You're the heart of fire! - ZK AU
And you're the battlecry of your warlords.
Deep at night. Zutara. Yes, yes, but of course. They always arrive unannounced - and always welcome. Right into the heart. Piercing through space and time, like a blinding explosion of a supernova that's been there forever, in truth. Of course.
All because of the song. This song.
And there I was lost to magic.
I may or may not provide this post with a full translation of the lyrics [let alone an accurate one, as I'd much rather interpret the visual effects the words create in a particularly freehand fashion] as the music is powerful enough to drag you into this magical sort of a historical|Mongol|steppe|12 Kingdoms|magical AU that has just upgraded the Z/K pairing for me onto an entirely new level of forever awesome.
> Zuko, the mighty warlord [and falconer hell yeah!!] among the endless steppes, the fierce firebender [in the droolable wild and wicked S1 hairstyle] leading his horselords to the lands where the Sun goes for its nightly rest.
> Katara, the amazon archer, healer, blood magician, sorceress capable of enchanting animals and master of all the natural watery elementals - bending the fogs in the steppe to see the future, extracting liquid from plants [and enemies, when the battle demands it].
They meet in the fires of a bloody fight, but of course.
The peculiarities are SO up to the speculation that one can get drunk on the spicy scents of the burning steppe grass and flowers alone, and you add to this the Mononoke-ish [not Miyadzaki's, the TV one] style of clothing, the ornaments encircling their entire universe into a magical chant of spells guiding the flows of energy - whirlwinds of aspiration, admiration, [almost] uncontrollable bending, wilderness, [wander]lust and devotion-through-all-the-lifetimes.
Katara reads the future in his hands, those rough from endless battles, exerting the heat of relentless strength; and lulls him to sleep with her songs-turned-prophecies.
***
They learn to fight together, back to back - heart to heart. His lashes of irest anger - her arrows of deadly ice, - they may be comrades, but it's unspoken they never go past these invisible borders engraved into his scars and the sadness splashing in the pools of her eyes.
***
Awoken from a particularly terrorizing nightmare, he kisses her without even consciously knowing who they are in this world - whether it is all a blessed pause to his inner tortures of pasts and unknown mistakes or one of her illusions heavily laced with fog.
The fog covers the steppe with whispers of unsaid promises and protects his army from any harm, Katara makes sure her illusions can preserve as well as kill in the most tormenting of fashions, slowly and excruciatingly.
***
They never speak of it when the dawn caresses the tops of grass stems.
She knows he'd be leaving soon and she hears the heavy hooves of his horsemen thundering in the sky above their vast [yet unstable] kingdom.
This time she cannot accompany him, not for his funeral pyre she'd much rather walk instead of him - herself, as in Katara, the bow-string to his motivation and the arrow to all his dreams.
***
He knows the price to be payed for that conquest-turned-wanderlust, and for once in his life of brash yet sure decisions - he hesitates whether it's worth paying - his life is not what concerns him, as he's aware some of her fogs are also part of her tears shielding him from harm alright - in the bitter veil of what could have been - and Zuko wonders, if perhaps that's what he should really do instead.
Yet he leaves anyways, ready to accept this last mistake of his, and pay for it in full.
He gazes at the Moon and knows she will not be able to watch over him this time.
Born amidst the fierce winds and raised by the storms, he, the heart of fire himself, watches the enemy's arrow coming at him as if through a fog, a bog in his conscience, where her arrows no longer sing for their glorious victories, but lament.
The fire is gone, and cinders are her most precious jewellery, the memories chiming quietly through the steppe.
Sweet baby Jesus, someone hold me through this glorious pain of ZK shipping.
I could have written a fic mayhaps but I see the images in a whirlpool of colours instead of words, so if you may or feel or just - tune into it, may he who is the heart of fire and her the moonlit keeper of his strength, guide you through.