characters: aang, katara, zuko.
etc: tiny tiny kataang.

…

iv. a dragon's mind is not a thing to play with
of learning how memories are made
…

"Tell me something," her voice is surprisingly soft as it drifts down around him, and she, herself, is settling down in her spot across from him, "about when you were young."

And maybe he should mask his shock as to not appear rude, but his eyes widen and his lips part curiously. Zuko looks up at her and she's, fuck, she's smiling. He's never seen her this way, not with an effortless smile on her lips like a secret, like her subconscious tugs at the corner of her mouth, and he can't help but stare for a few moments.

Then it quirks, her lips, and she's frowning in confusion. "That's important, isn't it? Why're you looking at me that way?" Zuko sucks in a nervous breath (because he wants to ask, what way, I'm not looking at you any way, Katara), but the threat of her name in his thoughts is too close and he swallows too quickly, and bursts into violent coughs. He braces his palm against his chest, his other hand clenching dirt underneath his nails, and after a few moments of heavy breathing, his gaze floats back up to her.

Worry and amusement line the tilt of her lips as she speaks. "Are you okay now?" Zuko lifts his shoulders into a shrug and rubs the dirt of his palms onto the leg of his pants, sighing gently.

"I startled myself, I guess," he offers in poor explanation, and her eyebrow notches up before it drops again, either appeased with his meager explanation or nonplussed enough to ask any further question. He coughs again, this time to clear his throat, and his father's voice looms in the back of his head—you are a prince, carry yourself like one, and most importantly, you are my son—and he blinks the fire out of his eyes, drawing his posture up with square shoulders and neatly folded hands.

"My childhood wasn't like yours," he starts, and ignores the flare of his nerves when her face darkens, "it wasn't very pleasant. So, I don't think you really want to hear about it, and the last thing I need is for you to feel sorry for me." Part of him doesn't mind the idea, but something shreds in brittle pieces inside of him at the thought of cheapened, pitiful sorrow in the stead of forgiveness.

Not after all of this talking. He could handle the shambles of whatever unsteady thing they had now—Katara didn't seem to hate him all hours of the day, but he was nowhere close to the circle of her good graces, and he may as well have been stumbling blindingly in the dark in the meantime.

Katara doesn't say anything, although the tremble of her lips tells him that she wants to. She wants to respond to this self-hatred he has ingrained, but Zuko isn't sure she would be much of a combatant for that, all things considered. She speaks, and his eyes flicker up to watch the expressions dance over her face. "Every year, on the day of first snow, my mother would wake us up, like a holiday."

Softly, a smile curves on her face and Zuko is mesmerized, watching her peaceably, "Sokka and I would play in the snowfall and our father would walk all the way through the fresh snow until we couldn't see him anymore. And it was like a game, we screamed, and he came back running." He watches her shift, unfolding her legs to pull her knees against her chest.

Zuko tries to imagine it; round, brown face tucked into a parka, toddling through the snow after her brother, hopping in and out of the large footprints of her father. And somehow, it shifts, to a frightened little girl screaming for her father, and him running back to her in vain. He flinches, and Katara looks at him curiously.

"Once," he finds himself saying, "my mother taught me how to manipulate clay casts. Not that I really learned anything, since I was three, but I remember her melting the clay in bowls over candles, and pouring it into a dish. She made me put my hand in it, and it was hot and sticky and like sludge over my fingers. She told me to wash it off while she finished the cast, but instead I went to tell my father what I did."

His words sit in the back of his throat, heavy and painful, and his chest aches with each breath, but there is so much of a startling difference—at least Katara has the father who comes back running, the one who lets her follow in his footsteps with no burdens. "The clay hardened and I broke my thumb, because my mother asked me what happened," but Zuko remembers the frustration in his father's expression, the way he'd jerked him closer and gripped his tiny hand in his much larger one and peeled the sticky clay off with disdain, rough motions and a sharp turn of his head when Zuko cried out in pain, and it was weeks proved worthless because he couldn't bend with a broken finger, "but that's it. Azula was born after that, and there's not much to really remember worth remembering."

If Katara wants to say something, she does a spectacular job of not saying it. But Zuko doesn't miss the way her eyes seem so bottomless with sorrow, the way she lets her chin sit between the points of her knees to hide the frown on her lips. Silence settles between them for moments at a time, and she watches him. There's something about her eyes that seem so natural, so that Zuko doesn't feel like he's being picked apart by her gaze, and when her eyes stretch in shock, it's because he realizes too late that he's mouthing words to himself.

"Sorry," his cheeks rise in color, pink and embarrassed, "I just…I'm a lot different now than I was when I was young. I never had anything easy, I worked so hard, too hard—I'm just grateful that this is who I am now." And there are certainly parts of himself he could bear to release, like his irascible temper and internally damaging mindset and the wells of effort he had to put into everything. But his life carved at him, painfully, until he became this person sitting in the dirt.

He likes it, he thinks.

"Me too, you know." Katara stands and he stares at her as she moves, stares because those little syllables liken them to each other. And instead, Zuko imagines a girl trying and failing at keeping water cohesive, fighting against herself to be better, fighting against the Avatar to be better, and as Aang appears over the side of the temple and Katara rises to meet him, he thinks he understands why he hurt her so badly.

He wishes he could take it all back, but he knows better than anyone that it is a challenge he must overcome. So Zuko watches Katara wrap her arms around Aang, watches the color in her face when the young Airbender tilts his head up and his nose brushes underneath her chin, and resolves himself to change.

…

notes: i have had this rolling around in my head for weeks, sorry it took so long to spit out.