I hope everyone had a delightful holiday! Happy New Year everyone, may 2014 be good to all of you!
A shoutout to some of my reviewers, thank yall so much for sending me some love! I really do appreciate you guys taking the time to drop me a line, even if its just a couple sentences. Big hugs to Aiedail4eva, Guest, and LasWci for their lovely reviews on chapter 10!
xoxo,
nightfall26
"And you don't think that I love her just as much?" I whispered, finding it hard to even breathe, to even live in this eternal loneliness. Aang frowned a little, and I could see that he didn't understand.
"I've been in love with her for so long, Aang. I've loved her since the second I laid eyes on her, since the moment she offered me a chance. Nobody had ever given me such kindness like she had, nobody had blindly trusted me with so much." My fingers were playing in the growing pool of crimson on the floor.
"I'm still learning how to love someone. I've lived a lifetime in darkness, in utter loneliness, and she's the first good thing to ever happen to me. I would absolutely die for her." I looked back up at him, hardly able to hold my head up, the words coming from a place in my heart that hadn't been opened before. Aang was silent, staring at me with wide eyes.
My vision was getting foggy and blurry, as if someone had suddenly drugged me.
"Someone get help!" Aang's voice pierced the impending darkness for a moment as I felt my broken body slide to the ground. But I didn't care.
I just wanted to be with her again.
zuko. several days prior.
I stood on the bow of the ship, my eyes closed, feeling the rush of air against my cheeks and the spray of salt water kissing my face. The sea was cold today. I opened my eyes, staring down into the waters and letting myself exhale slowly. I had my heavy black cloak on, the hood pulled up so that the other passengers couldn't see my face. The edges of the material flowed out in the wind behind me ominously, the inky blackness stark against the white-grey sky.
Strangely, right now, I felt free. I felt like I was flying, watching the dark waters of the ocean rush by underneath me.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Katara was suddenly next to me, a smile curving her lips upwards. I answered her with a smile and a nod. She lifted her hand, raising a steady stream of water with her fingertips and letting it flow into organic shapes that danced around me. When she released the droplets back into the sea, she leaned her back against the railing and sighed, tossing her head.
"I could live on a ship and be perfectly happy." She mused, spreading her arms out wide. Something deep in my stomach lurched a little as I stared at her. I was so damn lucky to have her in my life. I reached into the space between us, taking her hand in mine. Katara laughed a little at the teasing way I tugged her to me.
"You know, Katara, the past few days have felt like a blur." I murmured, feeling her press close to my chest. She nodded slowly, her hands entwining with mine. I leaned my chin on the top of her head.
"I feel like the hurdles we moved through in the past few days were boundaries that usually take years to cross." My voice was quiet and serious and I could feel her tensing in my arms. She turned, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth a thin, hard line.
"What are you saying? Do you regret it?" Her tone was accusatory, and I bristled.
"Not at all, Katara, I wasn't done talking." I snapped back, and at my raised voice, she pulled her hands from mine. She moved away from me. My temper was surging, as was hers, and I could feel the heat burning just under my skin.
"Well then finish." She folded her arms, her lips pressing together tightly, her eyes glassy with an unwillingness to trust me.
"Now I don't feel like it!" I hissed, throwing my arms up in the air and turning away from her frustratedly.
"Yeah. Whatever. You regret it, you totally do. I should have known better." Katara's voice was echoing with a bitterness that made me think of her hesitancy to let me back into her life at all, so many years ago. She didn't trust me then, and she didn't trust me now. I was seeing red. She should trust me, after all we'd been through together! How could she disregard all of our years of friendship?
The silence echoed loudly in my ears. I sucked in a low breath, trying to calm myself because I knew her stubbornness wouldn't let her apologize first.
"Katara, just listen to me for a second. Please." I held out my hand to her, trying to make myself sound as pleasant as possible. With a roll of her eyes, she took my hand again, briefly, before standing with her arms crossed a foot or so away from me. Sometimes I forgot how easily she fell back into this; sometimes it was hard for me to see how hurt and untrusting she could be. It pissed me off. But it also made me sad. She deserved to trust someone with her whole being, and it was my fault that she didn't.
"What I was going to say, before you interrupted-" I stuck my tongue out at her. She wrinkled her nose back at me, slouching a little.
"-was that I really, really want this to work. I think we have something worth fighting for, we have something rare, something pretty damn great. I know that we have only officially been with each other in this way for a week or so, but please believe me when I say that I want to take the time to make this right."
I paused for effect, watching her face.
"Katara, I'm taking you back with me to the Fire Nation because I want it to be your home. I want you to be by my side for the rest of our lives." I had moved closer to her, and I whispered the last sentence huskily into her ear. The shiver that moved through her was visible, and I smirked a little with success. She turned to face me, and her eyes were big with an acceptance that made me lean down and kiss her.
"You really do love me." She head-butted my chest, smiling at me and uncrossing her arms. I chuckled.
"Yeah, Katara, I really do."
"Come on, Zuko, let's go back downstairs." The stubbornness had faded from her eyes, and she grabbed my hand, leading me back across deck with a grin lighting her face. Once we'd shut the door behind us, she faced me with a seriousness that I hadn't seen in her face in a while.
"I'm certain that this is right." She whispered, the words tremulous in the sudden tension between us. With quivering fingers, Katara unclasped my cloak, letting it billow to the floor. Her hand reached up, cupping my scarred cheek gently. I didn't flinch anymore. I welcomed her touch, now, the feeling of her cool fingers on the ridges of my scar.
"Somehow I knew this all along, Zuko. I left Aang because I felt like something was missing, like there was a piece of me that had been taken from me." My eyes were on hers, on the softness within them, the gentleness that she exuded. I was still learning to love, still learning to treat her like a precious piece of porcelain that I could shatter with one wrong move- and yet, treat her like an ancient weapon that commanded nothing less than the ultimate respect.
The butterfly kisses that she placed on my face made me bow my head to her, made me fall to my knees for her, made me bow to this girl- this woman- who commanded my heart, my soul, and my nation, just by glancing at me.
I was hers, in every sense of the word, and I'd never, never let her go.
zuko.
There was a heaviness in my limbs and a brokenness in my soul that hadn't been there in a long time. My eyes were shut, mainly because I didn't have the strength to open them. I felt sick. Sicker than I had ever felt, shaking, cold, and empty. I felt like the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and left me drained of my bending, left me without warmth, without hope, without life. A shiver made my body tremble.
"Has he moved recently?"
"Not in the past hour. I'm really concerned for him."
"He's never been out this cold before."
The voices around me were recognizable, and they held some little comfort. At least a few people cared to know if I was alive or not. Part of me was ashamed of my collapse; I'd sustained much worse injuries than that before and dragged my body through battle numerous times. But then again, that was because at least I'd had something to push me forward. Now, I was struggling. I was fighting for a Nation that didn't respect me as it's ruler, that was just aching to see me fail. I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.
What did I have to live for?
Another chill came over me, and I took it as a sign. I was reminded of a place surrounded by icy waters, of a woman with eyes bluer than the brightest sky. The sight of what I had just lost made me shudder again, and this time, I swallowed against bile in my throat. Sick. I felt sick.
But this time was different. I could feel the hotness growing in my belly, the pure, untouched fury roiling inside me, begging to be released. The chill faded, replaced instead by a core-deep fire that made my skin prickle with fire.
This was her fault.
She had come back from the deepest, darkest grave I could dig her and challenged me. She'd hurt my people, destroyed buildings, lives, and families. She'd taken the girl that I loved from me. It didn't matter that she had an impersonator, I'd hunt her down with the nose of a thousand bloodhounds. It didn't matter that she had amassed an army, I'd burn it to the ground.
It didn't matter, because I was Fire Lord Zuko, the honorable, and I would do what was right for my people.
Azula would pay.
It was then that my eyes snapped open, wincing at first at the brightness in the room around me before adjusting and finally seeing the faces of the people surrounding me. Uncle was sitting in a chair nearest to me, rocking back and forth and sipping contentedly at this tea. I expected that. What I didn't expect was to see Toph's head on the bed next to me, her dark hair fanning out over her arms and her eyes shut lazily. Suki was rummaging through medical supplies in a cabinet, and Sokka was playing with the ends of her apron in a way that made my heart squeeze.
"Stop, Sokka, I'm looking for bandages!" She giggled, swatting at him. He only smiled up at her with eyes bigger than the moon.
"I'll stop if you make me something to eat." Sokka rubbed his stomach with his free hand, smacking his lips. Typical. Suki played the part of being mildly offended for a moment before leaning down and kissing his cheek. I smiled softly to myself. There was a warmth in this room that hadn't been here before.
As my eyes continued around the room, I saw Aang snoozing in the corner, a blanket wrapped about him. He snored, which made me want to laugh. The noisy little flutters that escaped his mouth put Sokka to shame. One of the nurses that worked in the palace was cleaning some surgical equipment and gossiping with another nurse. They were both clad in stark white dresses that looked like they were bleached every morning.
The anger in my stomach wasn't dulling. Seeing these people come together for me was something I'd never had growing up. They were like a family to me, a lovingly dysfunctional family that occasionally hated each other but always made up in the end. They'd fought with me and nearly died with me, and in the end, they were still here for me.
The idea that Azula had targeted these people because of me made me shift my weight and try and force myself into a sitting position. The rustling of fabric alerted Toph to the fact that I was awake, and she rubbed her sightless eyes blearily before staring in my direction.
"It's great to see you awake, sleeping beauty." She drawled, and I shook my head at her sarcasm.
"Hey, guys, Zuko's awake." Toph sat back in her chair, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment at being caught actually caring about me.
"I FOUND THEM." Suki shouted, stuck headfirst in the cabinet and holding a roll of bandages successfully in the air. When she wrenched herself free, her hair somewhat disheveled, she hurried to check to see if I was feeling okay.
"I'm sorry, Zuko, we were being noisy. Did we wake you?" The petite warrior, sans facepaint, began unwrapping one of my many bandages with a concerned look on her face. I shook my head.
"You guys were fine. I just woke up." My voice was sticky in my throat, like I hadn't spoken in a while.
"How long was I out?" Suki pulled the soiled bandage off of my arm, and I winced at the stinging sensation the air brought with it. She grabbed a tube of antibacterial herbal gunk to spread on my wound before replying.
"About a day. Not too bad, considering the wounds you had were laced with poison. It's no wonder you passed out."
"Agni." I looked at my arm, wincing at how infected it looked. Suki squelched some of the herbal remedy onto it, and I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out in sudden pain. She rubbed it into the wound as gently as she could, looking at me with sympathetic eyes.
She knew she wasn't Katara. But she was doing the best she could.
"Thank you, Suki." I offered a smile to her once she'd rewrapped my arm, and she smiled back with a tiredness that made me push myself to the edge of the bed.
"Now where do you think you're going?" One of the other nurses huffed at me, her expression stern. My feet dangled off the edge for a second before I let them collide with the coolness of the stone floors. I shrugged.
"I have a country to run and a girlfriend to save." I said casually, raking my hand through my hair. Sokka rolled his eyes.
"Oh come on, Zuko. You're not allowed to go around saying that just yet. Give us some time to adapt."
"Like you didn't see it coming, Sokka." Suki teased, sticking her tongue out at her boyfriend. Toph scowled a little, pointing at Aang in the corner. Suki's expression slackened, and she busied herself again.
"No, it's fine, Toph." Aang's voice came from the corner, and I watched as he stood, shrugging off his blanket and handing it to a nurse. He scowled before walking to the door.
"It's not like I didn't know." He narrowed his eyes at me once before leaving, the door shutting quietly behind him. Toph sighed and shook her head.
"He's got to be hurting so bad." She murmured. We all collectively nodded, once or twice, before Suki added her two cents.
"Well, if you consider that they were separated for a good few months before he sent any kind of letter to anyone vocalizing his distress at her disappearance, he should have had an inkling." Suki tossed the soiled rags from my wound into the fireplace, dusting her hands off and turning back to us with her hands on her hips.
"He knew." Toph said softly.
"What do you mean?" I asked the earthbender, still sitting on the bed. She sighed again.
"He sent me a long letter before he proposed to her, voicing his concerns. He talked about how she called out for you in her sleep sometimes, Zuko, and how she talked about you endlessly. He especially focused on the fact that when he didn't let her go to the anniversary celebration but he let her visit her family, she still looked sad." Toph played with a piece of string in her hands as she spoke.
"He knew she loved you, Zuko." Toph reached over to me, patting my arm and pressing her lips together in a thin, firm line. There was a long, painful moment of silence between us all, and I decided then to push myself to my feet.
It had to be killing him, that she'd slept beside him at night and craved for another. Mai had felt like that, too, and there was a regret inside me at having caused both of them such endless pain.
I was shaky, and I almost felt my knees give out, but I was standing.
"I'm going to go look out the window. Uncle, can you gather up your information and meet me in the briefing room with some of our advisors soon?" I asked, leaning on the bedpost heavily.
"Nephew, are you sure you want to put such a strain on your body just yet? You need to heal." Uncle's voice was concerned, and he stood from his chair to face me. The lines in his face were deepened by the worry in his eyes.
"I have to do this for my nation." I said firmly, and he patted me on the shoulder once before leaving the room soundlessly.
When I crossed the room to the window and threw open the curtains, I staggered back with sudden surprise. The courtyard, which when I left it had been filled with debris and evidence of a battle, was looking as pristine as ever. Toph had reconstructed the pieces that were broken, and the bits of buildings that had littered the area were gone. There were tents set up all along the edges.
The most startling thing was the medium sized crowd of people looking up at my window. A few of them were holding flowers, or baskets of food, and were placing them on the palace steps. I pushed the window open with the pads of my fingertips.
"They've been bringing things all day, Zuko. Many of them are constantly asking for you to see if you're better." Suki's voice from behind me made a smile touch my face. I waved down at the people below, and when they saw me, began to clap and whistle.
Maybe this wasn't hopeless. Maybe they weren't all looking for me to fail; maybe I'd convinced some of them that I could be the leader they needed.
And maybe, just maybe, I could finally find my place in this world.
aang.
Today was a day like any other, where Katara was sitting in the sun, tending her little herb garden and humming under her breath to herself. Her hair was swept up and pinned, exposing the nape of her neck to the sunshine. I knew she got a little bored here, sometimes. It was impossible not to. We were completely surrounded by forests and animals, with no neighbors in sight and no real civilization nearby. I'd picked a lonely peak near where my Air Bending school had once been to make our home, crafting it out of stone and moss and buying new sheets and cookware from a traveling market. I'd picked up some seeds for her to make a garden with a few days ago, when I'd left to find some new sources of information.
I needed to keep to myself for a little while before I could go back into the world. I was letting Zuko have his time to repair the damage his father had done, letting him recreate his image and the image of his people. I wanted there to be other heroes, too, not just me. I chipped away at the little pendant in my hands that I was making for Katara. I'd gone to visit her father some time ago, while she was still staying in the Fire Nation, and requested to marry her.
His agreement was stiff and cordial, and to some degree I felt like he still believed she was his little girl. But she was a woman now. It was time for her to marry.
At least, I thought so.
Suddenly, a hawk soared down from the bright blue sky into the airy room I was perched in, landing effortlessly on my extended arm and dropping a wrapped piece of parchment onto my lap. It pushed off from my arm with an indignant glance before returning the way it came. I unwrapped the note with careful fingers, wondering who on Earth would be sending us mail?
"Fire Lord Zuko cordially invites you to the second anniversary of the end of the war." I mumbled, feeling horror-struck at the words. We'd been invited to a party in the Fire Nation. Katara must have heard the hawk fly in, and when I glanced up, her petite figure graced the doorway.
"What's that?" She asked, walking towards me with curious eyes and nimbly plucking the invitation from my hands. I stumbled over my words for a second before falling silent.
"Aang, this is wonderful! We have to go! It'll be so good to see Toph, and Suki, and my brother- and Zuko, of course." There was a special way she said Zuko's name, almost like she languished in saying it, relished the taste of it on her tongue. Her cheeks were pinker than usual.
Or was I just imagining it?
"Well you can't be forgetting it'll be your eighteenth birthday soon." I said distractedly, hiding the pendant in my pocket. She turned away from me.
"But just think of it- a party! Seeing people, eating real food, and dancing-" Her words faded off wistfully, and she spun in a small circle with a half-smile that made me suddenly jealous. What was her draw to this event, besides seeing her friends?
"And of course, we'll be taking students soon, Katara."
"Of course, we'll have to see if Zuko would let us stay there, or would it just be for the night, I wonder?"
"Katara, listen." I snapped, wincing at my own tone. Startled, she looked up at me with eyes bigger than a doe's. I swallowed nervously, working up the courage to say what I thought was right. If she was going to marry me, she couldn't have feelings for other people. It just wasn't right. So I had to keep her here, with me, so that any of those foolish thoughts would be gone from her head before too long.
"We're not going, okay? Just stop." My voice quivered as I said the words, and I watched in horror as her eyes sank to the note in her hands and her shoulders slumped. The pink in her cheeks faded away again, and she let the parchment drop from her fingers to the floor.
"Oh. I see." She left the room then, returning to her garden with a slouch in her spine that made me feel sick.
Sometimes, there was a darkness in her gaze that disturbed me. I didn't understand how deeply things affected her, or how emotional she got sometimes. I didn't understand why she sometimes cried in the middle of the night, sitting up in bed to clutch her knees to her chest and whisper old songs to herself.
Sometimes, she'd get bitterly angry at me for no apparent reason. She'd stomp away, down into the forest below, and it'd take me all day to find her again. I was used to her stubbornness, that was normal. But when she talked about the war, or if I brought up how I wanted her to stay here forever, she got terribly angry. I'd picked her up from the Fire Nation almost eight months ago, hoping that she'd adjust to my life and she'd learn to love what I could offer. At first, she'd been loving, and kind, and the Katara that I'd known for most of my life.
But then the darkness grew in her eyes. I lost the ability to make her smile. I lost the ability to pull her from long, distant daydreams that made her eyes mist and her hands clench.
She had nightmares that made her scream in her sleep, sometimes. I'd never been able to comfort her, no matter how tightly I held her or how many times I whispered loving things in her ear. It was always the same- she ended up pushing me away.
She called out names in her sleep, begging for peace, for solace, for her friends.
"I'm sorry." I whispered, unable to understand her anymore and yet hoping that she could somehow understand me. Katara's silence from the garden made my heart sink. I hid the pendant in a box under the sink for the time being. I was almost done, it'd be another few days before I could find some ribbon for it and then I'd hang it around her pretty neck, where it belonged.
But that night, for the first time, she cried out Zuko's name with a soul-shaking agony that made me turn over and face the wall with an emptiness growing in my heart. I knew now.
I knew her secret.
Love you all! thank you for taking the time to read my story!
please do take a moment to write what you thought down in that cute lil review box down there, it makes me so happy!
reviews are like little emails filled with sunshine for me.
xoxo,
nightfall26