Avatar: tLA // Three-shot, 2 of 3 // Quietbender
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Focus: Zuko, Katara, the Gaang
Genres: Introspection, angst, extremely mild romance if you squint
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 1508
Notes: Sequel to Dreambender. This and Dreambender were both supposed to be a flashfic, but I completely failed at romance in favour of half-destroying the world, and am therefore now on my third attempt at an actual Zuko/Katara. Haha, me.
Same notes go for this one as the last one: expansion and reapproach to the idea in Bloodbender, not a Zutara romance fic.
Enjoy!
~Eia
Katara has lost her power as a waterbender, and tries to come to terms with her new self. Zuko protects her silence and waits.
Quietbender
The water followed her finger the way it would follow anyone else's.
Katara stared numbly into the cup, watching how over and over again the water did exactly what it was supposed to. There were tear-tracks, old and dried, crusting her cheeks, and her eyes were hollowed into her pale skull. It was clear that she hadn't slept or eaten in a very long time by the fragile texture of her bruise-yellow skin.
Every once in a while one of them would say something to try and cheer her up, pull her out of this silent dark hole she'd created for herself, but she would only smile wanly at them in a sad semblance of her old self and tell them she was fine, fine, perfectly all right. If they yelled, which they sometimes did, she looked at them as though she couldn't understand why they were angry and told them angrily to leave her alone, she was fine, dammit.
The only one who never said a word was Zuko, because he understood.
He knew the place she was drifting through right now. He remembered it from the long dark nights after Ursa had vanished, staring at the ceiling and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one wanted him, no one needed him, there was no place for one such as him in the world. And because he remembered, he knew that nothing anyone could say would ever convince her otherwise. The understanding had to come from within or not at all.
So he sat opposite her at the table and said nothing, allowing her the time to find her own way through. Most of the time he studied the scrolls and books they'd found in the Firelord's personal library, taking breaks only when his body demanded food or relief. Whenever he needed to sleep, he laid his head on the table and slept like a warrior or a scholar, unheeding of his surroundings but ready to wake at a moment's warning.
The others asked him, each in turn, why he insisted on sitting there, when there were plenty of other places to sit that may have been more comfortable and did not have Katara sitting across from it emanating bleak sorrow. That last they did not voice, but he heard it anyway, and answered it with his eyes while he answered the first with his voice. "I like this seat," he told them. It wasn't precisely a lie.
It had taken the Water Tribe seventeen days to completely wash the city clean of blood. On warm, clear days, they could still smell it. It had seeped into the bones of the city and would never be fully cleansed away. Perhaps that was for the best-- it would be harder to forget this way.
They had been warned. Zuko had reminded her of that, right afterwards, as she lay broken and desolate in his arms, staring up at a red-misted sky. He had warned them. Aang had warned them. Every one of them had stood there on that rooftop over the city and told the people of the Fire Nation capital that there was a bloodbender coming, one who was so vastly powerful even she could not hope to control herself. They had told the people that they would not survive if they had stayed. They had stayed anyway, and therefore this fate was one they had chosen for themselves.
Katara, being the person she was, refused to forgive herself nevertheless.
Zuko was not surprised. He hadn't expected her to. That was why he sat here, day in and day out, each crimson sunrise after the next, protecting her silence as best he could.
She had already been courageous enough for three lifetimes. She had only been quiet for twelve days. He thought it massively unfair that they were already asking her to be courageous again so soon... but then, he'd been there, at her side when the world ended. They hadn't, they couldn't possibly understand, it was unfair of him to expect them to, but it made him angry to watch them push and pull her like she was obligated to be what they expected her to be. He knew what that felt like and had hated it as much as he was sure she hated this.
It was true, however, that they needed her. Without her belligerent maternal presence they were falling apart at the seams. Aang was losing his eternal battle with self-doubt, Sokka was understandably half-frantic with terror that she would never return to herself, and Toph simply refused to speak to anyone unless it involved a screaming insult match. They barely spoke to each other except in terse sentences discussing what to do next.
Zuko realized suddenly that without her, these people would never have been traveling together at all. Sokka loved Aang now, yes, but he never would have without Katara holding them together until they stuck. Toph, despite the way she and Katara ceaselessly managed to push her buttons, would never have grown into the person she was now, who was capable of making friends and keeping them. Aang would have run, and run again, and again. It was only because of Katara's unwavering belief in him that he had been able thus far to stand strong and walk forward towards his frightening destiny. Without that, he was lost, pathless and weak.
He hadn't understood before just how much each of these people needed each other, how useless they were if even one member of their little army fell. Their interdependency both frightened him and made him envious-- he had never had anyone rely on him like they relied on her, never had anyone trust him to that extent. No one had ever loved him like they loved her, from the position of an equal who knew no more about her than she knew about them. Iroh had loved him, and he had loved Iroh, but he had never deluded himself that he knew anything about his uncle beyond what Iroh chose to let him see.
Yes, he envied them, even as the thought of being that vulnerable to anyone else terrified him.
Therefore, towards the end of being someone worth Katara's trust, he sat and practiced bending the silence, and waited for her. He was prepared to wait forever.
As it turned out, she only made him wait five more days, being a surpassingly kind person. "Zuko," she said at three in the morning on the twenty-third day.
He had not been sleeping, not really. He hadn't really slept for weeks. "Katara?"
"What should I have done?"
He smiled at her, glad that everyone else was asleep and wouldn't question him for doing so. Reaching out across the table, he caught her hand. It was cold and bird-thin, but undeniably still belonged to a living person. "Exactly what you did," he said.
"It was the right thing to do?" she asked, the hope in her eyes painfully bleak and bright like dawn in winter.
He shrugged. "You tell me."
"Zuko!" she cried, an echo of her old power in her sudden anger. "Answer the question!"
"I can't," he said honestly. "I don't know if it was or not. All I know is that of all the options you had back then, you chose the one that would end the war and help your friends. I have no business forgiving you first."
"First?" she echoed, confused.
"Before you do," he amended, tightening his hold on her hand.
She was quiet for a long minute. Zuko could feel it curling around both of them, introspective but lighter than it had been these past weeks.
Finally, she nodded, firmly, as though confirming something to herself. "I was wrong," she said, shocking him utterly.
He'd been so sure, so sure--
"But," she continued, cutting off his train of thought, "I won't regret it anymore. It's done, and it can't be undone, so the best I can do is help Aang and hope someday I can atone for it."
Zuko swallowed hard, stunned by how much she sounded like himself from a couple months ago, determined to right his mistakes by helping the Avatar until forgiveness could be had. If she, the person he'd admired the strength of so much, was capable of feeling that same weakness...
"I--" he stuttered, trying to say something, anything that would show her that he understood--
"Zuko," she said, cutting him off again. She was smiling, her eyes clear again.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. "Yes?" he croaked, overwhelmed.
"Thank you," she said, and brought her other hand up to cover his where it rested wrapped around hers. "For waiting."
It seemed to him the most natural thing in the world then to stand up, circle the table until he was standing in front of her, and drag her into his arms. "Thank you for coming back," he said into her hair, voice muffled and rough. "Welcome home."
XxxxxxX
A/N: And now I’m off to write some more. They had better consent to at least kiss this time or I’ll kill them both. ^____^
EDIT: Final segment is done, and can be found here:
Unbender - 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: Introspection, angst, extremely mild romance if you squint
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 1508
Notes: Sequel to Dreambender. This and Dreambender were both supposed to be a flashfic, but I completely failed at romance in favour of half-destroying the world, and am therefore now on my third attempt at an actual Zuko/Katara. Haha, me.
Same notes go for this one as the last one: expansion and reapproach to the idea in Bloodbender, not a Zutara romance fic.
Enjoy!
~Eia
Katara has lost her power as a waterbender, and tries to come to terms with her new self. Zuko protects her silence and waits.
Quietbender
The water followed her finger the way it would follow anyone else's.
Katara stared numbly into the cup, watching how over and over again the water did exactly what it was supposed to. There were tear-tracks, old and dried, crusting her cheeks, and her eyes were hollowed into her pale skull. It was clear that she hadn't slept or eaten in a very long time by the fragile texture of her bruise-yellow skin.
Every once in a while one of them would say something to try and cheer her up, pull her out of this silent dark hole she'd created for herself, but she would only smile wanly at them in a sad semblance of her old self and tell them she was fine, fine, perfectly all right. If they yelled, which they sometimes did, she looked at them as though she couldn't understand why they were angry and told them angrily to leave her alone, she was fine, dammit.
The only one who never said a word was Zuko, because he understood.
He knew the place she was drifting through right now. He remembered it from the long dark nights after Ursa had vanished, staring at the ceiling and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one wanted him, no one needed him, there was no place for one such as him in the world. And because he remembered, he knew that nothing anyone could say would ever convince her otherwise. The understanding had to come from within or not at all.
So he sat opposite her at the table and said nothing, allowing her the time to find her own way through. Most of the time he studied the scrolls and books they'd found in the Firelord's personal library, taking breaks only when his body demanded food or relief. Whenever he needed to sleep, he laid his head on the table and slept like a warrior or a scholar, unheeding of his surroundings but ready to wake at a moment's warning.
The others asked him, each in turn, why he insisted on sitting there, when there were plenty of other places to sit that may have been more comfortable and did not have Katara sitting across from it emanating bleak sorrow. That last they did not voice, but he heard it anyway, and answered it with his eyes while he answered the first with his voice. "I like this seat," he told them. It wasn't precisely a lie.
It had taken the Water Tribe seventeen days to completely wash the city clean of blood. On warm, clear days, they could still smell it. It had seeped into the bones of the city and would never be fully cleansed away. Perhaps that was for the best-- it would be harder to forget this way.
They had been warned. Zuko had reminded her of that, right afterwards, as she lay broken and desolate in his arms, staring up at a red-misted sky. He had warned them. Aang had warned them. Every one of them had stood there on that rooftop over the city and told the people of the Fire Nation capital that there was a bloodbender coming, one who was so vastly powerful even she could not hope to control herself. They had told the people that they would not survive if they had stayed. They had stayed anyway, and therefore this fate was one they had chosen for themselves.
Katara, being the person she was, refused to forgive herself nevertheless.
Zuko was not surprised. He hadn't expected her to. That was why he sat here, day in and day out, each crimson sunrise after the next, protecting her silence as best he could.
She had already been courageous enough for three lifetimes. She had only been quiet for twelve days. He thought it massively unfair that they were already asking her to be courageous again so soon... but then, he'd been there, at her side when the world ended. They hadn't, they couldn't possibly understand, it was unfair of him to expect them to, but it made him angry to watch them push and pull her like she was obligated to be what they expected her to be. He knew what that felt like and had hated it as much as he was sure she hated this.
It was true, however, that they needed her. Without her belligerent maternal presence they were falling apart at the seams. Aang was losing his eternal battle with self-doubt, Sokka was understandably half-frantic with terror that she would never return to herself, and Toph simply refused to speak to anyone unless it involved a screaming insult match. They barely spoke to each other except in terse sentences discussing what to do next.
Zuko realized suddenly that without her, these people would never have been traveling together at all. Sokka loved Aang now, yes, but he never would have without Katara holding them together until they stuck. Toph, despite the way she and Katara ceaselessly managed to push her buttons, would never have grown into the person she was now, who was capable of making friends and keeping them. Aang would have run, and run again, and again. It was only because of Katara's unwavering belief in him that he had been able thus far to stand strong and walk forward towards his frightening destiny. Without that, he was lost, pathless and weak.
He hadn't understood before just how much each of these people needed each other, how useless they were if even one member of their little army fell. Their interdependency both frightened him and made him envious-- he had never had anyone rely on him like they relied on her, never had anyone trust him to that extent. No one had ever loved him like they loved her, from the position of an equal who knew no more about her than she knew about them. Iroh had loved him, and he had loved Iroh, but he had never deluded himself that he knew anything about his uncle beyond what Iroh chose to let him see.
Yes, he envied them, even as the thought of being that vulnerable to anyone else terrified him.
Therefore, towards the end of being someone worth Katara's trust, he sat and practiced bending the silence, and waited for her. He was prepared to wait forever.
As it turned out, she only made him wait five more days, being a surpassingly kind person. "Zuko," she said at three in the morning on the twenty-third day.
He had not been sleeping, not really. He hadn't really slept for weeks. "Katara?"
"What should I have done?"
He smiled at her, glad that everyone else was asleep and wouldn't question him for doing so. Reaching out across the table, he caught her hand. It was cold and bird-thin, but undeniably still belonged to a living person. "Exactly what you did," he said.
"It was the right thing to do?" she asked, the hope in her eyes painfully bleak and bright like dawn in winter.
He shrugged. "You tell me."
"Zuko!" she cried, an echo of her old power in her sudden anger. "Answer the question!"
"I can't," he said honestly. "I don't know if it was or not. All I know is that of all the options you had back then, you chose the one that would end the war and help your friends. I have no business forgiving you first."
"First?" she echoed, confused.
"Before you do," he amended, tightening his hold on her hand.
She was quiet for a long minute. Zuko could feel it curling around both of them, introspective but lighter than it had been these past weeks.
Finally, she nodded, firmly, as though confirming something to herself. "I was wrong," she said, shocking him utterly.
He'd been so sure, so sure--
"But," she continued, cutting off his train of thought, "I won't regret it anymore. It's done, and it can't be undone, so the best I can do is help Aang and hope someday I can atone for it."
Zuko swallowed hard, stunned by how much she sounded like himself from a couple months ago, determined to right his mistakes by helping the Avatar until forgiveness could be had. If she, the person he'd admired the strength of so much, was capable of feeling that same weakness...
"I--" he stuttered, trying to say something, anything that would show her that he understood--
"Zuko," she said, cutting him off again. She was smiling, her eyes clear again.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. "Yes?" he croaked, overwhelmed.
"Thank you," she said, and brought her other hand up to cover his where it rested wrapped around hers. "For waiting."
It seemed to him the most natural thing in the world then to stand up, circle the table until he was standing in front of her, and drag her into his arms. "Thank you for coming back," he said into her hair, voice muffled and rough. "Welcome home."
XxxxxxX
A/N: And now I’m off to write some more. They had better consent to at least kiss this time or I’ll kill them both. ^____^
EDIT: Final segment is done, and can be found here:
Unbender - 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.