned out for the entirety of their conversation. "This time, when I come back," he stands and Katara tilts her head up to look at him as he moves by, dropping his hand to rest in the froth of curls tangled on her shoulder, "I hope you've at least spoken to each other, okay!"
Katara's eyes flit over Zuko for only a few moments, long enough to watch him fold his hands into his lap and stare down at them, before she watches Aang retreat in colors of sunset, his gait feather light.
There's nothing to say, because she has nothing to say. She takes strands of her hair into her hands, threads them loosely while she thinks of all the things she could do with the time she's wasting here, sitting in front of this exiled Prince. They're so close that she can feel the heat wafting from his body (because neither of them have moved from where Aang pushed the earth together, a tiny rift in the ground between them from where the rocks collided), so close that she doesn't have to reach too far before her fingers are hovering close to the furled scarred flesh over his face.
This is so, completely and utterly—
"I burned myself."
When she looks up, his hand is cupped like there is a candle in its center and she expects flame to burst, but it doesn't; instead, he touches the tips of his fingers together, rubbing his own fingertips. "When I first learned I could firebend, I burned myself. My father said it was because my chi was weak."
She creases a frown deep across her lips, because Zuko says father in such an oppressive way that it hurts even her, but she doesn't speak. And even when he falls silent, she distracts herself by watching the thin pale fingers trace over wounds that have healed long ago. "I was always ready to use my firebending to hurt other people instead. And I only ever—" I only ever hurt myself. "When I took up swords, I was taught restraint. And deliberation. And being aware that I had the choice whether or not to strike with harmful intent."
When he shifts, he shifts the both of them; Katara scoots back slightly, frowning. "That might not be important to you, but it is to me." He shrugs his shoulders and without much of a warning, he stands to brush the wrinkles out of his pants.
"Wait," she grinds her teeth in annoyance, "it's supposed to be my turn, isn't it?!" But Zuko doesn't turn around, and after Katara scrambles to her feet, she doesn't have the drive to chase him down.
…
But she watches his eyes when she sits on the other side of the fire, how there's a fire that simply sways and dances and slips through the air, and how it doesn't matter what surrounds it, that it will burn carelessly (carefree) in ways he would never.
She doesn't really know what to do with this new information (and she hopes Aang doesn't ask).
…
notes: this will be a lot more rapidly updated, promise. (i sorta forgot about it for a little while, there.)