Title: The Tallest Tower
Prompt: #084 Sad
Notes: IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a direct companion to 'It Comes With a Price'. Except from Katara's point of view. This really adresses Katara's feelings about a relationship with Aang. Because honestly, she never struck me, at anytime during the series, as being okay with being considered a prize. Also, Zuko would treat her sooo much better.
The Tallest Tower
When Katara was five, before she even really understood what war meant, her mother had told her a story. A bedtime story, to be exact. Perhaps, with another child and another mother, that occurance wouldn't have been unusual. But here, in this particular tent, it was unheard of. Legends and spook tales were common, but Kya simply didn't engage in such nonsense as fairytales (something she had inherited from her own mother). But on that day, the first Fire Nation raid in Katara's memory had taken place. And the story, meager and silly, was Kya's desperate attempt to comfort the terrified child.
It was the story of a princess locked away in a very very tall tower made of ice by her family, who did not like her because she was not a Waterbender. They told her that when she could bend herself out of her tower, she would be free. Years passed and the princess still could not bend, but she never, never gave up. (Kya made sure to stress that point, Katara had ignored her.) It was pure luck (or maybe destiny) that dictated that a young and strapping Waterbender would come along to bend her out. Then (much to Katara's delight and Kya's half hearted dismay) they married and proceeded to live happily ever after.
Katara had felt comforted then. Now she doesn't feel so good when she remembered that one fairytale from her youth. "I should go congratulate Zuko," she tells Aang stiffly. Her jaw doesn't want to move, it seems.
"Okay." His smile could light the entire party.
As she walks toward Zuko she tries to stiffle her rising heart and replace the europhia with guilt. I should feel ashamed, she thinks. But she doesn't, not really. Zuko makes her feel alive. She likes to think that he feels the same about her.
Nevertheless, there is only friendly banter and half-witty remarks. Nothing that would give away the secret that isn't really a secret. Finally she hugs him, slowly because she's so, so, so reluctant to let him go. Zuko breathes, "I love you." What can she do but hold him tighter and try desperately to ignore the chaos around them?
Out of the corner of her eye, she spies Aang. Her very own proverbial Waterbender. Her savior from the tall ice tower of ignorance and fear that had been her cage before his arrival. The one who inspired her hope and her dreams and everything that made her who she was.
Zuko's hands are almost unbearably warm on her lower back. Too late the princess has realized that she has traded the tallest tower for a gilded cage. Katara begins to cry.