Title: I Promise I Don't Care
Prompt: #069 Numb
Notes: Takes place sometime during the two weeks between 'The Crossroads of Destiny' and 'The Awakening'. Nothing much else to say.
I Promise I Don't Care
It's a special kind of numbness reserved for those who've had their hearts broken. The type that leaves you feeling as though everything in you is pulling toward a black hole that used to be your heart and any minute you'll be sucked into that abyss never to return. It's not something that Katara is familiar with. Or was familiar with, she supposes. Because she feels that black hole and she feels the constant need to give in to the despair.
When Sokka notices, she promises it's just worry for Aang. When Toph notices, she passes it off as being shocked by Ba Sing Se's fall. All others, she gives varying explanations. And the things is, all of those explanations are true. They just aren't the reason that she feels like she's constantly drowning.
It's him. Zuko, Prince of the Fire Nation. Her mortal enemy. Except he wasn't. For a moment, no longer that the flit of an azure butterfly's wing he was just Zuko and he was her's. She knows, down in the very depths of her soul, that in that moment she held his soul in the palm of her hand, not just his scar.
But she tells anyone who asks that he didn't break her heart. Didn't hurt her, didn't make her cry, didn't fix little pieces of her. She didn't fall in love with him for a second. She didn't. Because she's numb and damnitall she doesn't care.