Summary: AU in which Aang loses to Firelord Ozai. Zuko and Katara are imprisoned together in the Fire Nation. M for smut.
Wires Crossed
By Ninazadzia
Three days after Sozin's Comet
Every morning, I woke up to the sound of Katara's sobs.
It had only been a few days since we'd officially lost the war. Azula didn't waste any time in telling us Aang was dead, that my father had effectively succeeded in his goal of total world domination, and that it was only a matter of time before Uncle Iroh, Sokka, and whatever was left of the resistance was caught. They'd managed to get away, but Katara and I had the misfortune of being deep within Fire Nation territory, and were the first defectors we knew of to be arrested.
At least you're in here with her, I reminded myself, as I listened to her heave across the cell.
In an act of either unexplainable compassion or complete delusion, Azula decided to pair Katara and I in the same cell. Why, I would never know—maybe they were anticipating the other cells to be filled quickly? All I knew was that for as distraught as Katara was, and how new and precarious our friendship was, I was grateful to have her in there with me—even if we were sitting as far away from one another as two people could possibly be.
"Couldn't sleep again?"
She started, the sounds of her sobs dropping down to quiet sniffles. "Sorry. I didn't know you were awake."
"Yeah. I've been in and out for hours." I cleared my throat. We'd barely gotten anything to eat or drink since we'd been in there, and I was beginning to feel it. My throat was parched and I could barely see straight. "Any chance you could waterbend those tears into my mouth? I could sure use a drink."
She managed a sigh, and what seemed like half a smile. "It's saltwater, Zuko. It won't do anything except dehydrate you. 'Sides," she sighed, "I don't think I could bend anything right now, even if I wanted to."
I nodded slowly. "I know the feeling. Believe me."
"I know you do," she whispered, hugging her knees into her chest.
Shit. Had it really only been a few weeks ago, that Aang and I had ventured to see the Firebending masters? It felt like that had happened in another lifetime.
And then, all of the sudden I'm thinking about Aang again, and the War, and how royally we fucked everything up. And white hot tears threaten to spring from my eyes.
Katara must sense she's hit a sensitive spot. "I'm sorry for bringing that up."
"You're not wrong," I manage. "I just…" I rub my hands through my hair. "Part of me wishes I'd figured things out sooner."
She looks up at me, and wipes the tears away from her eyes as she narrows her gaze. "What do you mean?"
"I just can't help but wonder, what would've happened if I'd joined up with you guys sooner. If Aang had more training under his belt."
"Zuko…"
"I'm serious, Katara." My voice is shaking. Because, God, I'm pissed. I'm beyond pissed at myself for the mess of the situation we're in. "We'll never know what happened up there—but his Waterbending was solid. His Airbending was solid. And yeah, his Earthbending wasn't perfect, but he had months of training with Toph. And Firebendeng was always his weakest element. I just…I can't help…."
"Stop." She'd crossed over from across the cell at this point, and took my hands into hers. "You can't blame yourself for this. I won't hear it."
"It's my fault, Katara." The tears that had been threatening to spring from my eyes finally flowed freely. "This whole goddamn war, my father finding the Avatar, all of this—it's all my fucking fault."
"Hey." She grasped my face in her hands. "Look at me. Look. Now I want you to listen to me…" She brought up her face so it was all of inches away from mine. When I tried to look down, she grabbed my chin, tilting it up so I would be forced to meet her gaze. "None of this is your fault. This war started long before either of us were born. You can't help the way you were raised, and you can't help who your father is, or what he asked you to do to reclaim your honor. Once you figured out where you belonged, you made the right call."
I shook my head. "But it was too late," I managed.
She sighed. "Zuko, Aang was on ice for over a century. You chased us for, what, a grand total of eight months before changing sides? I'm sorry, but in the grand scheme of things, I don't think another few months of training would have made much of a difference. And besides…" She looked around the cell. "It's not like there's anything we can do about it now. What's done is done."
"'What's done is done'?" I echoed. "You can't be serious."
"I hate this situation as much as you do. But we can't go back in time and change anything." Katara's bottom lip quivered. She took a deep breath, finally pulling away from me, slouching against the wall. "I'm tired, Zuko, I'm sorry. But I just want you to know…I don't blame you. And you shouldn't blame yourself."
"It's easy for you to say," I muttered. "You were by his side the whole time. You always had his back. And I spent the better part of the last year chasing you guys around the world—"
"Only to leave everything you knew behind so you could train Aang." She sighed. "We could go back and forth on this for hours, Zuko. But do you remember how skeptical I was, when you first joined up with us? How I was convinced you were going to stab us in the back?"
I nodded slowly. It would be hard to forget that trip with Katara.
"You won me over then, and nothing that's happened since has changed my mind about you. Hell—you took a bolt of lightning for me three days ago. I owe you my life…" she swallowed a lump in her throat. "And I know that if Aang were around right now, he would tell you to stop being so hard on yourself."
I scoffed. That much was true, and I knew it. "I wonder what he'd think about the two of us being stuck in here together."
"Oh, this isn't anything new for us," Katara said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. It took me a minute before I realized she was talking about Ba Sing Se.
After a few minutes of silence, I asked, "Do you remember how we killed time, the first time we were locked up together?"
"We talked about our moms and I offered to heal your scar with sacred water—as one does."
I managed a laugh. "Right, of course."
She let out a chuckle herself. "I mean, we talked. We talked a lot." She looked up to the ceiling, her eyes suddenly far away. "I guess this time, though, there's no one coming to rescue us."
"Guess not," I said quietly. "Still though…we could still talk, I guess. If it meant passing the time."
"You do realize we might be talking for years, right?"
I shrugged, patting the spot on the ground next to me. "I mean, we have a lot of ground to cover."
She rolled her eyes, letting a small smirk creep on her lips. She sat down next to me. The two of us were facing the bars in front of us, looking out to the empty jail. "Fair enough. I guess, let's start with the first stories we can remember."
"Oh, that one's easy. Azula and I were little…."
Six Days After Sozin's Comet
We fall asleep talking one night. I wake up the next morning with a fistful of raven hair practically in my mouth.
Over the last three days, we covered everything from my childhood in the Fire Nation, to my time living undercover in the Earth Kingdom, to Katara's time at the South Pole to her journey up North, to my time in exile searching for the Avatar, to my relationship with Mai, to her pseudo-relationship with Aang, to Sokka's relationship with the Moon (which, apparently, turned out to be a real thing, not a euphemism he'd made up during our excursion to the Boiling Rock), to everything in between. We must've lost track of time and talked late into the night, because I wake up completely disoriented. The last thing I remember is her telling me about her mother.
Katara must've felt me stir, because she woke with a jolt. "I'm sorry," she murmured, her voice still half-asleep.
"Ssh," I whispered. I meant to stroke her arm, but in the process, I pulled her back towards me. "Nothin' to be sorry about."
Well. That wasn't entirely true. The position we fell asleep in was the furthest thing from comfortable—we were slouched against the wall, her head nestled in the crevice of my neck. I don't even remember us getting that close to begin with…although, now that I think about how the last week had gone, we'd started out the week on opposite sides of the cell from one another. And with every day and conversation that passed, I guess we'd inched ourselves just a little bit closer to one another.
I couldn't even tell what we'd been talking about when we'd fallen asleep the night before. It might have had something to do with Sokka, and Toph, and what we thought they were up to. The last thing I remember was Katara asking me if there was anyone I would miss, the way she'd miss Sokka and Toph and Aang. And while the obvious answer—the answer I'm sure she was looking for was Mai—it wasn't the honest answer. "If I'm being completely honest, Katara," I responded, "You're all the company I need."
Blood rushed to my face as the memories of last night came rushing back to me. I hadn't really said that. Had I?
One look at Katara's face told me everything I needed to know—oh, yes, I fucking had.
Her eyes slowly opened, and she caught my expression before I had a chance to hide it. "For what it's worth, Zuko," she started, her voice still raspy from having just woken up, "you're all the company I need, too."
Her hand was already inches away from mine, and before I could think better of it, I wrapped my fingers around hers. "I'm glad," I whispered.
My heart began to pound, and I could feel blood rush to my face. But if Katara sensed anything, she didn't show it. We just lay there, nestled up against the wall, as she lazily dozed on and off. The only way I knew how much of the day had passed was from the shadows on the wall the cell across from us. We just lay there together, half asleep, for what had to have been a full day.
By the time the sun came down and we were drenched in darkness, I finally worked up the nerve to propose a question I'd been wanting to ask all day. "As nice as this has been…my neck is killing me. Would you mind if we moved to the cot?"
I waited for her to correct me—for her to say, 'you mean, if you moved to a cot?' But she didn't. Instead, she nodded, and wordlessly traversed the cell with me.
As I lay down next to her, there wasn't a doubt in my mind. If she couldn't hear my heart pounding out of my chest before, she sure as shit could now.
Author's Note: Sorry to leave you guys on a cliffhanger! Update coming in a few days. Let me know what you think in the reviews!
