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kdinthecity · 6 years

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Confessions of a Teenage Sugar Queen: Sweet Little Lies

This piece can be found on Ao3 and ff.net or by following the links below.

Chpt. 1 | Chpt. 2 | Chpt. 3 | Chpt. 4 | Chpt. 5

Chpt. 6 | Chpt. 7 | Chpt. 8 | Chpt. 9 | Chpt. 10

Zuko pushes himself to a standing position too abruptly, and I scramble to get my feet underneath me. He'll bolt again, I bet, but instead a silence just hangs in the salty sea air between us long enough to sting. I see the realization in his eyes, the drop of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw, and I want to take it back—take it all back, if I could.

"So Ikem, he's—"

I nod.

"And Kiyi—"

I shrug. She could be Ikem's daughter and not Ursa's, but there is an undeniable resemblance between the feisty five-year-old and her would-be half-brother. "Zuko, I—"

A full range of emotions passes across his face in a matter of seconds, and whatever I intended to say next simply dies in my throat. His rage flares, but is quickly replaced by piercing hurt and confusion that penetrates to my core. Then he settles on that distant expression—decidedly the worst one of all. He's shut me out again.

We didn't revisit the whole boyfriend-girlfriend conversation, but Zuko is probably right. I am crazy for hoping we could make it could work. There is too much uncertainty, too many—

"Too many lies," Zuko says and resolutely shakes his head. "I'm done with all the lies."

I had been thinking secrets, not lies. The truth is there, just hidden. We are supposedly on this journey to find answers together, but there hasn't been enough time to talk about everything while we're running for our lives. Yet, I've apparently betrayed his trust by keeping secrets from him—that is, if he ever really trusted me at all. I was the one making confessions back at the airport but had only assumed our feelings were mutual.

I should tell him what I know before we head back to Noren—err, Ikem's house, but now he is intently focused on his phone, punching at the screen with unnecessary force. I pull my phone out to check the bus schedule and notice that I've missed two messages from Dad. He says he's at Ikem's, which I already knew, and is worried, so no surprises there, except…

What the—? Dad knows about Ikem?

I feign ignorance and text back, "I'm sorry, but who is Ikem? I don't recall visiting anyone by that name."

He responds, "I meant Noren," which strikes me as odd, so I half expect him to call my bluff and add, "But you knew what I meant." I stare at the words on the screen, and suddenly I want to scream. Zuko is right. IT'S ALL LIES!

"Come on. The White Lotus has service here," Zuko says briskly. "I've called us a car."

His fingers interlace with mine, and he leads me up the rocky beach pathway at a rather quickened pace. I've heard of The White Lotus before, an app-based rideshare service, but I've never used it. Headquartered in the Bay Area, it's widely popular there, although I had no idea its footprint expanded as far as Alaska.

Of course, the driver would happen to be Aleut, too, and recognizes our shared heritage. His chattiness has robbed me of any chance to talk to Zuko, to at least warn him that we're likely walking into a situation where his uncle, my dad, and Ikem are all on the same side. I mean, I think we're on their side, too, just purposely left in the dark on a lot of things. Whether it is lies or light, there is much to be revealed.

The scene upon our arrival should not have shocked me, honestly, but whatever had been keeping me together through all of this, completely shatters. Zuko barges in the door, heads straight for Ikem, and shoves the man against the wall. I crash into Dad's arms despite my earlier misgivings. Kiyi screams.

"Where is my mother?" Zuko demands.

"Nephew, now let's just—

With one hand fisted in Ikem's shirt, Zuko rounds on his uncle and points a shaky finger at him. "Or how about you tell me where she is?"

Iroh's hands shoot up in a placating gesture. "Ursa is safe, and that's what matters! But not everyone is safe, and that's why we're here. Please, we need to tell you something important."

At this, the façade breaks. Iroh catches Zuko with a fierce embrace while Ikem skirts several paces away. A sigh, a shudder, a faint I'm sorry. It's a moment that shouldn't have an audience, yet here we all are. Even though I'm enveloped in strong, safe arms, I wish I could disappear—escape. I bury my face into Dad's chest where my tears have already dampened the fabric of his shirt. The lingering scent of moonpeaches only makes me cry harder.

Sokka emerges from a corner of the room and gently addresses a trembling Kiyi. "Hey firecracker, weren't you gonna show me some cool masks in your room or something?" The young girl sniffles, then accepts the hand he's offering, and they disappear down the hallway together.

Can I go with them? I silently plead. This day started so innocently for me with Kiyi—and the smell of moonpeaches… talking about masks on the wall—and The Blue Spirit Crashing.

Nothing could have prepared me for the series of events that would happen today. And nothing could have prepared me for what Iroh is about to say. A simultaneous, collective movement is made toward the couches and chairs, because news like this is better taken while sitting down.

"There's been an incident." The old man clears his throat or chokes on his words, it's hard to tell which. "At the Marine Science Center. It caught fire last night, and—"

My dad takes the cue and continues, "Most of the animals are safe. Yue was able to set them free into the bay before the place was engulfed in flames. But because she went back to rescue them, she didn't make it out in time herself. It's uhh, all over the news. Some guy named Hahn has been interviewed, and they're looking for you two. There will be a full-scale investigation because they suspect arson as the cause."

I can barely form thoughts much less words. I somehow manage to hear Zuko speaking past the pounding in my ears.

"Are we suspects?" he asks.

Iroh shakes his head.

"But my father is behind this."

"Zuko, don't—"

"Come on, Uncle, you and I both know what he's capable of." Zuko catches my eye for the briefest of moments. "I think we all know, so please. There's no use sugar-coating anything."

I fight the urge to become a self-declared Sugar Queen—just a normal, blissfully unaware almost-sixteen-year-old. In my steadfast quest for answers, I hadn't fully weighed the impact of the truth, past or present. I sure as hell didn't think about who else might suffer the consequences.

Zuko voices my very next thought, "This is all my fault."

"It's not," my dad counters. "You can spend years consumed by self blame, but it won't bring any more or less honor to the deceased's name. Seek justice, yes, but not at the expense of safety."

These words hit home for me, but Zuko doesn't skip a beat. "But it should have been me. Ozai probably went to the Marine Center looking for me. I turned him into the police! My own father. I gave them Mom's files and The Painted Lady's, too. It won't matter, though, because all of that Death Valley stuff will be covered up by now. He goes around terrorizing everyone—killing people even, but because he neatly covers his tracks, it will never end. He's too powerful, too connected. As the primary benefactor for the Marine Science Center foundation, he'll probably give some bullshit speech about how he is so sad for the loss. Meanwhile, there is no proof of his madness. No one knows what Future Fire Industries does behind closed doors!"

"Mai does!" I blurt out suddenly. How could I fucking forget something so important? Zuko raises a brow in confusion, and with all eyes trained on my every movement, I rummage through my purse to procure the USB drive she had given me the other night at Mushi's. "Mai put some files on here about the weapons Future Fire is making," I explain breathlessly. "She gave it to me before we left, and everything has happened so fast since then. I'm sorry I didn't—"

Iroh reaches out to take the device from me. "I will personally make sure this gets to the authorities. You kids have dealt with so much already."

"Make a copy of it first, Uncle," Zuko suggests. "You never know with my father."

"Oh believe me, I know," Iroh says solemnly. "I know far too well."

I shudder at the thought of what Iroh must know and wonder how he's managed to evade his brother's wrath or influence. Then I remember that Zuko said his uncle worked for Future Fire at one point. A flicker of mistrust stirs inside me. What if—

"We've been tracked."

I'm beginning to hate when Zuko finishes my inner thoughts aloud. Because most of what I'm thinking is pretty dark these days.

Zuko, looking very pale, points to his phone and clarifies, "I don't know why Mai is offering to help again, but she warns that Ozai somehow knows we're here." He runs a hand through his hair and mumbles to himself, "He'll kill her next for tipping us off."

My dad asks the hard question. "Iroh, can you think of any way he could have known that you sent the kids here? Or that you were coming here yourself?"

The older man furrows his brow. "I was quite intentional with the travel itineraries, and the paper trail should have been minimal. But like my nephew said, Ozai is very well-connected, so the possibility exists—"

"It was me." Zuko now appears paler than pale. Impossibly pale. Is he going to pass out? "Fuck, I wasn't thinking. I was so careful to use cash everywhere just like you said, Uncle. But the White Lotus… I used the app to get us a car. I haven't used it since… and it's still—"

Iroh nods in understanding, his expression grim. "I see."

My dad looks back and forth between them, bewildered, and I sense the same seedling of mistrust taking root in him that I had felt earlier. It would help if he actually had a clue what we're talking about. The explanation quickly follows, not that it sets anyone at ease.

"My brother's credit card is still tied to a taxi service, of sorts, that Zuko can access from his phone," Iroh says with a sigh. "He used it often last summer when he was interning at Future Fire and did not have a car of his own, yet. When Zuko came to live with me just recently, I checked for any tracking devices Ozai might have placed on the phone, and we deleted a few suspicious apps. But we must have overlooked The White Lotus."

"So where are we going?"

No one had noticed that Sokka had rejoined the group. No one has an answer for him, either.

"So… the megalomaniac is chasing us… we gotta go somewhere he can't find us," Sokka continues. "The Bahamas would be nice and warm. Hmm, maybe… Spain? Or how about… Japan?"

"Don't get too excited there, Sokka," Dad intones. "We can't really afford—"

"Pick anywhere, and I'll send you there," Iroh says, then persists when my dad starts to shake his head. "Hakoda, it's the least I can do… after all the grief my family has caused yours."

Iroh then turns to Ikem, another person who's been forgotten in the mix. "I trust you have a safe place for you and Kiyi?"

"My parents live in a remote village in the Yukon Territory. We'll go visit them until this whole thing blows over."

Ikem's response surprises me. Why wouldn't they go see Ursa? Is it too risky?

Well, I'll take that risk. No more lies. No more sugar-coating.

"Thanks for the offer, Uncle Iroh," I say. "We'd like to go to Ba Sing Se. And we want Zuko to come with us."

#zutara week #zk week #zutara #hs au #zutara week 2017 #zk week 2017

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raisindeatre · 7 years

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the dream we dream together here (Zutara Week 2017: Soulmates)

*shows up late with Starbucks* Anyway, this is my very late submission for ZK Week 2017, under the Day 6 ‘Soulmates’ prompt (namely: the idea that you see your soulmate as a ghost after s/he dies, which is… admittedly just a very flimsy excuse for me to write my two favourite things: snow and angst, but oh well)

A hundred years from now, dear heart, We shall not mind the pain; The throbbing crimson tide of life Will not have left a stain. The song we sing together, dear, The dream we dream together here, Will mean no more than means a tear Amid a summer rain.

- John Bennett, In a Rose Garden

A List of Things You Learn Growing Up in the South Pole

1. Things disappear.

Amongst the glaciers, transience is a concept everyone learns from childhood. Nothing ever stays. Snowflakes melt the moment you tip your face up to them, there and gone in a blink as they catch on your eyelashes. You wake up one morning to find half the village’s meat supplies gone, dragged by wolves into the tundra sometime in the night. Every year when the worst of the blizzards hit, there are always people who go missing, caught in the storm and unable to find their way home, their cries indistinguishable from the screaming of the winds outside the heavy folds of the tents.

Things disappear. Mothers are alive one moment, and gone the next. Fathers kiss you goodbye and vanish over the waves, bringing all the men of the village with him as they sail into war.

You dumb-dumb, Sokka says to her once when she is six years old, when he jumps triumphantly out at her from where she is hiding, giggling, behind the alcove where the Southern Water Tribe stores their firewood. That’s gotta be the easiest game of Hide-and-Seek anyone’s ever played. You gotta learn to hide your footprints, Katara. I followed them all the way here.

She sticks her tongue out at him. I hate snow! If we didn’t live in the South Pole, you wouldn’t have been able to find me.

Maybe, Sokka says. But I like it. I like seeing where people go, or where they come from. I like that people know where I am. He jumps away from her, sending a spray of snow in the air, his boots leaving a perfect imprint in the white. It’s like a stamp, see? I am here!

Yeah, I guess snow isn’t so bad, Katara says. If we didn’t live here, I couldn’t do this.

Sokka turns just in time for the snowball to hit him in the face.

(2. How to run from your brother.)

Later, they walk home, Sokka keeping a firm grip on his sister’s hand as dusk begins to fall, as the Southern Water Tribe begin to light their lanterns. Katara looks over her shoulder behind them to see the trail of their footprints already vanishing under the falling snow.

I am here, Sokka had declared, a wild and defiant clarion call. I am here! But Katara looks at her footprints which are already beginning to fill in, and thinks instead, I am disappearing.

3. Things reappear.

But the sea never takes without giving back. Amongst the glaciers, return is also a concept everyone learns from childhood. Driftwood you hurl into the ocean one summer washes up on the black shores the next. Star-flowers survive the ice and the hail to push their weary heads out into the weak sunlight every spring.

The Avatar, a hundred years later, turns up in an iceberg.

And three months after his funeral, Katara wakes up one night to see Zuko sitting on her bed.

A Question: who does she love?

An Answer: the boy in the snow, of course.

Another Question: which one? There were two she first met amongst the ice.

“Zuko?” she says, almost gasps, as she bolts upright in her bed, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Taking shape amongst the familiar shadows of her tent, he looks for a moment like the South Pole personified: his pale skin the shade of every snowfall, his hair as black as any of the rocks rising out of the sea. Only his eyes ruin the illusion: they are the colour of amber as they blink at her, and oh, the joy that rises up in her chest at the sight of them is, for a second, indistinguishable from pain.

Old habits die hard. For so long the first emotion that had roared to life inside her at the sight of him was anger, and Katara almost embraces the fury that sparks to life in her veins.

“You idiot!” Katara snaps at him, and Zuko’s eyes widen. “What were you thinking, taking that lightning bolt for me – I’m so mad at you – “

He smiles at her, faintly. “When are you ever not?” Zuko says, and she almost closes her eyes at the sound of his voice.

Almost. “You idiot,” Katara says, and reaches out to – to hit him, or maybe to hug him, with all the strength that she has –

But her hand passes right through him like he is made of nothing more than mist, and when Zuko looks at her, Katara can see the disappointment in his gaze, but no surprise.

Okay, Katara thinks. Okay.

Anybody else might think they were going crazy. But Katara has held Aang in her arms in the midst of the Avatar state, his eyes glowing white, a god’s incredible, terrible power trapped in the slight figure of a boy. She has seen a princess disappear before her very eyes, vanishing into the sky as Sokka’s face clouded over with loss. She has lost her brother to the Spirit World once, when the angry spirit Hei Bai had whisked him away in its rage. She has visited an impossible library, hurtled down its corridors as she’d fled from the owl guardian’s fury.

Throughout the war, Katara has learned one thing: nothing is impossible when it comes to the spirits, and the way they blur the borders between the two worlds. She might have watched Zuko’s casket being lowered into the ground three months earlier, but he is here now, right in front of her, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it? Aang is the Avatar. Surely there can be some way for him to go into the Spirit World and bring Zuko back. Nothing is impossible, not anymore.

Everything will be okay when Aang sees him. Everything is going to be okay.

“Come with me!” Katara says, and Zuko might be the prince here, but he follows her orders as if doing so comes as naturally as breathing. Katara bursts out of her tent and runs across to Sokka’s, ripping the canvas folds open. Aang and Sokka look up at her blearily from their respective sleeping rolls.

“Katara? What is it?” Aang says in alarm, as he struggles to sit up.

“Zuko –“ Katara says. “He –“

Grief flickers over both their features. Sokka closes his eyes for a beat.

“I know,” her brother says. “Katara, I know, I have nightmares too –“

“What’s wrong with the two of you?” Katara says, gesturing to where Zuko is standing beside her, looking so solid against the ice. “Can’t you see –“ She breaks off, anger and desperation rising up in her throat. “Can’t you see –“

“See what?” Aang says, so gently –

And when Katara turns to look at Zuko – invisible Zuko, impossible Zuko – she sees that behind them in the snow, there is only one set of footprints: hers, which are already disappearing.

A Question: What is the difference between a spirit and a ghost?

An Answer: What does it really matter, in the end?

“Calm down, Katara,” she says to herself when she is back in her tent, having turned on her heel and ignoring Aang and Sokka’s confused flurry of questions. “It’s okay, breathe –“

“Maybe you need some calming tea,” Zuko suggests, from where he is standing by the foot of her bed.

“I don’t need any calming tea!” she snaps at him, and the expression on his face when she says that: amused, and also a little tender – makes something in her throat ache. She runs a hand down her face, takes a deep breath.

“If you were a spirit, Aang would’ve been able to see you,” she says. “I know he would. So what does that mean?”

Zuko doesn’t say anything; only watches her silently.

“I’m not crazy,” she says, and by now they are standing so close that if this had been any other world, one where Zuko had survived his sister, she would be able to feel the warmth of his body. But it is in this world they are in, and the only heart beating in this vicinity is her own. “Zuko, I’m not crazy.”

“I know,” he says softly, all smart remarks forgotten.

“You’re dead.”

A strange expression flickers across his face, a little sad. “I know that too.”

“Then what are you doing here? Why am I the only one who can see you?”

He has no answer for that, and so all he can do is look at her helplessly. Outside, the wind howls across the frozen tundra, and Katara could swear that it is the sound of pure loss.

“You have always been the only one to really see me,” he says to her later, his voice so soft from the corner of her tent he is sitting in. “Why should this be any different?”

Katara closes her eyes from where she is curled up on her bed, huddled under the blankets. “Please don’t say anything more.”

“Katara?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Zuko,” she tells him tiredly.

“Why not?”

The answer to this is because if they were real, my mother would have found me by now. The answer to this is because if they were real, why is it only me you’re haunting?

But Katara just shakes her head. She takes in a deep, shuddering breath. “Please,” she says. “Please just leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” he whispers back to her. “I don’t know how to.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, and Zuko studies her for a moment, his eyes dark honey in the flickering lamplight. “If you don’t believe in ghosts, what do you think I am?” he says at last.

For a long, long moment, Katara doesn’t say anything. She closes her eyes and turns her back on him, as if by doing so she can banish him, this vision of Zuko that has crept out of whatever dark crevice in her heart she’s pushed him into, whatever grave he’s been buried in. But when after heartbeats upon heartbeats later she turns and opens her eyes again, he’s still there, looking so real against the dark canvas.

“A dream, maybe,” she says hoarsely. “A hallucination.”

Zuko says, slow and distant, as if almost to himself, “An echo.”

Katara knows all about echoes; knows the hundreds and thousands of ways the South Pole can capture and crystallise and reflect moments in the past. When they were younger, she and Sokka had explored the vast white plains, stumbling into caves, peering over the snow-edged chasms of ravines; their young voices shouting into the depths, Hello! and hearing a thousand ghostly replies back: hello, hello, hello.

On bad nights when the blizzards howl around her tent, she thinks she can hear in its icy scream her own cries from almost a decade ago, trapped forever in the snow: Dad! I think Mum’s in trouble! On bad nights, Katara thinks that living in the South Pole means never escaping the past, an endless loop of your own voice reflected back at you in the cold winds that roll off the waves.

An echo.

“The last thing I ever did,” Zuko says reflectively, “the last thing I ever did in my life was reach for you.” And when he says that Katara flashes back to the palace, fires raging all around her – and Zuko, jerking and shuddering from Azula’s lightning bolt but still struggling to push himself up, still stretching out his hand towards her. “Maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe I’m still reaching.”

“Then stop,” she says. “Stop reaching.”

Zuko smiles at her then, sadly. “Even if I did, Katara,” he says. “I’d still be here.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he says. “You’re reaching too.”

When Katara goes to sleep that night, she dreams of falling down an endless ravine, of desperately trying to hold on to fingers that always just slip through her own.

4. Always ask your gran-gran.

Amongst the glaciers, there is one truth everybody holds on to: when in doubt, ask your gran-gran. When all the men have gone off to fight, it is the women of the village who become its heart and backbone. It is the women who grimly haul broken bones back into line, who pick up spears to hunt, who tilt their heads back and read the signs in the sky. It is the women you go to when you have questions that need answering. Ask your gran-gran. (Amongst the glaciers, everybody has at least one).

Old habits die hard. It is Kanna that Katara has gone to time and time again over the years: on the fifth anniversary of her mother’s death, all the the cold nights when Hakoda’s ship did not appear on the horizon, the time she got her first moon-blood. It is Kanna that she goes to now.

“Gran-Gran,” Katara says the next morning as she sits down cross-legged in her tent. Zuko hovers unobtrusively by the entrance, as if anybody other than Katara can really see him. “What do you know about ghosts?”

The look her grandmother gives her is so, so sad, but not at all surprised, as if she knew all along that Katara was going to come and ask her this question one day. She looks out at the endless horizon, the flat gray sea just barely visible through the flaps of the tent. She looks, for a moment, older than Katara can ever remember her being. “Katara, my love,” she says. “Are you alright?”

“Please,” Katara says. “Just tell me.”

Kanna doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then:

“It is a strange place, the South Pole,” she says. “So far removed from everything else, all alone. Some people say it sits at the very edge of the world.” She passes a tired hand over her face. “They are wrong, of course. The South Pole sits at the very edge of the worlds; Katara, both of them. Here, there are places where everything is thinner: the air, the ice, and above all the veil that separates our world from the next.”

“And so?”

“And so.” Kanna sighs. “There have always been people here gifted with the sight. Spiritwalkers, we call them. Ghostseers. They see the people who have not yet crossed over, or the people who have crossed back. Which category they belong to doesn’t really matter, after all. The dead are always the dead.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Zuko flinches, and maybe it is because of that Katara’s next words are sharper than she’d intended. “But I’m not one of them,” she says. “I’m not. A ghostseer, or a spiritwalker, or whatever you want to call them. I don’t see the dead, or a horde of ghosts or anything –“

“Just one specific ghost,” Kanna says, and Katara closes her eyes, shame washing over her. It’s not my mother, she wants to say, the guilt rising up in her throat. It’s not your daughter, Gran-Gran, and I don’t know why – if I had to see a ghost, it should’ve been her, I don’t know why it’s him instead – and the worst part is that if I had to choose between the two of them, I don’t know who I would’ve rather been haunted by – they both died for me, and I couldn’t save either of them –

“What does it mean?” she says instead. “If it’s just one ghost, Gran-Gran, please, what does it mean? How can I get rid of –“ Her voice catches, and Zuko looks up at her.

“I do not know, Katara,” Kanna says. “But I imagine…” She trails off, and then sighs. “I think perhaps there might be unfinished business between the two of you. Resolve it. Only then can the two of you move on.”

“Right,” Katara says, addressing Zuko as they face each other in her tent. “Unfinished business. Okay, yeah. I think I know what it is.”

“That makes one of us,” Zuko says.

“Shut up,” Katara says automatically, and the way he arches his good eyebrow back at her is so familiar, muscle memory, an old dance she longs to slip into. She doesn’t. Instead she clears her throat and says, in what she imagines to be a magnanimous tone, “Zuko, I want you to know that I forgive you.”

This should be the moment where he disappears into nothingness, putting this whole hallucination to an end. Instead the affront that flickers over his face is anything but ghostly.

“You what?” he says.

“I forgive you,” Katara repeats, and Zuko looks at her incredulously.

“You forgive me?” he echoes. “For what? Right, yeah, I’m sorry I saved your life, Katara, I should’ve known that was something I had to apologise for –“

“Fine!” Katara shouts back at him, and some distant part of her recognizes that she should keep her voice down, but this is a storm that has been months and months in the breaking. “Then I apologize! I’m sorry!” she says, and her voice breaks a little, her chest catching as Zuko stares at her.

I’m sorry, Katara thinks desperately, I’m sorry that I didn’t do anything when Azula looked at me. I’m sorry I didn’t run, or fight back. I’m sorry that all I did was stand there and watch you jump. I’m sorry I volunteered to go with you. I’m sorry that all I ever was to you was a death sentence, I’m sorry I led you to your grave, I’m sorry –

She doesn’t say any of this out loud, but Zuko – Zuko is a ghost now, or an echo, or a memory – she doesn’t know, does she, but whatever he is, it renders speech between them unnecessary.

“Katara,” he says, reaching out to cup her cheek gently, but his hand passes right through her, and it’s ridiculous that this is the thing that sets her off, but it is. Touch has always been the one honest thing between them – even when they could trust nothing else about each other, their bodies have always spoken the truth. A palm on a scar, a hand reaching out to pull the other on a bison, arms flung around a neck. Depriving them of this is the cruellest thing Katara can imagine, and she lets the tears slide down her cheeks soundlessly as he tries, again and again, to wipe them away.

“Katara,” he says at last. “Katara, don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry. I don’t regret it; I will never regret what I did for you. That isn’t why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here?” Katara asks him again, and again his face registers nothing but uncertainty. And how can I make you leave? is the unspoken question between them, because just looking at Zuko hurts in a way Katara can’t quite articulate, can’t even begin to understand.

Has it only been months since the Agni Kai? It feels like a lifetime.

“I don’t know,” Zuko says helplessly. “I don’t know.”

Stop reaching, Katara tells herself. Stop reaching, but when she opens her eyes Zuko is still there.

“Maybe it’s not me you have unfinished business with,” Katara says to him later. “Maybe it’s Uncle Iroh. Or Sokka, or Aang. Have you tried going to them?”

“Of course I have,” he replies. “You greatly overestimate how interesting it is being in your head.”

“Hey, now.”

He tilts a tired smile at her. “Of course I’ve tried,” he says, quieter. “But I can’t. Sokka and Aang can’t even see me, and every time I try to go to my uncle I end up back here. I can’t leave. Wherever I try to go, whichever path I take, it leads me right back to you.”

“Not to me,” Katara says, trying to ignore the way her heart has jumped at his words, because she isn’t allowed to feel like this anymore, she isn’t allowed to look at a dead boy and think, maybe – “The South Pole. You heard what my gran-gran said, this place is like some kind of magnet for spirits or something. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Maybe,” Zuko says. “Or maybe not.”

He sighs, and Katara watches the place where his breath should cloud out into the icy air. (There is nothing there, of course.) “Even when I was still…” he says, trailing off, and Katara knows what he means to say is alive. “Even back then,” Zuko starts over, “every path led me to you. Again and again and again. It’s just the same thing, I guess. It shouldn’t come as a surprise now.”

“You were tracking Aang,” Katara says. “Every path led you to him.”

“It wasn’t Aang,” Zuko says quietly, “that I met in the caverns beneath Ba Sing Se.”

And Katara closes her eyes, as if doing so will make what Zuko says next – what she knows Zuko will say next – less painful. It doesn’t, of course.

“It’s you, Katara,” he says. “It’s always been you.”

“Do you ever think about what would happen if things had been different?” Katara asks.

“Sometimes,” Zuko replies.

“What do you mean?” Aang says.

“I mean…” Katara says. “I mean, what if Zuko hadn’t died that day at the Agni Kai?”

Sokka shakes his head when she says that, grief and anger warring in his blue eyes. “Katara, don’t.”

“I’m just saying,” she says, but he interrupts.

“What’s the point in wondering?” he says sharply. “He did. It’s over. There’s no point thinking anything else.”

Aang looks at Sokka reproachfully, the way he does anyone he thinks is hurting Katara. “Maybe it would do us good to talk about it,” he says, but Sokka brushes them off, getting to his feet.

“Then be my guest,” he says. “I’m out of here.”

Zuko closes his eyes as Sokka walks right through him, and for a moment Katara wants to take the words back, call after her brother. Sokka is right, after all. Zuko is dead. Nothing any of them can do will change that.

But instead she turns back to Aang and says, “So what do you think would’ve happened? Do you think Zuko would’ve been here with us? The four of us at the South Pole – that sounds great, right?”

“Right,” Aang says uncertainly, as if he’s unsure now if this was a good idea or not, but Zuko looks right at Katara and says, “No.”

Katara has to fight to keep her eyes on Aang’s face, but Zuko pushes on.

“If I’d lived,” he says, the sound of his voice low and inexorable like the crashing of the sea in the distance, “I would never have come to the South Pole, Katara. I would’ve stayed in the Fire Nation and assumed the throne. I would’ve become Fire Lord. I would’ve married someone there.”

“Stop it,” Katara hisses, and Aang looks at her in confusion, but Zuko continues talking.

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe this is why I’m here. Because this is the only way I can be here. Any other way – if I’d lived – I wouldn’t have been able to be here with you –“

“But you’re not,” Katara says, the word almost a wail, and the despair that opens up in her stomach like a chasm feels black and never-ending. “You’re not here, you’re not even real –“ She buries her face in her hands, shaking, and Aang steps forward to hug her –

But Sokka is there first; Sokka, who turned back for her like he always has, like he always will, and it is in her brother’s arms that Katara collapses for the first time since this all of this happened. Aang rubs comforting circles on her back as Zuko stands by and watches them, grief written all over his face, and Katara thinks to herself – to him – I miss you, she thinks, but you’re just in my head. You aren’t anything, anymore.

He doesn’t deny any of it. “Don’t cry,” is all he says, helplessly, as if that has ever stopped anyone from weeping.

Stop reaching. Stop reaching.

But Katara doesn’t know how to.

The nightmares get worse, and she begins to lose her appetite. Slowly Katara begins to withdraw from the rest of the village, because it’s easier to be alone – not that she’s ever really alone, not anymore – than it is to have to face the fact that nobody else can see Zuko, that no one else can hear his dry voice. It’s less confusing than having to navigate the awkward situations that arise with Aang or Sokka when she responds to something they haven’t said, when her eyes slide past them to where Zuko, invisible, is watching her.

It’s easier to disappear into the tundra for hours at a time, to sit with Zuko on the bluffs and watch the ocean churning below.

“Katara,” he says, almost sighs from where he is stretched out on the snow beside her, gazing up into the sky. “Katara, Katara.” He turns his head to look at her with his good eye. “It sounds like the wind, a little bit. Like it’s saying your name.”

“Oh?” she says tiredly.

“Don’t you think?” he says, as the plains around them sing with the sound of her name, calling her home. Katara, Katara. And Katara knows that for the rest of her life, it will be Zuko’s voice she will hear every time the arctic wind whispers across the ice. The idea is enough to make her want to curl up in the snow and sleep forever, to walk into the ocean and never stop walking, to reach out for Zuko’s hand and never let go.

“I do now,” she says, and they don’t say anything more after that.

Whatever you have to do, Kanna had told her that day in the tent, make sure you do it soon, Katara. The living weren’t meant to mix with the dead. They have to fade, or we run the risk of fading with them.

And there are times when Katara thinks her grandmother is right. Sleepless nights, pushing around the noodles in her bowl, uneaten. Days when she is viscerally surprised at the fact that she casts a shadow in the arctic sun, so used to the absence of Zuko’s own. A moment when she realizes that the first thing she does upon waking is look for Zuko, her eyes searching the tent for a dead boy’s face.

Stop reaching, Katara.

But she doesn’t. How can she? She stretched out a hand towards him in the green light beneath Ba Sing Se, and she’s never really withdrawn it since. Across oceans he has followed her, over mountains and canyons and a million forests, South Pole to Earth Kingdom to Fire Nation, palace to palace.

And now, somehow, she has to let go.

“You should sleep,” Zuko tells her one night, as the katabatic winds howl around them. Even with what feels like a hundred furs piled on top of her, Katara can still feel the cold.

“I can’t.”

“Have you been having nightmares again?” he asks, and Katara has to close her eyes at that. Again. He doesn’t know, does he, that they’ve never really stopped, not since he died. Instead she says, “Yes. Do you want to hear a bedtime story?”

Zuko smiles faintly. “Go on then.”

“Once upon a time,” Katara says, “a brother and a sister found the Avatar – who’d been missing for a hundred years – in an iceberg.”

“I think I’ve heard this one before,” Zuko says.

“It’s a pretty famous story. The brother and the sister who saved the world. The Wolf of the South and the most beautiful girl in the South Pole.”

“Huh,” Zuko says. “Not a very hard job. I heard she was the only girl in the South Pole.”

“And so,” Katara says, ignoring him, “they took the Avatar and his sky bison back to their village, and for a while things were good. But then who should come sailing in but a Fire Nation warship.”

“Of course.”

“Heading the ship was the prince of the Fire Nation and his uncle. And this prince, this villain, this evil jerkbender –“

“I get it.”

“He comes marching in and says, Give me the Avatar! I need to capture him to restore my honour!”

Zuko huffs. “I don’t sound like that.”

And when Katara looks at him, all the teasing in her falls away, because the look of affront on his face is so real, so familiar, and yes – yes, Katara thinks, she can see how the way she feels about him can transcend memories, can transcend even death. The way she feels about him – how could some part of Zuko not remain here, not be pulled back from wherever the dead go?

“Well,” Zuko says. “This doesn’t sound like it’s shaping up to be a good story.”

Katara, Katara, the gales sing outside, as the storm continues to rage. If she was to leave her tent now, she knows all she would see is endless white. If she was to leave her tent now, she would never be able to find her way back.

Katara pulls the blankets up to her chin, curls away from him. “Yeah, well. You should hear the ending.”

This is what she dreams about, again and always:

Falling into a chasm, the wind screaming past her as she tumbles into the black, all the fear and panic crushed into her throat so she cannot even cry out. And a hand, pale in the darkness as it stretches out to her, as she tries again and again, to grab on to it.

Stop reaching, Katara.

But if I stop, she thinks, I’ll die.

But there are times when she wakes up and sees Zuko watching her, half a smile on his face – here and not here, her impossible boy – and thinks that this might just be eating her alive anyway.

When the snowball hits her in the face, the first thing Katara registers is surprise. The next is fury.

“What in the Spirits’ name do you think you’re doing?” she yells at Sokka. Her brother is standing a few feet away, his shoulders squared, his jaw set – but despite all the determination in his stance, his blue eyes when he looks at her are filled with anxiety; worry that Katara knows she has helped to place in the lines of his face.

“We are going,” he says slowly, “to have a snowball fight.”

“What?” Katara says, as Aang nods solemnly at her from where he is standing beside Sokka.

“We are going to have a snowball fight,” Sokka repeats.

Katara turns away, to where Zuko is watching them. “I don’t want to –“

“You’re not eating!” Sokka cries out. “You’re not eating, and you’re not sleeping, and you’re not listening to anything anyone says anymore, like you’re not even here, and half the time you really aren’t here, you’re off in the tundra somewhere and –“

Katara swallows. “Stop it.”

“I miss him too,” Sokka says, taking a step towards her. “I miss him every day. We all do. You don’t have a monopoly on this grief, Katara. And we are going to have a snowball fight, right here, right now, because if Zuko was here this is what he would want.”

“No, it isn’t!” Zuko and Katara say in unison.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sokka says. “Prince High-and-Mighty probably wouldn’t be caught dead in the South Pole.”

“Too cold,” Aang jumps in.

“And if he ever did come, we’d probably have to assign someone to keep an eye on him at all times,” Sokka says. “We’d lose him otherwise. After all, the guy could practically camouflage in snow, right?”

“How can you say that?” Aang mimics, just as Zuko says those exact words, and Katara – she doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

“Maybe this is why I’m here,” Zuko huffs. “To stop you from being alone with these two morons. I feel like that’s a good enough reason to come back from the dead.”

Sokka and Aang are still watching her, and their eyes are suspiciously bright, but there is hope in their expressions too, a kind of plea. Come back to us, Katara. Katara, Katara.

“If he was here,” Sokka says softly, “he would want us to live.”

Is that true? Katara thinks, and all the mock-affront on Zuko’s face vanishes, to be replaced with disbelief, a terrible surprise.

“Do you really believe otherwise?” he says, his voice so hoarse. “I jumped in front of a lightning bolt for you, Katara, and you really have to ask me that?”

Katara swallows, nods. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

Relief sweeps across Sokka’s face then, in a way that reminds Katara of the waves breaking against the rocks: bleak and breathless. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Katara says, and throws a snowball right in his face.

(2. How to run from your brother.)

The battle is furious and deadly, snowballs flying through the air as they run and duck and jump, as triumphant shouts rise up to the sky, as they slip and tumble and skid on the ice. And with every victorious war cry, every footprint stamped on the snow, Katara remembers what Sokka had said, so long ago. I am here. The war has taken everything else from her, but it has not taken this. I am here!

“You cheater!” Katara yells at Sokka, when she sees that he has already prepared a whole pile of snowballs, ready to launch missile after missile at her.

“Non-bender privileges!” he shouts back, and Aang explodes from the snowbank beside them to shower them in white, roaring like a polar bear, and Katara cannot remember the last time she has laughed so hard.

There is a moment, though, when she glances around and sees Zuko looking at them, and the terrible sadness on his face stops her in her tracks. He looks down at himself as a snowball goes right through his stomach, and then another through his leg, and looks back up at them with such an expression of longing that it almost brings Katara to her knees.

Sooner or later, they are going to have to fix this, to stop reaching, to let go, because Katara sees now that she is not the only one being eaten alive. Sokka barrels right through him, shouting a battle cry as he hurls snowballs in quick succession at Aang, and Katara sees Zuko close his eyes.

They are here, but Zuko is disappearing.

Are we ghosts to you? she thinks. Are you haunting me? Am I haunting you?

“Yes,” Zuko says, his voice so quiet amongst the din. “Yes.”

The days after Zuko’s funeral and before she’d boarded the ship that would take her back home are a dark blur, but what she does remember is spending hours and hours in the Fire Nation Library, alone there in the dark and quiet.

There had been a poem in one of the Fire Nation scrolls she’d read again and again, peering over the parchment in the flickering light of the candles. Even now, four months and a thousand miles later, Katara can remember every word.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, she thinks, we shall not mind the pain.

“I remember that poem,” Zuko says. “It used to be one of my favourites.” He stretches out from where he is lying on the hides next to her sleeping roll, looking up at the roof of her tent, his smoky voice dropping to a whisper. “The throbbing crimson tide of life, Will not have left a stain.”

The song we sing together, dear, Katara thinks dully, the dream we dream together here –

“Will mean no more than means a tear,” Zuko finishes, “Amid a summer rain.” He props himself up on one elbow to look at her, his beautiful eyes so clear in the lamplight.

A hundred years from now, Katara thinks. A hundred years.

“Aang,” she says to him. “You’re pretty old, aren’t you?”

“Wow. Good morning to you too, Katara.”

She doesn’t laugh, but she does tilt a tired smile towards him. “Sorry. I was just wondering. I mean, technically you’re a hundred and twelve years old, right?”

Aang studies her for a moment, his eyes as gray as the sea churning behind them as they walk on the shores together. “Yeah. I guess.”

“So how…” Katara says, and looks away from him. Zuko is sitting on a nearby rock, watching them, but she forces herself to ignore him and look instead at the never-ending sky before her, the forever horizon. She takes a deep breath. “How do you do it? How do you keep on going?”

Aang doesn’t say anything, and Katara squeezes her eyes shut so she does not have to witness the pain she is about to inflict. “Everyone you’ve ever lost. Gyatso. The Air Nomads. How do you not let it crush you?”

When she looks at him again, she almost wants to take everything back, to erase the terrible grief that’s spread across his young (old) face. Aang looks at the ocean for a long while, his throat working.

“You want to know,” he says at last, “how I’ve moved on? I haven’t.” He runs a tired hand down his face. “You can’t move on from the past, Katara. All you can do is move ahead.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, to be honest,” Aang admits softly. “I just… You have to have faith in the future before you. You have to believe that what lies ahead is greater than the loss behind.”

Katara doesn’t look at him when she says, “What if I can’t?”

Aang rests a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You miss him. And you will miss him every day for the rest of your life. But it will not be forever, Katara. I believe we will see him again, one day.”

Seeing him isn’t the problem, Katara thinks, and Zuko smiles mirthlessly at her.

“It will get better,” Aang says.

“How do you know, though?” Katara says at last, letting all her rage and despair into her voice. “How do you know it will get better? Maybe you’re better-equipped for this life, Aang, because you’re the Avatar, did you ever think of that? You’re going to live forever, in a way, so maybe loss doesn’t mean anything to you, but I only have one life –“

And I have already endured enough loss for a million of them, is what she doesn’t say. How can one life withstand so much grief?

“Don’t tell me it’s going to get better if you don’t believe it,” she says finally. “Don’t lie to me. I am sick and tired of people lying to me! I am sick of you lying to me.”

“Katara!” Aang protests, but Katara is looking directly at Zuko, who is rising to his feet. Somewhere she is dimly aware of Aang stumbling over his words, saying, “I’m sorry I lied to you when we first met Bato – I didn’t want you and Sokka to leave me, I’m sorry –“ But she keeps her eyes steadily on Zuko, who looks back at her with indignation.

“When?” he demands. “When did I ever lie to you?”

I can take Azula this time, she thinks emotionlessly. And this way no one else has to get hurt.

“Oh,” Zuko says. “Oh.”

And one night the nightmare changes: one night, she dreams she is back at the Agni Kai, blue and white and yellow flares lighting up the blackness as Zuko and his sister do battle, but this time when Azula turns to look at her it is Yon Rha’s face she is wearing, and suddenly they are in the middle of a blizzard, the arctic gales screaming around her with the voice of her mother, Katara, Katara, and Zuko jumps –

And Katara wakes up screaming too, her hands scrabbling over the blankets, her chest so tight it feels like she might die, then and there, her lungs gasping for breath. She is sweat-soaked and shaking, and Zuko is kneeling before her, trying desperately to hold on to her shoulders, to touch her face, saying, “Katara, it’s alright – it was only a dream, I’m here –“

“No,” she says, her tongue still thick from sleep. “No, you’re not –“

“It’s okay,” Zuko says, “everything’s okay –“

“It’s not okay!” she shouts, and Zuko flinches back, moves to say something, but Katara doesn’t let him. “It’s not okay, and you’re not here, you aren’t ever going to be here again, and I could’ve lived with that, I think I could have, if only you would let me.”

“Katara,” he whispers, brokenly, but Katara shuts her eyes as if by doing so she can shut him out forever.

“And I thought I could do this,” Katara says, “I thought I could have it both ways, but I can’t, I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go, and it feels like it’s killing me, Zuko, it’s –“

And suddenly her grandmother is there, enveloping her in her arms as Katara rests her head on her shoulder and cries and cries the way she hasn’t let herself in years, every breath she takes shuddering throughout her body. Her grandmother holds her, and doesn’t say anything, but Katara knows, as Kanna’s hands move comfortingly down her spine, that she can feel how prominent her ribs have become.

“Katara,” she says at last. “Katara, my love, please, you need to let go.”

“I’m trying, Gran-Gran,” Katara rasps. “I’m trying so hard –“

“Are you, though?” Kanna says, and tilts her head to catch Katara’s gaze, her eyes blue and so, so tired. “Are you really? Are you really ready to let go of him?”

“I don’t know why he’s here,” Katara says. “I don’t know what unfinished business we have –“

“That wasn’t my question,” her grandmother says. “Are you ready, here and now, to let go of him?”

Yes. No. Katara raises her head, lets her gaze flicker around, but for once Zuko is not there. For once, she is alone, and she has to fight not to cry again at how relieved she is at that, even if it feels a little like a betrayal. If Zuko stays any longer, she thinks she might grow to hate him, and Katara - oh, Katara has survived many things, but she does not think she can survive that.

“I think,” she says at last. “I might have to be.”

5. How to let go.

They are standing on the edge of the cliffs, she and Zuko, looking down into the waves. She can feel the current of the ocean from here, a waterbender’s call, the song of the sea. The sea, which never takes without giving back.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, she thinks.

“The grief will all be over,” Zuko finishes quietly from behind her. He looks so tired today, pale and almost flickering in the light of the setting sun, as if it is only here and now that he has become, finally, a ghost to her. You are here, she thinks. But I am disappearing.

Whatever unfinished business you and I have, she thinks, we have to let it go, we have to let go –

And just like that, she – she understands, feels the knowledge shift in her like a glacier splitting open, like a piece of driftwood washing up on the shore, like a snowfall covering the last of the footprints heading home.

“I know,” Katara says. “I know why you’re here. And I know how we can end this.”

There is silence for a long time, and then:

“Good,” Zuko says. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Tomorrow,” Katara says. “Just… just stay with me. One more night.”

“Always,” Zuko says, and they stand there together until the dusk begins to fall.

And the next day –

The next day, Katara leads Zuko out into the tundra. For a long, long moment she looks at him; his sharp chin, his dark hair, his eyes so soft as they look back at her. Ahead of them the vast snowy plains stretch on for forever, an endless white expanse reaching out to the horizon, the brilliance of the arctic sun almost blinding as she squints into it.

“I thought,” Katara says finally, “I thought that you were here because we had unfinished business. But that’s not true, is it?” She reaches out and rests her hand a heartbeat away from Zuko’s scarred cheek; and he closes his eyes and leans into her palm. She pretends she can feel the warm skin against her own, and lets out a breath.

“We don’t have unfinished business, Zuko,” she says. “You and I, we never started.”

Zuko blinks at her, long and slow.

“And –“ Katara says, and her voice catches, just for a moment. “Maybe that’s better, you know? If we’d started, but we never got the chance to end things, I don’t think I could’ve let go of you, but we never started, the two of us, and maybe that’ll make it easier. Maybe now you can go. Maybe now we can stop reaching.”

And Zuko smiles at her, just a little, so sadly it makes her throat ache, but there is something else in it too. Affection. Understanding. Grace.

“Never started,” he says, his voice so familiar – and already, it seems a little hollow, echoing, like already it is fading. “Okay. I think I can live with that.”

“That’s a terrible joke, ghost boy,” she says. “I’m the one who has to live with it.”

“Can you?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about my strength,” Katara says, an old joke between them, and even though she is breathless, even though she has to fight every impulse in her body to gasp out the next words, she does. “I have plenty.”

“Okay,” Zuko says. “Okay.” He turns to look at the horizon, unceasing and so empty. If they walk into it, Katara thinks, they might just keep walking forever, until they reach the edge of this world and cross over into the next one. He looks younger, suddenly; Katara can just barely make out the loosening in his brow as his features begin to flicker and fade.

“Thank you, Katara,” he says, and Katara has to stop for a moment, reset her heart, breathe out the pain in her lungs. It is too cold to cry, and for that alone, she thinks she might love the South Pole a little, this beautiful and frozen landscape, this icy world that has broken and built her.

“I think,” she says. “I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

Zuko tilts a smile at her over his shoulder, but he is already walking into the sun, and Katara watches him go. He doesn’t leave any footprints, but Katara pretends he does, and she stays until those imaginary footprints – I am here; I am disappearing – have been filled in by the snow that has already begun to fall.

And it is then, and only then, that she turns back towards her village – Katara, Katara – and lets the winds sing her home.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, The grief will all be o'er; The sea of care will surge in vain Upon a careless shore. These glasses we turn down today Here at the parting of the way— We shall be wineless then as they, And shall not mind it more.

#i write #zutara fic #zutara week #zutara week 2017 #zutara #otp: you rise with the moon i rise with the sun #forever and always the show of my heart #atla

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