Zutara Week. Day Three. Social Networking.
I own nothing! Zuko, Katara, Aang, Iroh, Azula, the Crystal Catacombs, Appa, and anything else recognizable belong Mike/Bryan/Nickelodeon/Viacom! Obviously, I don't own deviantART or LiveJournal.
Zutara Week 2011 is, of course, run by the lovely trishna87, senbo-sama, AnimantX, and Irrel. Best wishes to GreenifyME, who unfortunately couldn't participate in ZW this year.
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Sometimes, when she's bored, Katara will sit and write about the way things could have gone if she had changed a few select words or actions. She calls them alternative chapters, deleted scenes of her life that never actually happened.
They always end with kissing Zuko.
...
She wrote about the time Zuko had tied her to that tree by the lake.
The bark biting into her back, his guttural voice seething into her ear, her precious necklace dangling from pale fingers. He tucks the pendant into a pocket somewhere and leaves a line of rough kisses along her jaw. He feels more than hears her whimper, and his body absorbs the shudder she tries so hard to repress.
"If I let you go, peasant, will you run?"
The waterbender shakes her head as the prince slowly releases her tight constraints. She thinks of running, thinks of all the different ways she could beat him at his own game and leave with both her necklace and her dignity.
Instead, she doesn't run, as promised, because even though she wants to get back to Aang and Sokka, she also wants more of his fingertips stealing over her skin, more of his lips at her throat. All she does is wait and pull him closer as he leans in to kiss her again.
He breaks away too soon and too suddenly, stalking away. Zuko doesn't look back when she calls for him.
...
There was another she wrote in tears, a rewrite of when she and Zuko had been locked in the Crystal Catacombs together.
He stares at her, and she stares back. Suddenly it's not a banished-prince-turned Earth-Kingdom-refugee and a novice-waterbender-turned-teacher-for-the-Avatar. It's just a boy and a girl who have been deceived and tormented by the war that rages the world.
She reaches up to traces the outline of his scar. He flinches and almost blocks her touch,but he hesitantly allows her to press her cold palm to the rippled, red flesh across his face. Zuko squeezes his eyes closed as she settles her hand naturally over his cheek.
His mouth is uncomfortably dry, and he wants so badly to lick his lips. He doesn't though, because that would mean that he'd taste her skin and he doesn't know if he could handle that right now.
She lifts her hand from the prince's face, but her fingers don't stray far. She traces brazen lines across his lips. Zuko chokes out a pained sigh when she replaces her fingers with her own mouth. It's simple, gentle, unassuming.
Zuko can't help himself then and his tongue darts out and he catches her saccharine taste. He takes the chance of looking at her again to find her kind smile and trusting eyes staring up at him. Then he simply can't stand it anymore and kisses her. The waterbender welcomes her opposite and lets the feeling consume them both.
"I'm sorry for everything," he says into her hair. "So sorry. But I'm good now, I swear. I don't want to be like this anymore."
She says that she understands, that she accepts his apologies. When Aang and Iroh burst through the glowing green crystals from a passageway on the other side of the wall, she is immediately pulled into Aang's arms and Zuko into Iroh's. It's her turn to apologize, but that's the good thing about being so alike. He understands too.
As Azula harasses her brother, hissing words like traitor and destiny and choosing sides, the girl with determined blue eyes looks back at him. It's not even a choice; there's no competition. He steps toward the Avatar, toward his uncle, toward the bender who so graciously offered to rid him of his mark.
She risks her own safety and reaches out to him. He nods and decidedly meets her hand with his own. She grins as he twists his hand and laces their fingers together. Later, after Azula had been taken down and Zuko had been incorporated into the group, he tells her that he didn't have to think twice about which side he would choose.
...
Another was written in anger and confusion and forgiveness after she had faced her mother's killer.
"I couldn't do it!" she sobs, clutching at his soaked black shirt. "I couldn't…"
Zuko sighs and smoothes her hair from her forehead before loosening her grip on him. He stands purposefully and leaves her crying against one of Appa's paws. He slings his twin swords across his back.
"Wait! Where are you g-going!" It takes so much strength to keep herself from choking on her sobs.
Zuko pauses and sends a glance over his shoulder. "To kill that bastard. He doesn't deserve to live." His voice is harsh, harsher than he intended it to be.
"No! Zuko! You c-can't! Don't—don't…" She extends her arms like a child wanting to be lifted and purses her lips. This isn't the girl he knows, the headstrong, natural-born leader who puts everyone before herself. This is a girl with a flurry of disarrayed emotions and a cracked will. It breaks his heart.
He curses to himself and goes back to her, like he always does. He sits in the mud and gathers her in sinewy arms, tucking loose tendrils of hair behind her ear. She kisses him desperately, only to resort back to crying when he turns her away.
She'll be the death of him, he swears. So, he cradles her face and holds her very still. He indulges her once with a slow, soft kiss. It's not enough for her, but if there's one thing that Zuko has learned in his life is that he shouldn't screw with a girl in tears, much less take advantage.
Her tears meld with the rain and soon enough, she can't even tell if she's still crying or if it's the rain streaking down her face. She lets him lift her up onto Appa and doesn't complain when he takes the reins. Instead, she sinks into the exhausted oblivion that crying leaves one in and sleeps.
The waterbender awakens when Zuko has Appa land by a lake, allowing the bison to drink and rest. Right as Appa takes off again, she crawls up between his horns, lightly pecks Zuko on his scarred cheek, and cuddles into the thick fur of the animal's neck. She whispers her gratitude while nestling her head in Zuko's lap. Zuko manages a smile, tells Appa to go a bit slower, and starts brushing through the girl's hair with his fingers.
...
Some of these drabbles are merely tiny moments, set in unpretentious times, after dinner or as she wakes up. She will post these stories on LiveJournal or deviantART, or on whatever network she remembers the password to. It's not like she expects anyone to pay her any mind, but it's the fact that she's published something that matters.
Katara does have a handful of loyal reviewers, though. One of them has the screen name of BlueSpirit, but signs his reviews as Li. He never leaves a comment more than a few words long, but he's always very kind.
As she writes, alone and in peaceful stillness, Zuko watches her.
"What are you doing?" he asks one day.
Her head snaps up; she furiously stacks sheets of paper together and covers others with the thesaurus that's close at hand. "Oh, uh, n-nothing," she stammers.
"Nothing, huh?" His face is blank, but his eyes are alight.
"Oh, well. Ha, ha, you caught me!" she tries. "I'm, uh, I'm writing—haikus. Yeah, I write poetry. Now, um, you can go."
Zuko gives her a look that she really doesn't like. He reaches into his pocket and unearths a few pieces of folded paper, flattening them out. "Really? This doesn't look like poetry."
As Katara freezes, Zuko smirks and drops the printed sheets into her lap. She hardly has to look at them to know what they are, and her entire face burns scarlet.
"It—it's not what it…" She trails off as Zuko kneels down and shifts closer.
"It's exactly what it looks like," he murmurs, his breath hot against her neck. "Now. How about we work on making some of these more than fiction?"
Yeah, so...I don't have any idea what I'm doing. :P
What is this? Alternate Reality? It's not quite AU, since it still takes place in the Avatar world, just with the Internet thrown into the mix. xD So yeah, it's weird. But I absolutely hate writing AU, and how do you write a story for "Social Networking" without it being in an alternate universe? I'm usually pretty good about twisting prompts to my liking, but I didn't know what else to do for this.
Thus, the fic has little to do with the actual prompt, but that's okay. It's still in there. LiveJournal and deviantART are both social networks, on which Zuko found Katara's alternate endings and later "commented" on.
Review, please?
Tchao, Zutarians.
Erika
xoxo