characters: aang, katara, zuko.
etc: easily one of my favorite scenes.

…

v. now you see me, now you don't
of learning the truth
…

They have much more important things to do than these mediations, but no matter how many times Katara asks Aang, he gives her the same answer: a gentle shake of his head with a tiny frown and wide, clear eyes focused on her. "You're already doing so well!" He tells her with an excited smile and she tries to mirror it, but it comes out crooked and dejected and far from genuine.

It doesn't matter, because he cannot confess anything to her that will erase the hurt he caused her underneath those catacombs, a pain she thought had died on the dank, dripping floor of the underground lake. So she can listen to Zuko as much as she wants, and maybe, sometimes, she smiles, but underneath it she remembers the cool touch of his skin and the points of his scar and when she sees him, she remembers how it felt and remembers how she felt, knitting Aang's shredded skin together.

Katara finds herself even more angry to find that no matter what she does to him during the day, no matter how she berates and harasses him, he is always seated by the time she scales the cliffside, on the side he sat on the very first day they started having mediations, hands cupped neatly in his lap. Her hatred is so misguided and blind sometimes that all she does is store his words away for later moments, tries to steel herself against his personal confessions.

She sees him turn his head and a shy, small smile flits across his lips, and it's terrible, because Katara just wants to make it go away.

"What will you do if you and Aang go looking for this Sun Warrior place and you still can't firebend?" Her words are brittle and harsh, but Zuko doesn't react. Whatever she hopes to draw out of him, she knows it will only be a violent outburst, and part of Katara is itching for a fight, itching to freeze his hands and chip at them until they shatter into pieces.

Zuko bites his lip nervously, and Katara finally sits down in front of him, knees digging into the ground and heels digging into her backside. "This is serious, Zuko," she insists, brows drawing together in frustration, "if you can't teach Aang firebending, then there will really be no use for you, here, and—"

"I'll find a way to help."

His face darkens, shadows of angry red in his cheeks, and Katara wants to laugh at the sight. Something deep underneath all of this virulent pettiness calls out to her, trying to coax her into sympathy and friendliness, but she can't bring herself to go along with that today. "Not that your firebending was particularly impressive to begin with."

He knows, because his eyes widen and then his face falls into impassivity, and she knows that he is prepared to bear the brunt of her bitterness, of her petulant tactics to anger him. He folds his arms across his chest and Katara tucks her legs underneath her, sitting with her legs crossed. She flicks her hair over her shoulder, and one corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk.

"The only firebender I've ever seen with a scar," she scoffs, but Zuko jerks suddenly, arms twitching across his chest, head snapping up to look at her, "what'd you do?"

Even parts disgust and even parts anger spill over his face, mixing until he just barely keeps his rage tempered. Katara's fingers rest on the tip of her waterskin, ready to rip all of the liquid out of it and drown him on dry land, but it is he who leaves her drowning when he lunges over the small peak in the ground, topples her onto her back.

Katara twists and starts to move, but Zuko presses the heel of his hand over her face, over her eye, and she squirms under his grip but he holds her still. "This is what my father did," he hisses, his voice dangerously low, and Katara hears his words in abrupt stereo, ringing in her ears even when he stops talking, "this was my punishment for wanting to save people."

One of them was breathing heavily—Katara couldn't discern which of them it was because her heart was beating in her throat and his eyes pierced hers, concentrated rays of sunlight. She didn't dare move, not at the risk of him burning her to ash with only the force of his own will to hold him back.

"So shut up," he snarls, jostling her, their foreheads bumping together awkwardly, "you don't know anything about how hard I've worked, you don't know what I've done to deserve anything, so shut up."

Katara yanks at her hands but he's the one who lets go, pulling himself off of her and getting to his feet. "I'm done," he says quietly, his body still quaking angrily, "you can tell Aang that I'm done."

Her face aches slightly and it's because she remembers the feeling of his rough palm pressed against her eye, resting on the cup of her cheek, and something burns with shame low in her stomach at the fact that she chased him away. Katara expects to feel something borderline triumphant, because he wasn't strong enough to withstand all of the pressure she thought he deserved and finally, finally she proved it.

But Katara only feels like a villain as she sits up, shaking the dust out of her hair and then pulling it over her shoulder and then through her hands like a sieve, carefully picking out any of the lingering dirt. She just wants to sit here and pretend it hadn't happened, but every time she closes her eyes, she recreates the anger and the hurt in the lines of his face, hears his voice stuttering over his explanation.

This is what my father did. Katara bites down on the inside of her cheek, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She tries to picture it, tries to imagine the Fire Lord touching his hand to his son's face, thirteen and vulnerable, and burning it. No, she didn't truly know anything about what Zuko had done to deserve anything, and for the first time since she'd met him, she felt terrible for treating him the way she had.

When Katara storms through the center of their camp, Aang and Zuko are huddled together, and she stops for a moment. Zuko's eyes are hollow and he doesn't turn to look at her, but Aang frowns at the look on her face, moves to comfort her. "Katara, what's wrong?"

She drags her arm over her face, startles herself because she hadn't even know she started crying, and then marches away; at least until the two of them return, she can be alone for a little while.

…

notes: katara can be a terrible person when she wants to be, so much more in this particular scene (canonically, this lines up with the firebending masters), so i don't doubt if she was forced to be around zuko that she would patronize him over his scar, especially because it is so closely related to the reason why she is upset with him. gosh, katara.

also, i just wanted to say that i appreciate all of your reviews. i have very mixed views about what i want to do with this story on some days, but reading your opinions on each of the chapters keeps me a lot more on task, so thanks!