Avatar: tLA // Three-shot, 1 of 3 // Dreambender
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Focus: Zuko, Katara, the Gaang
Genres: Action, drama, angst, suspense, extremely mild romance if you squint
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 8205
Notes: First, importantly: this is essentially genfic. If you're looking for fic focused on Zutara romance, look elsewhere. There is pre-romance, if you will, but contains not so much as a kiss.
Secondly, if you'll remember Bloodbender, a story I wrote last February, a lot of people asked for an elaboration or continuation on it. This isn't it. I took my idea from back then of Katara conquering the capital by herself and came at it from a different direction.
Enjoy! ^____^
Katara has a secret that makes her run from her friends in the middle of the night. Zuko knows what it is, but refuses to tell them... for her sake.
Dreambender
The dream shattered.
Zuko woke up to find himself unable to move, unable to breathe, his heart sluggish and straining in his chest. Panic swamped him. His mind cleared of sleep-fog instantly, but he still couldn't move. Through his resolutely shuttered eyelids, he could tell that it was still dark, and by his estimation he hadn't been asleep longer than a couple of hours.
Something was wrong.
Thinking as fast as he could, he tested each limb one by one, pressing back against the strange pressure until he was sure he couldn't break it without harming himself. He calmed his heart rate so that his oxygen would last longer and wondered, angrily, if he was seriously about to die after coming all this way.
Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished, leaving him to suck in great heaving lungfuls of air. Around him, he could hear the others doing the same. So this had not been a personal attack. He couldn't decide whether that was better or worse than the alternative. At least if it was personal he would have an excuse to get angry, return to that familiar, easy state of being. He knew how to deal with anger.
Fear wasn't quite as simple, and this fear less so than most.
Rubbing his aching chest, he sat up.
Aang and Sokka were still on the outskirts of camp. Aang on watch, Sokka half-awake at his feet, both clutching their own chests. Toph was upright already, doing the equivalent for her of staring wildly around, which consisted of standing absolutely still with her eyes closed, listening to her feet.
Zuko already knew what had happened. He'd been expecting it for two weeks, ever since he'd found out about Katara's secret from Aang (who trusted Zuko more than he should).
As if to prove him right, Katara broke into quiet, agonized sobs across the fire from him.
He didn't bother to stand up. He knew he'd never get there before the others. There was nothing he could do anyways, even if she'd let him come within ten feet of her in this vulnerable state.
Sure enough, a split second later a stampede of three concerned friends and one flying rodent swarmed Katara, throwing questions at her at the rate of roughly ten per second.
"What just happened?"
"Are you okay?"
"Did the Fire Nation catch us?"
"Why are you crying?"
"Where does it hurt?"
She let them continue, stammering out half-complete answers in whatever small time they afforded her, for about half a minute. Zuko counted down in his head: three, two, one-- She stood so suddenly they all fell away from her into the dirt and stared up at her in mute shock.
"Leave me alone," she snapped, fed up. "I'm fine. The Fire Nation haven't caught up to us. Go back to sleep, I'll explain in the morning."
Yeah, right, Zuko thought, but kept the words to himself. Aang would want to know what he meant, he would be forced to explain, and Katara already had enough things she refused to forgive him for without adding this one to the list.
Murmuring amongst themselves, her exhausted friends obeyed the clear tone of command in her voice and returned to their bedrolls. Aang continued to watch her from his perch on a rock. He should have been watching the night, making sure there were no threats coming from outside the camp, but Zuko couldn't really blame him for his distraction. Tonight, the threat came from inside the camp.
As though she could feel his eyes on her, Katara turned and glared at him.
He shrugged, annoyed. Served him right for caring in the first place. He should have known Katara wouldn't welcome his understanding.
Leaving her alone to wallow in her misery, he turned over and tried to go back to sleep. He'd try to get her alone tomorrow and make her understand. He hoped he'd survive the encounter.
xxxxx
When they woke again in the morning, more naturally this time, Katara was gone.
Everyone but Zuko was surprised.
"Where could she have gone? Do you think she was captured by the Fire Nation?" Aang, who was deathly pale. His hands on his glider pole where white-knuckled and shaking.
"Toph! Can you see her?" Sokka, whose clever head was somewhat clearer than the others but still astonishingly blind to the obvious in this instance.
"I can't feel her," Toph said fretfully, "she's not anywhere!"
Zuko couldn't stand it. "Of course you can't," he sneered derisively, "there's a river around here, isn't there?"
They stared at him blankly for a moment.
Sokka understood first, slapping his forehead. "Of course," he said, "she's walking on it. Toph wouldn't feel her through the water."
"That's not fair," said Toph, angry because the only other option was fear.
"What was she thinking?" asked Aang, close to tears now. "Was it something to do with that weird thing that happened last night?"
Zuko hurt for her. How much had she hidden from them, to leave them this ignorant of her situation? He didn't blame her. He wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone either had it been him. "Yes," he said without thinking, "of course it was." Even as the words left his mouth, he wished to the point of gutache that he could take them back, swallow them and keep them somewhere they would never rise again.
It was too late.
The other three stopped and stared at him suspiciously, even Aang. "How do you know? What aren't you telling us?"
He opened his mouth to spit it at them, the obvious thing they'd been missing, but it stuck in his throat. He was trying so hard to be good, be trustworthy, earn her forgiveness. This would be a giant step back. "If you can't figure it out on your own, it's not my business to tell you." He hesitated. "This is Katara's choice. It's kind of a new thing for me, but... I'm going to trust her to deal with it as she sees best."
"We're her friends!" yelled Toph, furious.
He couldn't blame her, but neither could he change his decision without hating himself twice as much for it. Zuko wondered for the second time that day if he was going to die. "I know," he said simply. "And I know I'm pretty bad at understanding the whole friendship thing. But everything in me right now is telling me that I can't tell you this for her. She has to do it herself, or not at all."
He wasn't surprised at all when a minute later he found himself encased in a writhing cocoon of earth, with a shimmering blade of water and one semi-ordinary star-metal sword pressing dangerously on the skin of his throat.
"I don't trust you," said Sokka steadily. "You have no right to hide things from us after begging us to trust you."
"You're right," said Zuko, doing his best not to swallow. "But this isn't my secret. I'm not hiding anything from you that's mine to tell. I swear it."
"He's not lying," Toph said, resigned. "And he's not panicking. He's made up his mind. I don't think we're going to get anything out of him."
Sokka snarled, but sheathed his sword. "While we've been wasting our time on this snake, she's been getting further away from us. Let's find that river and see if we can't track her."
The three of them packed up camp in less than five minutes, threw everything onto Appa's back, and nearly set off without him. They gave him a cold glare when he clambered into the saddle with them, but when he didn't say anything, they resigned themselves to his presence and opted instead to ignore him.
That was fine by him. He still hadn't quite figured out how to talk to them in a way that didn't make them angry, and he didn't want to give them any further reason to throw him out. He had atonement to do, and this was the only place he could do it. If it was unpleasant... well, that was his fault, for giving them so many reasons to hate him in the first place.
They found the river two hours later, miles west of the campsite. There was a small tributary leading up to it that Katara had undoubtedly made good use of.
"...Which way?" asked Aang blankly. The river wound away out of sight northwards and southwards, and the jungle vegetation of the area overhung it on both banks with plenty of room for a small woman trying not to be seen to hide in.
She wasn't going anywhere in particular, either, just... away. Their guess was as good as Zuko's, but logic told him after he thought for a moment that she would try to go somewhere uninhabited.
"South," he said, "further in."
"How do you know?" asked Sokka suspiciously.
Zuko shrugged. "I don't. Just a hunch."
"...Well, we don't have any better ideas," sighed Sokka at last, defeated. "South it is."
"You know," said Zuko, the words bursting out of him before he could stop them. Again he wished to take them, and again it was too late.
"What?" they asked, almost in unison.
He hung his head miserably, certain they would push him off Appa for saying this. "Are you sure it's a good idea to go after her right now? She ran away for her own reasons, all of them good ones. Catching her might not end as well as you think."
They glared at him, their frustration revived tenfold.
"Will you please just tell us what you know?" Toph snarled lethally.
He wasn't afraid. They were miles in the air, he would win a battle with a woman who couldn't see without the earth under her feet easily. Aang didn't scare him either, the boy had a set of morals that would kill him too if he ever did something as cruel as kill Zuko in cold blood. Sokka did frighten him, because he could do nearly anything to protect those he decided were dear to him, but even he wouldn't try anything with Aang sitting right there.
The person he was most frightened of, far beyond any of these three, was the one they were chasing.
So, he shook his head regretfully and met their eyes with a hard look of his own. "No. I refuse."
They gave up again, but the tension in the saddle didn't subside at all. If anything, it grew steadily worse, until Zuko was nearly ready to contemplate jumping out on his own and testing a theory he'd once had about using firebending to create lift.
Hours passed without a word from anyone, until Sokka yelled and pointed over the side.
"Looks like Zuko was right after all," he said grudgingly.
Below them, the river was frozen into a delicate canopy of ice arching over the river. Engraved in the shimmering bridge were the words stop following me.
"Sorry, Katara," said Aang, not looking sorry at all.
Appa continued his meandering course down the river.
Zuko wasn't sure at all that they were flying nearly fast enough to catch up to Katara. She was a waterbending master. Sometimes he thought her companions didn't really understand that. Necessity was the mother of improvisation, and Katara had a really good reason to get away from them as fast as she could. It wouldn't surprise Zuko at all if she'd invented some way to fly using the river water to propel her. After all, she'd already figured out how to walk on it days ago.
He couldn't bring himself to feel unhappy about that. That last thing he wanted to do for the next few days was get anywhere near her, at least until she'd found a way to solve her dilemma.
Unfortunately, this was not a wish the world felt like granting him.
Two days of strained silence later, they caught up... so to speak.
She was waiting for them, standing in the middle of a lake surrounded on three sides by cliffs, her clothes ragged and her features sunken. "I thought I told you not to follow me," she said. Her voice was hoarse and furious.
"Katara, please," Aang said, alighting on the water himself with an airbending trick he'd only just learned before her disappearance and reaching out to her.
She leapt away from him as if scalded, falling into a battle stance. "Don't come near me," she snarled.
They stared at her, bewildered and hurt. "But Katara--"
"No," she hissed, eyes slitting. "You don't understand anything. Stay away."
"We would if you'd explain it to us," Sokka snapped. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I kind of thought after all this time you just might understand that you can trust us. I mean, you're the one who's always been preaching at Aang to talk to you, harping on and on that everything can be solved if we're just together. And now you have one little problem and you just split, leaving us to worry half to death about you and not having a clue where you are?"
"Well, you found me well enough," she snapped right back at him, the surface of the lake begin to roil.
"That's not the point! The point is that--"
"Stop it," said Zuko, unable to keep his words behind his teeth. "Leave her alone."
"Shut up!" Sokka yelled, temper finally snapping. "You're an outsider, you've been our enemy until just recently, what the hell could you possibly know about my sister?"
"Apparently more than you," Zuko fired back, his own temper fraying thin. "I would have thought it was obvious, both what happened and why she ran away, and I would have thought you trusted her enough to let her have her space and figure it out on her own time. For the love of fire, she's trying to protect--"
"Shut up, Zuko," Katara interrupted, glaring at him.
The injustice of it all welled up in him until he couldn't bear it anymore. "You know what?" he yelled furiously. "I've been protecting your secret this whole time, trying to convince them to leave you alone, enduring threats of torture from your sweet, innocent little friends here, doing my best to give you what you wanted, and all you can say is 'Shut up, Zuko.' Well, you know what? Shut up, Katara. Either you tell them, or I will. I'm sick of this."
She stared at him for a moment, then at the others. "You don't know?" she asked faintly. "He didn't tell you?"
"No, he didn't, but you should have!" An incandescently enraged Toph.
Katara had the grace to look faintly ashamed. "I thought for sure he'd spill the beans the first chance he got, hoping to gain your trust," she said with a nasty look back at Zuko.
He glared at her.
"That's not the point! We're your friends! You should have told us yourself, not left Zuko to do your dirty work!" Toph again, if possible even angrier than before.
Katara said nothing, letting the ricocheting yells fall flat onto the water from the cliff walls and die into rippling silence. "I didn't have time," she said at last. "I'm sorry. I panicked and did the only thing I could think of. I didn't mean to scare you, or make you think that I don't trust you. It's nothing like that. I just... didn't have time."
All their anger had died in those few intervening seconds before she spoke. It was with a heavy, tired voice that Sokka spoke up next. "Can you explain it to us now?"
"I think so," she said, and for the first time the party saw the enormous mass of fear she's been hiding behind her anger until this point. She was shaking with terror, nearly weeping with it, and was clearly not at all sure that it was safe.
"All right," said Sokka, landing Appa on the shore and helping Toph down. "Let's hear it."
Katara remained standing on the lake while they stood on the beach, the three of them clustered together while Zuko, who already knew what she was going to say, stood a few steps off and crossed his arms.
"Apparently," she began after a deep breath, "there's something that happens when benders learn and increase their power too quickly. I should have studied waterbending over years, getting used to each new level of power as I went, but because of... special circumstances..."
Aang closed his eyes.
"...I had to learn very quickly. My power increased so fast that my control over it couldn't hope to keep up, and that battle six days ago when I froze the entire river pushed me past my limit. As long as I was awake, my willpower was strong enough to at least keep it inside me. While I was sitting there at dinner, getting ready for bed, I was also bending the underground stream beneath the campsite just to let off the excess energy."
"Katara, it shouldn't work like that," said Aang, interrupting.
She waved a hand, asking for silence. "Who else do you know who's learned faster than their control could expand?"
"Um, me?" Aang offered, horrified.
She smiled wearily. "You'll be fine. You may not remember it all the time, but you have centuries of experience controlling your power. If it ever gets too much, you'll just go into the Avatar state and blow it off under the expert control of Roku and the others. I... don't have that advantage."
Aang was silent, stunned.
Zuko sighed.
"I managed to stay awake all night," she continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But the next night was harder, and the next night even worse. Finally, three days ago, I couldn't help it. I fell asleep."
Three days ago was when they'd all awoken in the middle of the night unable to breathe.
Katara hung her head and continued miserably. "I had a nightmare that the Fire Nation found us," she said, talking faster and faster as though to expel it all before she lost the courage to continue. "In my dream, I reached out and stopped all their blood. And because of my lack of control in the dreaming state, I..." She stopped, swallowing convulsively and fighting tears.
"You stopped ours instead," supplied Zuko quietly, knowing that none of the others would have the cruelty to say it out loud. They all already hated him anyway.
"Yes," confirmed Katara, looking as if she would like nothing better than to let the lake swallow her and never resurface. "I nearly killed you. If I hadn't woken up at that exact moment, you would all be dead." The tears that had been threatening for the last several minutes finally spilled over. She sank to her knees on the gentle waves and began to heave racking sobs.
Her friends were stunned, seemingly unable to think of a single thing to say until Aang stepped forward.
"I...I think I understand, Katara," he said hesitantly. "Remember when I first tried to learn firebending, I tried to use more power than I had control over and ended up hurting you."
"You ran too," she reminded him. "Not the same way I did, but you ran too. You refused to use firebending or learn about it ever again. You ran from its power. I... couldn't run from mine, so I ran with it instead, away from you. So I couldn't hurt you."
"I told you she knew what she was doing," Zuko muttered resentfully.
Sokka stepped into the water. "Katara. It's okay. We'll figure it out. You don't have to deal with this alone."
"Don't be stupid," she lashed out, the lake heaving. "The second I fall asleep, I could kill you all. This is a big deal, Sokka, it's not just going to go away by saying 'friendship conquers all!' Not that I disagree," she said hastily, seeing his expression, "I just know that this is going to take more than love to fix. I need time, and help... help that you can't give me."
"Why not?" asked Aang plaintively. "Why can't we help you?"
"Because there's a chance she might accidentally kill whoever stays to bring her food and train with her," Zuko said, saving Katara from having to explain it.
She nodded miserably. "I can't risk it. A second's failure and I could obliterate all of you. You can't feel this, but it's... bigger than anything I've ever felt before. It's like I'm a permanent channel for the power of all the water within a hundred mile radius, and if I turn in the wrong direction I could wipe out half a country."
"Oh, it can't be that bad," Sokka joked.
She didn't laugh. "You think so?" she asked solemnly. "I'll show you what you can't see from where you're standing. Back up."
Warily, they did as she instructed, retreating to the tree line.
"Watch," she said, and stepped out of the water, turning quickly to drop to her knees and put one hand back in.
Instantly, with a screaming roar like nothing any of them had ever heard before, the middle of the lake dropped sickeningly with a wrench, creating a vicious maelstrom that stretched from one end of the lake to the other. The water thundered around in raging circuits, twisting itself ever deeper and tighter until there was no lake, only whirlpool.
She looked up the beach at their horrified faces with a look that clearly said you see?
They did. Even Zuko hadn't understood the true depth of what was tearing its way through Katara right now. He was unspeakably thankful to her for running when she had.
Katara took her hand out. The lake calmed instantly, but all her hair rose around her head and she nearly glowed with power until she stepped back onto the surface with a sigh of relief. Though the surface remained calm, Zuko suspected that beneath it, the entirety of the lake was revolving again with the same horrifying speed and power.
He understood her dilemma even better now.
She couldn't risk Aang, even though he was the only one who stood a chance of withstanding this impossible storm for any length of time. He was the Avatar. He was needed elsewhere. Toph was powerful in her own right, but not like this. Sokka couldn't bend at all. None of her friends could survive being near her.
"It's getting worse," she told them flatly when they could hear again. "It's like I'm being stretched open around it, wider and wider, and pretty soon I'll just snap like an elastic band and it'll flood back into the earth where it belongs."
"We're not going to let that happen!" Aang yelled instantly, instinctively.
"How do you think you're going to stop it?" she asked him sadly.
His mouth gaped soundlessly, but he had no answer. Nobody did. None of them had anything that could possibly help her.
Like a light on the horizon, Zuko suddenly saw his chance dawning. He wouldn't have much time, but maybe this way he could in some way be instrumental to the Avatar's effort. Maybe he could be remembered as something other than a willfully blind, stubborn enemy they'd so hated. Maybe they'd forgive him if he did this. Just maybe... but a chance was all he needed.
"I'll stay," he said.
"What?" the other three yelled, shocked.
Katara didn't say a word. He could see the struggle in her eyes. She didn't want to hurt anyone, but she needed help, and if she had to hurt someone out of all of them, he was the natural choice. He'd earned it dozens of times over.
"Are you suicidal?" snapped Sokka. "No way. You'll die in like, three seconds."
"No, I won't," he said. "Katara's going to figure this out, and she's going to come back to you. I don't plan to die here." That wasn't quite true, but not quite a lie either.
"We're not leaving here without Katara!" interrupted Aang, panicked.
Zuko leveled a hot glare at him. "Jeez! Do none of you trust her whatsoever?"
"Zuko, they might be right, I might not be able to--" Katara started, but he rounded on her with the same ferocious stare.
"Don't you trust yourself? After all of this?"
She met his eyes, pleading with him mutely to understand, please understand...
"I do understand," he said roughly, ignoring her startled look. "You don't think you're strong enough to win this one, and you don't want to hurt them ever again. So... don't. I'll stay, I'll help you figure it out. I don't want to die, but better me than them."
"That's--" she started again, stricken, but stopped herself.
"You were going to say 'not true,' right? But it is true. You need Sokka's brain, Aang and Toph's power, to win this war. I could be useful too, but you don't trust me so my power isn't worth as much. Besides that, they're your friends. There's no way you'd be able to concentrate if you were terrified every second of losing control and killing them. I'm the only logical choice, and I'm saying I'll stay. If I were you, I'd shut up and take the offer. You won't get a better one."
"Since when have you known how to think logically?" Sokka jabbed weakly.
"It's a recent development," Zuko replied shortly with a hint of a mirthless smile. "So? What do you say?"
"Fine," whispered Katara.
The other three jumped in shock. "Fine?" they echoed disbelievingly.
Taking a deep breath, she spoke more strongly. "Zuko's right," she said.
"Of all the things I never though I'd hear you say," Sokka muttered.
A wave of relief washed through Zuko. He knew what to do next. After that point it was all pretty unsteady and by-the-moment, but right in this moment, he had a path to follow that he was sure, for the first time in a long time, was the right one.
"All right, good. All of you-- get out."
The uproar was predictable, but he ignored it, shouting over them. "You don't know how her control is right now. She probably doesn't even know herself. It would be pretty stupid if after finally deciding this, you went and stuck around saying your teary see-you-laters too long and ended up dead. Get out. Now."
They shot a look at Katara, but she only nodded in agreement. "He's right. Get as far away from here as you can. I'll find you later, so... don't worry."
Wearing identical tormented expressions, the three climbed aboard Appa and launched for the sky and safety.
Zuko and Katara were alone.
"I don't get it," she said. "Why are you here? Why didn't you tell them? Why--"
"One question at a time," he said wryly, putting his pack down and sitting down on a nearby log. "First, I'm here because I decided that I wanted to do whatever I could to help the Avatar. This is in line with that. Secondly, I didn't tell them because you wouldn't have wanted me to. It was your secret to tell them if you chose to, and since you didn't, I figured I should keep my mouth shut."
"I..." She paused, looked away, looked back. The look in her eyes as she met his now was different. There was no anger, and what hatred and mistrust still lingered was harder to see. "Thank you."
"Whatever. You were about to ask another question, right?"
"Yes," she said. "Why have you changed so much?"
That was a... question. A question with a long, painful answer that he wasn't really quite ready to tell her in its entirety, not yet. He hadn't even really faced it himself.
He shrugged uncomfortably and told her the half of it he had already made his peace with. "I guess... for the first time, I really saw what I was doing and how screwed up my way of thinking was. I still don't really know what to think, or even really who I am, but for the first time I know that I'm doing the right thing. I wouldn't trade this for all the approval my father could ever give me."
"I'm... impressed," she said, as though each word was being grudgingly torn from her throat. "I really didn't think you had it in you."
"Neither did I," Zuko said indifferently, despite the quick leap of joy in his chest. This was the first indication that there might be hope, that she might someday view him as something other than a loathed enemy. He wasn't sure why, but it meant something to him that she had thought positively of him again, even if only for a moment. He remembered how it had felt back in that prison with her hand on his cheek, understanding him well enough to be willing to heal him in that moment.
He'd come all this way hoping to feel that way again, and figure out why it was so important to him.
Right in this moment, he thought maybe he had an inkling of why. He respected the Avatar, and he respected Katara, and each of their companions. Not like he'd automatically, thoughtlessly respected his father simply because he was his father and a powerful Firelord. He respected them because they deserved it, and Katara probably more than any of them for her ferocious devotion to doing what she knew was right.
More than anything, he wanted to be respected back by these people, whom he admired. It would make him feel as if maybe there was something in him really worth respecting too.
"So, got any bright ideas?" she asked at last with a weak semblance of her usual feisty grin. "I have to confess I'm all out."
"Not a clue," he admitted, "but you're probably hungry, right? I'll get some food ready. We can think some more after your stomach is full."
"How'd you know? I'm ravenous," she said, nearly drooling.
He shrugged and smiled. "You've been running nonstop for days, and you forgot your pack," he reminded her. "I've got enough for both of us for a few days in my pack, and if it runs out before we figure it out, I'll hunt and search for edible plants. Uncle Iroh taught me a lot about how to find food in the wild."
Katara wiped her eyes, looking surprised that they were leaking again. "I'm not sure what to say," she said, sounding closer to happy than he'd heard her for a long time.
"You don't have to waste time thinking of stuff to say to me," he said sternly, "use it better and find a way out of this predicament."
"You're right."
"That's the third time today," he teased. "Be careful or you might end up agreeing with me on a regular basis."
She laughed, a welcome sound. "Not likely."
He laughed with her, then set about cooking her dinner before she collapsed of starvation. He made it good. It could be the last food either of them ate if this went badly.
"You're not a bad cook," she granted him about halfway through, after she'd managed to slow down past the cramming stage. "I never would have guessed."
"Yeah, well, I traveled with Uncle Iroh for years," Zuko said, fighting an embarrassing blush. "I could hardly not learn."
"I'll remember to thank him next time I see him," she mumbled around another mouthful of vegetarian stir-fry.
Zuko smiled and ate his own dinner, reveling in the new feeling that came with being of use to her. He'd never really tried to help anyone else before. It felt better than he'd expected.
"All right," she said when she'd finally eaten enough to bloat her.
He waded into the shallows to retrieve the plate for her, resigning himself to getting wet a lot in the next while.
"I'll probably be sick in a bit, but for now let's do something so I don't fall asleep."
"Something like...?"
She threw her hands up. "I don't know! I've been thinking about this for days and haven't had a single good idea. I've tried meditating, I've tried blasting it all out at once, but all the first one did is make me nearly fall asleep and the second one made it worse."
"You described it like a hole in yourself, right? A sort of channel?"
She nodded.
Zuko thought. "And it was widening, stretching you around it?"
Another nod. She wasn't sure where he was going with this, but that was fair since he didn't either.
"So if you can't close yourself around the power and bring it back to manageable flow levels..."
"It's like trying to crush a tree trunk in my arms," she said. "It's so much stronger than me, there's no way that'll work."
A glimmer of an idea came to him. "It's water, right? Have you tried letting go into it and swimming out?"
"It... doesn't work quite like that," she said, but there was a thoughtfulness in her voice that hadn't been there a minute ago. "I would be destroyed."
"Is there any way to... snap, as you said, but reform yourself outside of the power?"
She was silent for a moment, apparently pondering this. "I might be able to," she admitted reluctantly, "but I think if I did, I wouldn't be a waterbender anymore."
"It's that or die," he pointed out.
She curled in on herself miserably. "I know," she said, "but if I lose that power, I'll be useless."
A flare of hot anger came to life inside him. "Don't be stupid," he said harshly, making her snap her head up and look at him in surprise. "Your brother, Sokka-- he can barely bend grass by standing on it, and yet I've never heard you call him useless."
She fidgeted. "That's different, he has his brain. He's a great battle strategist. I'm just--"
He cut her off impatiently. "I've only been with you for a month and I can see plain as day that you're anything but useless. If it weren't for you caring for all of them, for your the strength of your conviction and your belief in all of them, they would never have made it this far. Aang is the leader, but they all look up to you. Even I'm not dumb enough to miss that."
Katara was at a loss for words. "I... I... but..."
"But nothing. They need you, waterbender or not. If this keeps up you're going to die, and do you really think you'll be more useful to them dead than powerless?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "I know you're right, I just--"
"Just what?" he cut across ruthlessly. "Are you so addicted to your power that you'd rather die than risk losing it?"
Dimly, he wondered where that had come from. He'd certainly never meant to say something like that, was pretty sure he was far too stupid when it came to understanding people to ever have said it from his own wisdom. Perhaps the spirits had intervened.
No matter, because he was about to die anyway.
Katara's eyes were huge and unblinking with shock. "What did you just--"
"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure whatever I said, it was right," he said resignedly.
"Me? Addicted to power? What gives you the right--"
The lake groaned and Zuko felt the earth shake under him. Every second he lived now was longer than he'd expected to. He hoped the insight helped her, since it was about to cost his life.
Seconds passed, and then more, until nearly a minute had gone by without a cataclysm. He opened his eyes and found, to his shock, not a furious Katara, but a broken one. She was curled up on the waves weeping and pulling at her hair until it nearly came out from the roots.
Alarmed, Zuko stood and ran into the lake, instantly feeling the horrific current yanking at him as he passed knee-depth. He'd been right-- the maelstrom was still there.
Determinedly, he waded further out, anchoring his feet as best he could in the silty lakebed. "Katara!" he called. "Katara, calm down!"
"You're right," she sobbed, "you're right and I hate you for it. I hate myself for it. I can't imagine a life without waterbending. I don't want to think of myself being that weak."
"You're not weak!" he yelled over the din. "After everything that's happened, all that horrible things you've been through, you're still fighting! If you lose your power, you'll still keep fighting! Katara!"
She wailed, rising like a wraith above the water which was eerily dissolving into mist. "Get back, Zuko," she warned. "I'm losing control again. Come back in the morning."
He slammed his fist into the water uselessly, feeling familiar frustration boil through him. It was just like back then, trying to catch the Avatar and being thwarted at every turn. He couldn't do anything, couldn't help anyone, he just made people angry and screwed things up.
The lake swirled around his calves as he thrashed his way out and picked up his pack from the beach. "I'll be back," he promised, swallowing his frustration. "I'm not giving up. Not this time."
Zuko turned and fled into the hills, and felt the lake explode behind him.
xxxxx
The entire night he lay awake and stared at the sky, fuming over his inability to do anything right, ever.
He was exhausted by the time the sun rose, but as he'd promised, he picked his pack up and marched back down the mountain to the beach.
Katara lay in the middle of the lake again, lazy spiral patterns swirling out from her still body, fast asleep.
Zuko sighed and dropped onto the beach to wait for her to wake up. Startling her awake would be more dangerous than it would be wise to risk.
With nothing better to do, he put together a cold breakfast of bread, cheese, jerky, and a few fresh wild greens he'd found the night before. She'd be hungry when she woke up.
The sun was well over the horizon when he finally heard the water stir. He turned to look just as she leapt to her feet with a cry of dismay, looking around her as though expecting the beach to be strewn with bodies. On seeing Zuko alive, alone, and with breakfast laid out, she sagged with relief and sank back into the water.
"Another nightmare?" he asked, glad that this one hadn't involved her annihilating a squadron of nonexistent soldiers and wishing he'd waited a while longer before daring to come down.
"Yeah," she said, "a predictable one."
Without waiting for her to ask, he brought her breakfast out to her and sat down to eat his own. "Have any good ideas in your sleep?"
"None better than yours," she said regretfully. "I had another dream earlier that I traveled up a river to the capital and obliterated it, but if I did that I would kill a lot of innocent people and probably die myself."
The idea hit him like lightning. Why hadn't he thought of it first, why hadn't Sokka thought of it first, it was so obvious-- "Not if I went ahead and warned them to get out," he said, excitement beginning to rise within him. "They know me, and they know the Avatar. If we went together and warned them to evacuate--"
"Wouldn't the Firelord just leave, then, too?" she said doubtfully, taken aback that he was even considering what she seemed to think was just a crazy dream.
Zuko shook his head. "No! I know him, better than anyone except maybe Uncle Iroh. His pride won't let him leave the city like a refugee. And also, because of that pride, he won't be able believe that you're more powerful than him, not a little Water Tribe girl."
She considered him, still off-balance but beginning to wonder with him now. "You really think it would work?"
"Yes!" he said, nearly bursting with excitement now. "And even if by some miracle he decided to leave after all, you would have control of the capital. That's the center of the entire war effort-- if you take it away, they'll scatter and be forced to find a new base. While they do that, you can separate them, disarm them, and win. Katara, it would work. I guarantee it."
"I..." She sucked in a deep breath, then stood up to face him, somehow managing to look wildly noble in her tatters and rags. "If you can get the innocent out, I guess I'll... I'll give it a try."
"I won't let you down," he promised, then scooped up his pack and set off at a dead run. "I'll go find the others, and come back for you when it's done. I promise!"
"Zuko!" she called after him. "Zuko, thank you!"
He waved over his shoulder, wordless but clear: glad to help.
xxxxx
The others weren't nearly as difficult to convince as he'd been sure they would be.
"Katara believes that it will work," he said, pulling his trump card on them and seeing their doubtful faces cave in. "It was my idea, but she's behind it. Please trust her if you won't trust me."
"Okay," said Aang, blessed Aang, wonderful open-hearted Aang. "If Katara and you agree on this, I kind of have to, because there's no way Katara would agree with you on anything if she wasn't absolutely sure you were right."
That was less a vote of confidence than ideal, but Zuko would take it gladly. "Then you'll come with me to the capital?"
"Yeah, I guess so," said Sokka, shrugging helplessly. "For the record, this is insane, but Aang's right. If Katara agrees, I'll trust her on it."
Toph rolled her shoulders. "You're all nuts," she said, but then she grinned, feral and dangerous. "I like it."
Zuko breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. He was getting better at being good.
xxxxx
His good mood had long since dissipated.
Now, there was only necessity and action. He'd warned the people, made a speech from the center of town side by side with the Avatar, pled with them with all the passion in his heart.
Most of them had left. Some of them hadn't. They were the ones who stubbornly clung to their belief in the Firelord and his militant, bloodthirsty vision for the world. They were the ones who supported the war and backed it in whatever way they could, though they could not wield weapons for whatever reason.
They were not innocent.
It was time to get Katara.
They plotted out a course from her lake to the capital that never took her further than a mile from water, commandeered a small rivership so she wouldn't have to get any further above it than necessary, and hoped it would be enough.
She wept when she saw them. "I don't know if I can do this," she sobbed. "All those people--"
"Katara," said Zuko gently. "I gave them a choice. I told them exactly what was coming. They chose to stay. Whatever happens, no one will be able to blame you for it."
"Still," she said, and suddenly he understood that she wasn't balking, wasn't refusing. She was just trying to make her peace with necessity.
"You can ask forgiveness later," he said. "Right now, there are just as many lives being lost to the Fire Nation as you're going to take, and so many more back across the years."
"Are you saying this is justified?" she gasped, unable to stem the tears.
"No," he said, letting the grief for his people show in his eyes so she would understand. "I'm saying it's forgivable."
He held her gaze for long moments, willing the others to be silent. Finally, at last, she nodded. Just once, slowly, but he recognized it for the acceptance it was.
Zuko held out his hand to her. "Come with me, Katara," he said. "We're going to end this war."
She stepped off the water and took his hand with a grip firm enough to make his bones ache. "Get me there as fast as you can," she said, her voice already strained.
They took her to the ship, and she let the power stream from her behind them so that the ship fairly flew up the river.
Zuko stood at the back of the ship with her the entire two-day journey back to the city. At first he only stood close by, ready at her request to take her and leap off the ship in case she lost control.
As the hours wore past, she withered, leaning on the railing for support.
Finally, she drifted sideways and fell. Zuko caught her, held her upright, supported her as she dissolved.
By the time they reached the city she was a wraith. Zuko carried her that last mile to the city gates, and then through the city itself up to the palace.
"Put me down," she whispered.
Zuko obeyed, setting her down in the middle of the great paved courtyard before the palace.
The doors above them swung ponderously open to reveal the Firelord. Zuko had been half-expecting to see him, but not so soon, so quickly, not yet. He sneered down at them, back straight and pride intact. "So this is what you bring to destroy my city? A half-dead peasant girl? I'll admit I expected something a bit more... impressive."
"Run," Katara whispered. "Get out. I can take it from here."
Aang shook his head. "What about the Firelord? There's no way--"
"Aang," she said. "Sokka. Toph. I love you. Please get out."
Zuko insinuated himself between her slumped, thin body on the stone and her friends, who were doing their best to screw everything up because they loved her too much. "Trust her," he said. "I'll protect her if she needs it. She wants you alive. Go."
"You too, Zuko," she said, surprising all of them but Zuko most of all. "Run away. Please."
"I've been here this long," he said resolutely, shaking off the shock. "This is as much my fight as it is yours. That's my father up there. This is his scar on my face. Are you really going to tell me to turn my back on this?"
"You'll die," she croaked.
"Maybe," Zuko said, forging through the surge of fear that realization brought on. "Maybe not. Either way, I'm staying, and you can't make me leave."
"All right," she said with a ghost of a smile. "Your funeral."
Zuko turned and faced the others, resolve strong in him. "It'll be all right," he said. "I'll keep her alive. Safe. Even if it kills me. I swear it on my honour as Zuko, son of Ursa."
"If you screw this up, I will hunt you forever," Sokka promised.
Zuko met his eyes, then saluted. "Get them out of here."
Sokka nodded, then spun and caught Aang under one arm and Toph under the other. He was taller than them, stronger than them, but he still would have lost if they had fought him. They didn't-- their last and greatest show of trust in Katara... and in him.
Moments later they were gone, a small white spot in the endless sky.
"You plan to fight me without the Avatar?" Ozai scoffed, laughing heartily. "You're mad."
"Maybe so," said Zuko fiercely, feeling more pulsingly, blazingly alive in this moment than he ever had before. "But that's beside the point. The war is going to end today. You are going to die."
"Well go ahead and try if you like!" crowed Ozai, raising his hands and calling wreaths of flame into existence. "I will take great pleasure in erasing scum like you from the memory of our noble family! Traitor!"
He barrelled down the steps. Zuko drew his twin swords, feeling the insane urge to laugh. He felt wonderful.
"Zuko!" Katara cried out, reaching up and catching his wrist. "Hold on to me, and don't let go!"
He didn't stop to think, simply obeyed, dropped to his knees and gathered her into his chest. She hardly existed anymore, a mist of fragile flesh over delicate bones, a shadow of the robust and powerful girl he'd known. It would be a miracle if she survived this.
It would be twice a miracle if he survived, but somehow he wasn't afraid. Sitting here at the end of the world with the most courageous girl he'd ever known in his arms, knowing that she didn't hate him anymore, remembering that she'd thanked him for this, he couldn't bring himself to feel regret.
He felt his death coming for him, and couldn't do anything but smile helplessly at it and hold Katara harder, trusting her with everything.
"You should have run," she whispered into his ear.
The world exploded.
XxxxxX
A/N: If you want to kill me for the ending, go right ahead, but I wrote no fewer than thirteen epilogues for this and all of them cheapened it. I won't change my mind on leaving it this way.
I hope you enjoyed it! Comments are welcome if you feel so inclined. ♥
Edit: WTF. Sequel upcoming for absolutely no good reason.
~Eia
Quietbender - Part II/III. Katara needs time to come to terms with what she's done. Zuko protects her silence and waits.
Unbender - Part III/III. The war reaches its climax, and its end. A powerless Katara must stay behind while her friends walk towards battle and death. Zuko carries her will to the frontlines in her place.
Focus: Zuko, Katara, the Gaang
Genres: Action, drama, angst, suspense, extremely mild romance if you squint
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 8205
Notes: First, importantly: this is essentially genfic. If you're looking for fic focused on Zutara romance, look elsewhere. There is pre-romance, if you will, but contains not so much as a kiss.
Secondly, if you'll remember Bloodbender, a story I wrote last February, a lot of people asked for an elaboration or continuation on it. This isn't it. I took my idea from back then of Katara conquering the capital by herself and came at it from a different direction.
Enjoy! ^____^
Katara has a secret that makes her run from her friends in the middle of the night. Zuko knows what it is, but refuses to tell them... for her sake.
Dreambender
The dream shattered.
Zuko woke up to find himself unable to move, unable to breathe, his heart sluggish and straining in his chest. Panic swamped him. His mind cleared of sleep-fog instantly, but he still couldn't move. Through his resolutely shuttered eyelids, he could tell that it was still dark, and by his estimation he hadn't been asleep longer than a couple of hours.
Something was wrong.
Thinking as fast as he could, he tested each limb one by one, pressing back against the strange pressure until he was sure he couldn't break it without harming himself. He calmed his heart rate so that his oxygen would last longer and wondered, angrily, if he was seriously about to die after coming all this way.
Then suddenly, as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished, leaving him to suck in great heaving lungfuls of air. Around him, he could hear the others doing the same. So this had not been a personal attack. He couldn't decide whether that was better or worse than the alternative. At least if it was personal he would have an excuse to get angry, return to that familiar, easy state of being. He knew how to deal with anger.
Fear wasn't quite as simple, and this fear less so than most.
Rubbing his aching chest, he sat up.
Aang and Sokka were still on the outskirts of camp. Aang on watch, Sokka half-awake at his feet, both clutching their own chests. Toph was upright already, doing the equivalent for her of staring wildly around, which consisted of standing absolutely still with her eyes closed, listening to her feet.
Zuko already knew what had happened. He'd been expecting it for two weeks, ever since he'd found out about Katara's secret from Aang (who trusted Zuko more than he should).
As if to prove him right, Katara broke into quiet, agonized sobs across the fire from him.
He didn't bother to stand up. He knew he'd never get there before the others. There was nothing he could do anyways, even if she'd let him come within ten feet of her in this vulnerable state.
Sure enough, a split second later a stampede of three concerned friends and one flying rodent swarmed Katara, throwing questions at her at the rate of roughly ten per second.
"What just happened?"
"Are you okay?"
"Did the Fire Nation catch us?"
"Why are you crying?"
"Where does it hurt?"
She let them continue, stammering out half-complete answers in whatever small time they afforded her, for about half a minute. Zuko counted down in his head: three, two, one-- She stood so suddenly they all fell away from her into the dirt and stared up at her in mute shock.
"Leave me alone," she snapped, fed up. "I'm fine. The Fire Nation haven't caught up to us. Go back to sleep, I'll explain in the morning."
Yeah, right, Zuko thought, but kept the words to himself. Aang would want to know what he meant, he would be forced to explain, and Katara already had enough things she refused to forgive him for without adding this one to the list.
Murmuring amongst themselves, her exhausted friends obeyed the clear tone of command in her voice and returned to their bedrolls. Aang continued to watch her from his perch on a rock. He should have been watching the night, making sure there were no threats coming from outside the camp, but Zuko couldn't really blame him for his distraction. Tonight, the threat came from inside the camp.
As though she could feel his eyes on her, Katara turned and glared at him.
He shrugged, annoyed. Served him right for caring in the first place. He should have known Katara wouldn't welcome his understanding.
Leaving her alone to wallow in her misery, he turned over and tried to go back to sleep. He'd try to get her alone tomorrow and make her understand. He hoped he'd survive the encounter.
xxxxx
When they woke again in the morning, more naturally this time, Katara was gone.
Everyone but Zuko was surprised.
"Where could she have gone? Do you think she was captured by the Fire Nation?" Aang, who was deathly pale. His hands on his glider pole where white-knuckled and shaking.
"Toph! Can you see her?" Sokka, whose clever head was somewhat clearer than the others but still astonishingly blind to the obvious in this instance.
"I can't feel her," Toph said fretfully, "she's not anywhere!"
Zuko couldn't stand it. "Of course you can't," he sneered derisively, "there's a river around here, isn't there?"
They stared at him blankly for a moment.
Sokka understood first, slapping his forehead. "Of course," he said, "she's walking on it. Toph wouldn't feel her through the water."
"That's not fair," said Toph, angry because the only other option was fear.
"What was she thinking?" asked Aang, close to tears now. "Was it something to do with that weird thing that happened last night?"
Zuko hurt for her. How much had she hidden from them, to leave them this ignorant of her situation? He didn't blame her. He wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone either had it been him. "Yes," he said without thinking, "of course it was." Even as the words left his mouth, he wished to the point of gutache that he could take them back, swallow them and keep them somewhere they would never rise again.
It was too late.
The other three stopped and stared at him suspiciously, even Aang. "How do you know? What aren't you telling us?"
He opened his mouth to spit it at them, the obvious thing they'd been missing, but it stuck in his throat. He was trying so hard to be good, be trustworthy, earn her forgiveness. This would be a giant step back. "If you can't figure it out on your own, it's not my business to tell you." He hesitated. "This is Katara's choice. It's kind of a new thing for me, but... I'm going to trust her to deal with it as she sees best."
"We're her friends!" yelled Toph, furious.
He couldn't blame her, but neither could he change his decision without hating himself twice as much for it. Zuko wondered for the second time that day if he was going to die. "I know," he said simply. "And I know I'm pretty bad at understanding the whole friendship thing. But everything in me right now is telling me that I can't tell you this for her. She has to do it herself, or not at all."
He wasn't surprised at all when a minute later he found himself encased in a writhing cocoon of earth, with a shimmering blade of water and one semi-ordinary star-metal sword pressing dangerously on the skin of his throat.
"I don't trust you," said Sokka steadily. "You have no right to hide things from us after begging us to trust you."
"You're right," said Zuko, doing his best not to swallow. "But this isn't my secret. I'm not hiding anything from you that's mine to tell. I swear it."
"He's not lying," Toph said, resigned. "And he's not panicking. He's made up his mind. I don't think we're going to get anything out of him."
Sokka snarled, but sheathed his sword. "While we've been wasting our time on this snake, she's been getting further away from us. Let's find that river and see if we can't track her."
The three of them packed up camp in less than five minutes, threw everything onto Appa's back, and nearly set off without him. They gave him a cold glare when he clambered into the saddle with them, but when he didn't say anything, they resigned themselves to his presence and opted instead to ignore him.
That was fine by him. He still hadn't quite figured out how to talk to them in a way that didn't make them angry, and he didn't want to give them any further reason to throw him out. He had atonement to do, and this was the only place he could do it. If it was unpleasant... well, that was his fault, for giving them so many reasons to hate him in the first place.
They found the river two hours later, miles west of the campsite. There was a small tributary leading up to it that Katara had undoubtedly made good use of.
"...Which way?" asked Aang blankly. The river wound away out of sight northwards and southwards, and the jungle vegetation of the area overhung it on both banks with plenty of room for a small woman trying not to be seen to hide in.
She wasn't going anywhere in particular, either, just... away. Their guess was as good as Zuko's, but logic told him after he thought for a moment that she would try to go somewhere uninhabited.
"South," he said, "further in."
"How do you know?" asked Sokka suspiciously.
Zuko shrugged. "I don't. Just a hunch."
"...Well, we don't have any better ideas," sighed Sokka at last, defeated. "South it is."
"You know," said Zuko, the words bursting out of him before he could stop them. Again he wished to take them, and again it was too late.
"What?" they asked, almost in unison.
He hung his head miserably, certain they would push him off Appa for saying this. "Are you sure it's a good idea to go after her right now? She ran away for her own reasons, all of them good ones. Catching her might not end as well as you think."
They glared at him, their frustration revived tenfold.
"Will you please just tell us what you know?" Toph snarled lethally.
He wasn't afraid. They were miles in the air, he would win a battle with a woman who couldn't see without the earth under her feet easily. Aang didn't scare him either, the boy had a set of morals that would kill him too if he ever did something as cruel as kill Zuko in cold blood. Sokka did frighten him, because he could do nearly anything to protect those he decided were dear to him, but even he wouldn't try anything with Aang sitting right there.
The person he was most frightened of, far beyond any of these three, was the one they were chasing.
So, he shook his head regretfully and met their eyes with a hard look of his own. "No. I refuse."
They gave up again, but the tension in the saddle didn't subside at all. If anything, it grew steadily worse, until Zuko was nearly ready to contemplate jumping out on his own and testing a theory he'd once had about using firebending to create lift.
Hours passed without a word from anyone, until Sokka yelled and pointed over the side.
"Looks like Zuko was right after all," he said grudgingly.
Below them, the river was frozen into a delicate canopy of ice arching over the river. Engraved in the shimmering bridge were the words stop following me.
"Sorry, Katara," said Aang, not looking sorry at all.
Appa continued his meandering course down the river.
Zuko wasn't sure at all that they were flying nearly fast enough to catch up to Katara. She was a waterbending master. Sometimes he thought her companions didn't really understand that. Necessity was the mother of improvisation, and Katara had a really good reason to get away from them as fast as she could. It wouldn't surprise Zuko at all if she'd invented some way to fly using the river water to propel her. After all, she'd already figured out how to walk on it days ago.
He couldn't bring himself to feel unhappy about that. That last thing he wanted to do for the next few days was get anywhere near her, at least until she'd found a way to solve her dilemma.
Unfortunately, this was not a wish the world felt like granting him.
Two days of strained silence later, they caught up... so to speak.
She was waiting for them, standing in the middle of a lake surrounded on three sides by cliffs, her clothes ragged and her features sunken. "I thought I told you not to follow me," she said. Her voice was hoarse and furious.
"Katara, please," Aang said, alighting on the water himself with an airbending trick he'd only just learned before her disappearance and reaching out to her.
She leapt away from him as if scalded, falling into a battle stance. "Don't come near me," she snarled.
They stared at her, bewildered and hurt. "But Katara--"
"No," she hissed, eyes slitting. "You don't understand anything. Stay away."
"We would if you'd explain it to us," Sokka snapped. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I kind of thought after all this time you just might understand that you can trust us. I mean, you're the one who's always been preaching at Aang to talk to you, harping on and on that everything can be solved if we're just together. And now you have one little problem and you just split, leaving us to worry half to death about you and not having a clue where you are?"
"Well, you found me well enough," she snapped right back at him, the surface of the lake begin to roil.
"That's not the point! The point is that--"
"Stop it," said Zuko, unable to keep his words behind his teeth. "Leave her alone."
"Shut up!" Sokka yelled, temper finally snapping. "You're an outsider, you've been our enemy until just recently, what the hell could you possibly know about my sister?"
"Apparently more than you," Zuko fired back, his own temper fraying thin. "I would have thought it was obvious, both what happened and why she ran away, and I would have thought you trusted her enough to let her have her space and figure it out on her own time. For the love of fire, she's trying to protect--"
"Shut up, Zuko," Katara interrupted, glaring at him.
The injustice of it all welled up in him until he couldn't bear it anymore. "You know what?" he yelled furiously. "I've been protecting your secret this whole time, trying to convince them to leave you alone, enduring threats of torture from your sweet, innocent little friends here, doing my best to give you what you wanted, and all you can say is 'Shut up, Zuko.' Well, you know what? Shut up, Katara. Either you tell them, or I will. I'm sick of this."
She stared at him for a moment, then at the others. "You don't know?" she asked faintly. "He didn't tell you?"
"No, he didn't, but you should have!" An incandescently enraged Toph.
Katara had the grace to look faintly ashamed. "I thought for sure he'd spill the beans the first chance he got, hoping to gain your trust," she said with a nasty look back at Zuko.
He glared at her.
"That's not the point! We're your friends! You should have told us yourself, not left Zuko to do your dirty work!" Toph again, if possible even angrier than before.
Katara said nothing, letting the ricocheting yells fall flat onto the water from the cliff walls and die into rippling silence. "I didn't have time," she said at last. "I'm sorry. I panicked and did the only thing I could think of. I didn't mean to scare you, or make you think that I don't trust you. It's nothing like that. I just... didn't have time."
All their anger had died in those few intervening seconds before she spoke. It was with a heavy, tired voice that Sokka spoke up next. "Can you explain it to us now?"
"I think so," she said, and for the first time the party saw the enormous mass of fear she's been hiding behind her anger until this point. She was shaking with terror, nearly weeping with it, and was clearly not at all sure that it was safe.
"All right," said Sokka, landing Appa on the shore and helping Toph down. "Let's hear it."
Katara remained standing on the lake while they stood on the beach, the three of them clustered together while Zuko, who already knew what she was going to say, stood a few steps off and crossed his arms.
"Apparently," she began after a deep breath, "there's something that happens when benders learn and increase their power too quickly. I should have studied waterbending over years, getting used to each new level of power as I went, but because of... special circumstances..."
Aang closed his eyes.
"...I had to learn very quickly. My power increased so fast that my control over it couldn't hope to keep up, and that battle six days ago when I froze the entire river pushed me past my limit. As long as I was awake, my willpower was strong enough to at least keep it inside me. While I was sitting there at dinner, getting ready for bed, I was also bending the underground stream beneath the campsite just to let off the excess energy."
"Katara, it shouldn't work like that," said Aang, interrupting.
She waved a hand, asking for silence. "Who else do you know who's learned faster than their control could expand?"
"Um, me?" Aang offered, horrified.
She smiled wearily. "You'll be fine. You may not remember it all the time, but you have centuries of experience controlling your power. If it ever gets too much, you'll just go into the Avatar state and blow it off under the expert control of Roku and the others. I... don't have that advantage."
Aang was silent, stunned.
Zuko sighed.
"I managed to stay awake all night," she continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But the next night was harder, and the next night even worse. Finally, three days ago, I couldn't help it. I fell asleep."
Three days ago was when they'd all awoken in the middle of the night unable to breathe.
Katara hung her head and continued miserably. "I had a nightmare that the Fire Nation found us," she said, talking faster and faster as though to expel it all before she lost the courage to continue. "In my dream, I reached out and stopped all their blood. And because of my lack of control in the dreaming state, I..." She stopped, swallowing convulsively and fighting tears.
"You stopped ours instead," supplied Zuko quietly, knowing that none of the others would have the cruelty to say it out loud. They all already hated him anyway.
"Yes," confirmed Katara, looking as if she would like nothing better than to let the lake swallow her and never resurface. "I nearly killed you. If I hadn't woken up at that exact moment, you would all be dead." The tears that had been threatening for the last several minutes finally spilled over. She sank to her knees on the gentle waves and began to heave racking sobs.
Her friends were stunned, seemingly unable to think of a single thing to say until Aang stepped forward.
"I...I think I understand, Katara," he said hesitantly. "Remember when I first tried to learn firebending, I tried to use more power than I had control over and ended up hurting you."
"You ran too," she reminded him. "Not the same way I did, but you ran too. You refused to use firebending or learn about it ever again. You ran from its power. I... couldn't run from mine, so I ran with it instead, away from you. So I couldn't hurt you."
"I told you she knew what she was doing," Zuko muttered resentfully.
Sokka stepped into the water. "Katara. It's okay. We'll figure it out. You don't have to deal with this alone."
"Don't be stupid," she lashed out, the lake heaving. "The second I fall asleep, I could kill you all. This is a big deal, Sokka, it's not just going to go away by saying 'friendship conquers all!' Not that I disagree," she said hastily, seeing his expression, "I just know that this is going to take more than love to fix. I need time, and help... help that you can't give me."
"Why not?" asked Aang plaintively. "Why can't we help you?"
"Because there's a chance she might accidentally kill whoever stays to bring her food and train with her," Zuko said, saving Katara from having to explain it.
She nodded miserably. "I can't risk it. A second's failure and I could obliterate all of you. You can't feel this, but it's... bigger than anything I've ever felt before. It's like I'm a permanent channel for the power of all the water within a hundred mile radius, and if I turn in the wrong direction I could wipe out half a country."
"Oh, it can't be that bad," Sokka joked.
She didn't laugh. "You think so?" she asked solemnly. "I'll show you what you can't see from where you're standing. Back up."
Warily, they did as she instructed, retreating to the tree line.
"Watch," she said, and stepped out of the water, turning quickly to drop to her knees and put one hand back in.
Instantly, with a screaming roar like nothing any of them had ever heard before, the middle of the lake dropped sickeningly with a wrench, creating a vicious maelstrom that stretched from one end of the lake to the other. The water thundered around in raging circuits, twisting itself ever deeper and tighter until there was no lake, only whirlpool.
She looked up the beach at their horrified faces with a look that clearly said you see?
They did. Even Zuko hadn't understood the true depth of what was tearing its way through Katara right now. He was unspeakably thankful to her for running when she had.
Katara took her hand out. The lake calmed instantly, but all her hair rose around her head and she nearly glowed with power until she stepped back onto the surface with a sigh of relief. Though the surface remained calm, Zuko suspected that beneath it, the entirety of the lake was revolving again with the same horrifying speed and power.
He understood her dilemma even better now.
She couldn't risk Aang, even though he was the only one who stood a chance of withstanding this impossible storm for any length of time. He was the Avatar. He was needed elsewhere. Toph was powerful in her own right, but not like this. Sokka couldn't bend at all. None of her friends could survive being near her.
"It's getting worse," she told them flatly when they could hear again. "It's like I'm being stretched open around it, wider and wider, and pretty soon I'll just snap like an elastic band and it'll flood back into the earth where it belongs."
"We're not going to let that happen!" Aang yelled instantly, instinctively.
"How do you think you're going to stop it?" she asked him sadly.
His mouth gaped soundlessly, but he had no answer. Nobody did. None of them had anything that could possibly help her.
Like a light on the horizon, Zuko suddenly saw his chance dawning. He wouldn't have much time, but maybe this way he could in some way be instrumental to the Avatar's effort. Maybe he could be remembered as something other than a willfully blind, stubborn enemy they'd so hated. Maybe they'd forgive him if he did this. Just maybe... but a chance was all he needed.
"I'll stay," he said.
"What?" the other three yelled, shocked.
Katara didn't say a word. He could see the struggle in her eyes. She didn't want to hurt anyone, but she needed help, and if she had to hurt someone out of all of them, he was the natural choice. He'd earned it dozens of times over.
"Are you suicidal?" snapped Sokka. "No way. You'll die in like, three seconds."
"No, I won't," he said. "Katara's going to figure this out, and she's going to come back to you. I don't plan to die here." That wasn't quite true, but not quite a lie either.
"We're not leaving here without Katara!" interrupted Aang, panicked.
Zuko leveled a hot glare at him. "Jeez! Do none of you trust her whatsoever?"
"Zuko, they might be right, I might not be able to--" Katara started, but he rounded on her with the same ferocious stare.
"Don't you trust yourself? After all of this?"
She met his eyes, pleading with him mutely to understand, please understand...
"I do understand," he said roughly, ignoring her startled look. "You don't think you're strong enough to win this one, and you don't want to hurt them ever again. So... don't. I'll stay, I'll help you figure it out. I don't want to die, but better me than them."
"That's--" she started again, stricken, but stopped herself.
"You were going to say 'not true,' right? But it is true. You need Sokka's brain, Aang and Toph's power, to win this war. I could be useful too, but you don't trust me so my power isn't worth as much. Besides that, they're your friends. There's no way you'd be able to concentrate if you were terrified every second of losing control and killing them. I'm the only logical choice, and I'm saying I'll stay. If I were you, I'd shut up and take the offer. You won't get a better one."
"Since when have you known how to think logically?" Sokka jabbed weakly.
"It's a recent development," Zuko replied shortly with a hint of a mirthless smile. "So? What do you say?"
"Fine," whispered Katara.
The other three jumped in shock. "Fine?" they echoed disbelievingly.
Taking a deep breath, she spoke more strongly. "Zuko's right," she said.
"Of all the things I never though I'd hear you say," Sokka muttered.
A wave of relief washed through Zuko. He knew what to do next. After that point it was all pretty unsteady and by-the-moment, but right in this moment, he had a path to follow that he was sure, for the first time in a long time, was the right one.
"All right, good. All of you-- get out."
The uproar was predictable, but he ignored it, shouting over them. "You don't know how her control is right now. She probably doesn't even know herself. It would be pretty stupid if after finally deciding this, you went and stuck around saying your teary see-you-laters too long and ended up dead. Get out. Now."
They shot a look at Katara, but she only nodded in agreement. "He's right. Get as far away from here as you can. I'll find you later, so... don't worry."
Wearing identical tormented expressions, the three climbed aboard Appa and launched for the sky and safety.
Zuko and Katara were alone.
"I don't get it," she said. "Why are you here? Why didn't you tell them? Why--"
"One question at a time," he said wryly, putting his pack down and sitting down on a nearby log. "First, I'm here because I decided that I wanted to do whatever I could to help the Avatar. This is in line with that. Secondly, I didn't tell them because you wouldn't have wanted me to. It was your secret to tell them if you chose to, and since you didn't, I figured I should keep my mouth shut."
"I..." She paused, looked away, looked back. The look in her eyes as she met his now was different. There was no anger, and what hatred and mistrust still lingered was harder to see. "Thank you."
"Whatever. You were about to ask another question, right?"
"Yes," she said. "Why have you changed so much?"
That was a... question. A question with a long, painful answer that he wasn't really quite ready to tell her in its entirety, not yet. He hadn't even really faced it himself.
He shrugged uncomfortably and told her the half of it he had already made his peace with. "I guess... for the first time, I really saw what I was doing and how screwed up my way of thinking was. I still don't really know what to think, or even really who I am, but for the first time I know that I'm doing the right thing. I wouldn't trade this for all the approval my father could ever give me."
"I'm... impressed," she said, as though each word was being grudgingly torn from her throat. "I really didn't think you had it in you."
"Neither did I," Zuko said indifferently, despite the quick leap of joy in his chest. This was the first indication that there might be hope, that she might someday view him as something other than a loathed enemy. He wasn't sure why, but it meant something to him that she had thought positively of him again, even if only for a moment. He remembered how it had felt back in that prison with her hand on his cheek, understanding him well enough to be willing to heal him in that moment.
He'd come all this way hoping to feel that way again, and figure out why it was so important to him.
Right in this moment, he thought maybe he had an inkling of why. He respected the Avatar, and he respected Katara, and each of their companions. Not like he'd automatically, thoughtlessly respected his father simply because he was his father and a powerful Firelord. He respected them because they deserved it, and Katara probably more than any of them for her ferocious devotion to doing what she knew was right.
More than anything, he wanted to be respected back by these people, whom he admired. It would make him feel as if maybe there was something in him really worth respecting too.
"So, got any bright ideas?" she asked at last with a weak semblance of her usual feisty grin. "I have to confess I'm all out."
"Not a clue," he admitted, "but you're probably hungry, right? I'll get some food ready. We can think some more after your stomach is full."
"How'd you know? I'm ravenous," she said, nearly drooling.
He shrugged and smiled. "You've been running nonstop for days, and you forgot your pack," he reminded her. "I've got enough for both of us for a few days in my pack, and if it runs out before we figure it out, I'll hunt and search for edible plants. Uncle Iroh taught me a lot about how to find food in the wild."
Katara wiped her eyes, looking surprised that they were leaking again. "I'm not sure what to say," she said, sounding closer to happy than he'd heard her for a long time.
"You don't have to waste time thinking of stuff to say to me," he said sternly, "use it better and find a way out of this predicament."
"You're right."
"That's the third time today," he teased. "Be careful or you might end up agreeing with me on a regular basis."
She laughed, a welcome sound. "Not likely."
He laughed with her, then set about cooking her dinner before she collapsed of starvation. He made it good. It could be the last food either of them ate if this went badly.
"You're not a bad cook," she granted him about halfway through, after she'd managed to slow down past the cramming stage. "I never would have guessed."
"Yeah, well, I traveled with Uncle Iroh for years," Zuko said, fighting an embarrassing blush. "I could hardly not learn."
"I'll remember to thank him next time I see him," she mumbled around another mouthful of vegetarian stir-fry.
Zuko smiled and ate his own dinner, reveling in the new feeling that came with being of use to her. He'd never really tried to help anyone else before. It felt better than he'd expected.
"All right," she said when she'd finally eaten enough to bloat her.
He waded into the shallows to retrieve the plate for her, resigning himself to getting wet a lot in the next while.
"I'll probably be sick in a bit, but for now let's do something so I don't fall asleep."
"Something like...?"
She threw her hands up. "I don't know! I've been thinking about this for days and haven't had a single good idea. I've tried meditating, I've tried blasting it all out at once, but all the first one did is make me nearly fall asleep and the second one made it worse."
"You described it like a hole in yourself, right? A sort of channel?"
She nodded.
Zuko thought. "And it was widening, stretching you around it?"
Another nod. She wasn't sure where he was going with this, but that was fair since he didn't either.
"So if you can't close yourself around the power and bring it back to manageable flow levels..."
"It's like trying to crush a tree trunk in my arms," she said. "It's so much stronger than me, there's no way that'll work."
A glimmer of an idea came to him. "It's water, right? Have you tried letting go into it and swimming out?"
"It... doesn't work quite like that," she said, but there was a thoughtfulness in her voice that hadn't been there a minute ago. "I would be destroyed."
"Is there any way to... snap, as you said, but reform yourself outside of the power?"
She was silent for a moment, apparently pondering this. "I might be able to," she admitted reluctantly, "but I think if I did, I wouldn't be a waterbender anymore."
"It's that or die," he pointed out.
She curled in on herself miserably. "I know," she said, "but if I lose that power, I'll be useless."
A flare of hot anger came to life inside him. "Don't be stupid," he said harshly, making her snap her head up and look at him in surprise. "Your brother, Sokka-- he can barely bend grass by standing on it, and yet I've never heard you call him useless."
She fidgeted. "That's different, he has his brain. He's a great battle strategist. I'm just--"
He cut her off impatiently. "I've only been with you for a month and I can see plain as day that you're anything but useless. If it weren't for you caring for all of them, for your the strength of your conviction and your belief in all of them, they would never have made it this far. Aang is the leader, but they all look up to you. Even I'm not dumb enough to miss that."
Katara was at a loss for words. "I... I... but..."
"But nothing. They need you, waterbender or not. If this keeps up you're going to die, and do you really think you'll be more useful to them dead than powerless?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "I know you're right, I just--"
"Just what?" he cut across ruthlessly. "Are you so addicted to your power that you'd rather die than risk losing it?"
Dimly, he wondered where that had come from. He'd certainly never meant to say something like that, was pretty sure he was far too stupid when it came to understanding people to ever have said it from his own wisdom. Perhaps the spirits had intervened.
No matter, because he was about to die anyway.
Katara's eyes were huge and unblinking with shock. "What did you just--"
"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure whatever I said, it was right," he said resignedly.
"Me? Addicted to power? What gives you the right--"
The lake groaned and Zuko felt the earth shake under him. Every second he lived now was longer than he'd expected to. He hoped the insight helped her, since it was about to cost his life.
Seconds passed, and then more, until nearly a minute had gone by without a cataclysm. He opened his eyes and found, to his shock, not a furious Katara, but a broken one. She was curled up on the waves weeping and pulling at her hair until it nearly came out from the roots.
Alarmed, Zuko stood and ran into the lake, instantly feeling the horrific current yanking at him as he passed knee-depth. He'd been right-- the maelstrom was still there.
Determinedly, he waded further out, anchoring his feet as best he could in the silty lakebed. "Katara!" he called. "Katara, calm down!"
"You're right," she sobbed, "you're right and I hate you for it. I hate myself for it. I can't imagine a life without waterbending. I don't want to think of myself being that weak."
"You're not weak!" he yelled over the din. "After everything that's happened, all that horrible things you've been through, you're still fighting! If you lose your power, you'll still keep fighting! Katara!"
She wailed, rising like a wraith above the water which was eerily dissolving into mist. "Get back, Zuko," she warned. "I'm losing control again. Come back in the morning."
He slammed his fist into the water uselessly, feeling familiar frustration boil through him. It was just like back then, trying to catch the Avatar and being thwarted at every turn. He couldn't do anything, couldn't help anyone, he just made people angry and screwed things up.
The lake swirled around his calves as he thrashed his way out and picked up his pack from the beach. "I'll be back," he promised, swallowing his frustration. "I'm not giving up. Not this time."
Zuko turned and fled into the hills, and felt the lake explode behind him.
xxxxx
The entire night he lay awake and stared at the sky, fuming over his inability to do anything right, ever.
He was exhausted by the time the sun rose, but as he'd promised, he picked his pack up and marched back down the mountain to the beach.
Katara lay in the middle of the lake again, lazy spiral patterns swirling out from her still body, fast asleep.
Zuko sighed and dropped onto the beach to wait for her to wake up. Startling her awake would be more dangerous than it would be wise to risk.
With nothing better to do, he put together a cold breakfast of bread, cheese, jerky, and a few fresh wild greens he'd found the night before. She'd be hungry when she woke up.
The sun was well over the horizon when he finally heard the water stir. He turned to look just as she leapt to her feet with a cry of dismay, looking around her as though expecting the beach to be strewn with bodies. On seeing Zuko alive, alone, and with breakfast laid out, she sagged with relief and sank back into the water.
"Another nightmare?" he asked, glad that this one hadn't involved her annihilating a squadron of nonexistent soldiers and wishing he'd waited a while longer before daring to come down.
"Yeah," she said, "a predictable one."
Without waiting for her to ask, he brought her breakfast out to her and sat down to eat his own. "Have any good ideas in your sleep?"
"None better than yours," she said regretfully. "I had another dream earlier that I traveled up a river to the capital and obliterated it, but if I did that I would kill a lot of innocent people and probably die myself."
The idea hit him like lightning. Why hadn't he thought of it first, why hadn't Sokka thought of it first, it was so obvious-- "Not if I went ahead and warned them to get out," he said, excitement beginning to rise within him. "They know me, and they know the Avatar. If we went together and warned them to evacuate--"
"Wouldn't the Firelord just leave, then, too?" she said doubtfully, taken aback that he was even considering what she seemed to think was just a crazy dream.
Zuko shook his head. "No! I know him, better than anyone except maybe Uncle Iroh. His pride won't let him leave the city like a refugee. And also, because of that pride, he won't be able believe that you're more powerful than him, not a little Water Tribe girl."
She considered him, still off-balance but beginning to wonder with him now. "You really think it would work?"
"Yes!" he said, nearly bursting with excitement now. "And even if by some miracle he decided to leave after all, you would have control of the capital. That's the center of the entire war effort-- if you take it away, they'll scatter and be forced to find a new base. While they do that, you can separate them, disarm them, and win. Katara, it would work. I guarantee it."
"I..." She sucked in a deep breath, then stood up to face him, somehow managing to look wildly noble in her tatters and rags. "If you can get the innocent out, I guess I'll... I'll give it a try."
"I won't let you down," he promised, then scooped up his pack and set off at a dead run. "I'll go find the others, and come back for you when it's done. I promise!"
"Zuko!" she called after him. "Zuko, thank you!"
He waved over his shoulder, wordless but clear: glad to help.
xxxxx
The others weren't nearly as difficult to convince as he'd been sure they would be.
"Katara believes that it will work," he said, pulling his trump card on them and seeing their doubtful faces cave in. "It was my idea, but she's behind it. Please trust her if you won't trust me."
"Okay," said Aang, blessed Aang, wonderful open-hearted Aang. "If Katara and you agree on this, I kind of have to, because there's no way Katara would agree with you on anything if she wasn't absolutely sure you were right."
That was less a vote of confidence than ideal, but Zuko would take it gladly. "Then you'll come with me to the capital?"
"Yeah, I guess so," said Sokka, shrugging helplessly. "For the record, this is insane, but Aang's right. If Katara agrees, I'll trust her on it."
Toph rolled her shoulders. "You're all nuts," she said, but then she grinned, feral and dangerous. "I like it."
Zuko breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. He was getting better at being good.
xxxxx
His good mood had long since dissipated.
Now, there was only necessity and action. He'd warned the people, made a speech from the center of town side by side with the Avatar, pled with them with all the passion in his heart.
Most of them had left. Some of them hadn't. They were the ones who stubbornly clung to their belief in the Firelord and his militant, bloodthirsty vision for the world. They were the ones who supported the war and backed it in whatever way they could, though they could not wield weapons for whatever reason.
They were not innocent.
It was time to get Katara.
They plotted out a course from her lake to the capital that never took her further than a mile from water, commandeered a small rivership so she wouldn't have to get any further above it than necessary, and hoped it would be enough.
She wept when she saw them. "I don't know if I can do this," she sobbed. "All those people--"
"Katara," said Zuko gently. "I gave them a choice. I told them exactly what was coming. They chose to stay. Whatever happens, no one will be able to blame you for it."
"Still," she said, and suddenly he understood that she wasn't balking, wasn't refusing. She was just trying to make her peace with necessity.
"You can ask forgiveness later," he said. "Right now, there are just as many lives being lost to the Fire Nation as you're going to take, and so many more back across the years."
"Are you saying this is justified?" she gasped, unable to stem the tears.
"No," he said, letting the grief for his people show in his eyes so she would understand. "I'm saying it's forgivable."
He held her gaze for long moments, willing the others to be silent. Finally, at last, she nodded. Just once, slowly, but he recognized it for the acceptance it was.
Zuko held out his hand to her. "Come with me, Katara," he said. "We're going to end this war."
She stepped off the water and took his hand with a grip firm enough to make his bones ache. "Get me there as fast as you can," she said, her voice already strained.
They took her to the ship, and she let the power stream from her behind them so that the ship fairly flew up the river.
Zuko stood at the back of the ship with her the entire two-day journey back to the city. At first he only stood close by, ready at her request to take her and leap off the ship in case she lost control.
As the hours wore past, she withered, leaning on the railing for support.
Finally, she drifted sideways and fell. Zuko caught her, held her upright, supported her as she dissolved.
By the time they reached the city she was a wraith. Zuko carried her that last mile to the city gates, and then through the city itself up to the palace.
"Put me down," she whispered.
Zuko obeyed, setting her down in the middle of the great paved courtyard before the palace.
The doors above them swung ponderously open to reveal the Firelord. Zuko had been half-expecting to see him, but not so soon, so quickly, not yet. He sneered down at them, back straight and pride intact. "So this is what you bring to destroy my city? A half-dead peasant girl? I'll admit I expected something a bit more... impressive."
"Run," Katara whispered. "Get out. I can take it from here."
Aang shook his head. "What about the Firelord? There's no way--"
"Aang," she said. "Sokka. Toph. I love you. Please get out."
Zuko insinuated himself between her slumped, thin body on the stone and her friends, who were doing their best to screw everything up because they loved her too much. "Trust her," he said. "I'll protect her if she needs it. She wants you alive. Go."
"You too, Zuko," she said, surprising all of them but Zuko most of all. "Run away. Please."
"I've been here this long," he said resolutely, shaking off the shock. "This is as much my fight as it is yours. That's my father up there. This is his scar on my face. Are you really going to tell me to turn my back on this?"
"You'll die," she croaked.
"Maybe," Zuko said, forging through the surge of fear that realization brought on. "Maybe not. Either way, I'm staying, and you can't make me leave."
"All right," she said with a ghost of a smile. "Your funeral."
Zuko turned and faced the others, resolve strong in him. "It'll be all right," he said. "I'll keep her alive. Safe. Even if it kills me. I swear it on my honour as Zuko, son of Ursa."
"If you screw this up, I will hunt you forever," Sokka promised.
Zuko met his eyes, then saluted. "Get them out of here."
Sokka nodded, then spun and caught Aang under one arm and Toph under the other. He was taller than them, stronger than them, but he still would have lost if they had fought him. They didn't-- their last and greatest show of trust in Katara... and in him.
Moments later they were gone, a small white spot in the endless sky.
"You plan to fight me without the Avatar?" Ozai scoffed, laughing heartily. "You're mad."
"Maybe so," said Zuko fiercely, feeling more pulsingly, blazingly alive in this moment than he ever had before. "But that's beside the point. The war is going to end today. You are going to die."
"Well go ahead and try if you like!" crowed Ozai, raising his hands and calling wreaths of flame into existence. "I will take great pleasure in erasing scum like you from the memory of our noble family! Traitor!"
He barrelled down the steps. Zuko drew his twin swords, feeling the insane urge to laugh. He felt wonderful.
"Zuko!" Katara cried out, reaching up and catching his wrist. "Hold on to me, and don't let go!"
He didn't stop to think, simply obeyed, dropped to his knees and gathered her into his chest. She hardly existed anymore, a mist of fragile flesh over delicate bones, a shadow of the robust and powerful girl he'd known. It would be a miracle if she survived this.
It would be twice a miracle if he survived, but somehow he wasn't afraid. Sitting here at the end of the world with the most courageous girl he'd ever known in his arms, knowing that she didn't hate him anymore, remembering that she'd thanked him for this, he couldn't bring himself to feel regret.
He felt his death coming for him, and couldn't do anything but smile helplessly at it and hold Katara harder, trusting her with everything.
"You should have run," she whispered into his ear.
The world exploded.
XxxxxX
A/N: If you want to kill me for the ending, go right ahead, but I wrote no fewer than thirteen epilogues for this and all of them cheapened it. I won't change my mind on leaving it this way.
I hope you enjoyed it! Comments are welcome if you feel so inclined. ♥
Edit: WTF. Sequel upcoming for absolutely no good reason.
~Eia
Quietbender - Part II/III. Katara needs time to come to terms with what she's done. Zuko protects her silence and waits.
Unbender - Part III/III. The war reaches its climax, and its end. A powerless Katara must stay behind while her friends walk towards battle and death. Zuko carries her will to the frontlines in her place.