ARC 4: They Built A Path To Be Together
DAY 24: Blaze
Katara has never met General Iroh.
She did see him once, on the day she gave birth to Aikka, far below Ba Sing Se in the crystal caverns she has tried to forget. She's heard a lifetime's worth of stories from Zuko, another lifetime's worth of his prowess on the battlefield.
Nothing prepares her for the stout old man with a kind smile. He greats her with a hug and a declaration of her beauty (she blushes like a little girl).
"My nephew is very lucky to have you," he says, "Though I wish he would have told me he was married sooner."
Katara jerks back with surprise (she keeps forgetting that they're well and truly married, even if it's just by Fire Nation traditions). Zuko, a step behind his uncle, flushes (it surprises him too sometimes). They are both rescued by Aikka, who coos at precisely the right moment (she's not even three months and she's already saving her parents).
Iroh grows very still at the sight of her. He reaches out slowly, gently touches a calloused old hand to her soft baby hair. "And you who might this beautiful lady be?" he murmurs, almost to himself.
He seems entranced, delighted. Katara smiles.
"She's your granddaughter." she says (he might as well be, with the way he's cared for the child's father).
Iroh turns to Zuko, who nods.
"You've been a better father to me than my own," he says, "She's your granddaughter. Aikka."
For a moment, she thinks there are tears in Iroh's wise old eyes. But then he laughs and takes the baby from her arms.
"If you'll excuse me, children, I must abscond with your daughter at once," he declares, "We are gravely overdue for doting and grandfatherly love."
He strolls away with a babbling child in his arms (the order of the white lotus seems to converge on him at once and much bragging, cheek pinching, and baby ticking ensues).
"Dearest nephew, I still cannot fathom why you would get married without telling me."
Zuko sputters apologies for the better part of an hour (Katara tries not to giggle).
Plumes of fire blaze down the courtyard, fill the sky with cold blue and angry red. Fire against fire, brother against sister.
Her heart is breaking.
Katara knows that Azula and Zuko don't love each other the way she loves her own brother; the two of them might as well be strangers for all they care about each other. But to see a brother and a sister fight, battle it out to the blazing, fiery death (for this Agni Kai can have no alternative); it breaks her heart.
"No lightning today?" Zuko taunts, "Afraid I'll redirect it?"
There is a frightening absence of cold reason in Azula's eyes; only blazing anger and fear and rage remain. The icy princess has been replaced with a fire demon. Azula cackles, thunder and lightning crackling around her (Katara thinks of her baby, many, many miles from here and thanks the spirits she was smart enough to leave her with a white lotus agent). Zuko breaths, sinking into a horse stance and the Azula fires but it's not at her husband, it's at her—everything happens at once.
Zuko shouts, throws himself into the path of lightning and takes it right to the chest.
Katara cries his name and surges forward.
She has poured all of her energy into healing him and yet Zuko remains motionless beneath her fingertips, even as his sister shrieks and spits plumes of fire in the distance (she's chained to a grate, screaming through her her sobs). Tears blur her vision Katara's vision.
"Zuko," she whispers, "Don't go."
She thinkings of a boy feeding turtle-ducks with her, a man making love to her in a little tent beside a mountain, his strong and capable hands cradling their child. She thinks of everything that will die without Zuko, everything that will shrivel up and die inside of her.
"Don't you dare!" she cries, beating his motionless chest, "Don't leave me, you jerk!"
She thinks of a daughter who will never know her father, of children they will never have together. Katara howls to the bloody skies, clutches Zuko's shoulders so tightly she draws blood.
"You can't leave me." She pleads.
Zuko coughs, chest heaving with the effort of drawing a breath. He smiles at her.
"I wouldn't…dream…of it." he says through coughing fits.
She cries his name and holds him even closer.
"Tara, c-could you…let go?" he rasps, "Of my…shoulders?"
It takes a moment for her to remember how to pry her fingers away and then another for to help him sit up. Zuko touches his chest, right below his perctorals. The skin there is smoothed over, but puckered and raw like an angry starburst. He would have been dead without her; he was nearly dead with her by his side.
"Thank you, Katara." he croaks.
"No," she says, and means it, "I'm the one who should be thanking you."
Then she begins crying in earnest.