#zutaramonth2024

[pink-concorde]

☾𖤓 Happy Zutara Month! 𖤓☽

Day Fifteen: Scarf

So we were all excited about the scarf, huh? How about a call back to it later?

[zukosdualdao]

oh, i want to know the way it feels

zutara month, day 20: accidental kissing, @zutaramonth

summary: upon zuko fearing they've been made while he and katara are at the market, he and katara make a brief excursion to the alleyway. when katara reaches for her bending, it's totally an accident when she kisses him. she's pretty sure. and it's totally an accident when both of them kiss each other back. it certainly doesn't mean anything.

other notes: we are back at it at the ember island marketplace lads! #idiotsinlove

They’re in the marketplace, walking side by side—Katara bravely does not blush when she feels their hands brush in the place between their sides—when she senses Zuko stiffen. From her periphery, she can see his mouth has turned slightly to a frown.

“What… ?” she asks, and suddenly, his hand is around her wrist. It doesn’t hurt, but the motion is so quick that it startles her as Zuko guides her to a nearby side alley, just to the right of a clothing stall. From the side of his mouth, Zuko murmurs, “Someone was staring at me. They might know who I am, or recognize us.”

On instinct at hearing this, Katara presses her back to the wall of stone. She’s less able to ignore the way the gulp in her throat as their middles press together, Zuko leaning over her as though to guard her in case someone comes after them.

It’s sweet, but… “I can take care of myself, you know,” she teases him lightly. “Master waterbender here, remember?”

When Zuko turns to meet her gaze, his smile is small but sort of breathtaking. Katara wishes she could see it more. She wishes they had more to smile about. 

“It’s not likely I could forget that,” he says in a whisper. Like this, with his head turned just slightly down to look at her, they are a mere breath away from one another. 

Someone passes by their hiding spot then, and Katara startles—maybe the people Zuko had seen were following them—and jumps to her tiptoes, ready to pull out her waterskin and fight their way out if they need to. It’s only a second later that she realizes that she met her lips to Zuko’s when she did this. Both of them are stunned to stillness for a moment, but then she thinks he’s kissing back, or she is. It’s all a little unclear. 

His lips are soft and warm and gentle. A little shy, she thinks, even as he kisses back. It’s only after another moment that he seems to figure out what to do with his hands, placing one against her waist and, from the sounds of it, bracing the other against the wall behind her. Her own left hand still holds their basket of fruit, but the other reaches to cup his face.

When he pulls back, gasping a little exhale as he does, Katara tries not to be too pleased with herself that she sees his pupils are wide and dark. She drops her hand.

“I—sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it was me,” Katara says before frowning at the implication. She looks to the side and sees whoever was walking by has since passed. In correction that she’s unsure is fair or even true, she adds, “I thought they were approaching.”

“Right.” Zuko clears his throat now and breaks apart from where he was connected to her, allowing a few inches of distance between them. Katara misses his warmth. “I think they’re gone now.”

Katara hums in agreement. They make quickly to leave the market, Zuko seeming nervous to be spotted again as they do. As they journey back, she finds that their hands are grazing by each other again.

Katara flexes her fingers. They journey forward.

[sokkastyles]

Zutara Month Day 1: Reluctant Allies

Or, may I offer you a little CoD AU in these trying times?

There was an incredible flash of light. Zuko could barely see for the brightness, but there was something about the light. He had seen it before, at the south pole. He’d known immediately what it was then, and he knew now, here in the luminous green-dark of the catacombs beneath Ba Sing Se.

He’d chosen wrong. Zuko had made so many bad choices in his life, and today he’d chosen wrong again. He knew it when he’d seen the eyes of the waterbender staring back at him from the dark mouth of the cave. Yet that hadn’t stopped him from choosing wrong again. His sister’s victorious smile as he’d sent a blast of fire towards the Avatar. She hadn’t known what he would do, and something about that niggled at the back of his mind. Azula had doubted, and then smiled, and he saw Katara’s face fall at his sister’s triumph, and his ruin.

“I thought you had changed,” she had said, and her voice was like ice daggers sliding into the holes in his heart. But nothing had changed. The holes were still there, had been there for a long, long time, slowly bleeding out with each wrong choice he made.

But then there was the flash of light, and for a moment he felt the familiar hope, but it was different this time. This time, he had only a split second in which to decide, and suddenly he found himself in front of his sister, his index and middle fingers extended out towards her, the way uncle had taught him to do, and then there was another bright flash of light, and a jolt of energy that nearly knocked him off his feet. Then the energy was all around him, and he was holding it within, and he had to let it out, and then he let it go, somewhere past his sister and towards the roof of the cave, where it shot forward in a blast of lightning that sent a cluster of stalactites crashing down onto the cave floor.

There was still so much brilliant light. Not the rapidly dissipating light of Azula’s lightning, but the light coming from the Avatar, floating in midair, chunks of rock orbiting around him, gusts of wind hurtling towards them from the tunnels, the water from the pools rising to join the cacophony. The Avatar's eyes were glazed white-blue.

Azula had been knocked off her feet by the force of Zuko’s redirection, and was quickly rising, staring at the rapidly building center of the chaos. Katara was staring, too, and the Earth King’s Dai Li agents stood poised, uncertain. Zuko looked at Uncle, and then he saw that the rumbling of the cave walls was causing his crystal bonds to crack. Uncle looked worried, though. Too worried.

The wind was rising. Katara was screaming Aang’s name, and Zuko was running towards Uncle, but then the ground rose up to meet him and everything went dark.

He remembered the feel of Katara’s fingers brushing his cheek, the tip of her thumb accidentally grazing lightly across his upper lip. It felt like a lover’s touch, like a dream, and then he thought he must be dreaming while he was remembering.

Maybe you could be free of it.

Wrong. So wrong. He would never be free, even if he lived for a hundred more years of war. But maybe that was alright, as long as she was touching his face.

He opened his eyes. She was brushing dirt off his face, picking rocks from his hair. So much for a lover's caress.

They were still underground, but it was darker than it was before. Gone was the brilliant flash of light, and even the light from the luminous green crystals seemed dimmer. Zuko realized they were in a smaller section of the tunnels, although he wasn't sure how he got here. Dimly, he could feel the sun high above them, underneath miles and miles of rock. It was like being deep underwater, and he had to stifle down the faint feeling of drowning. Katara was looking down on him with dirt-smeared cheeks and worried eyes.

Instinctively, he reached up a hand to brush the dirt away, like she had done for him, and her flinch made him draw back as if he had been burned. Then she stood and turned away from him.

“We have to find a way out,” she said, to the darkness and not to him.

“Azula…” he muttered, having again the sense that this had all happened before.

“No, it wasn't her, she was thrown by the explosion the same as we were.” Katara shook her head, her back still to him, her hands feeling along the rock wall

“The…” Zuko sat up and took a step towards her. “What happened…the Avatar…” a horrible realization was forming in his mind.

“It wasn't his fault,” she said, and when she turned to him her blue eyes were so, so wide. “He can't control it. I thought maybe after he went to see the guru…” Her eyes were far away, but then suddenly their focus shifted to Zuko. “You did something. You stopped Azula's lightning! That was incredible!”

Zuko thought he had hated her judgment, but now having her look at him with something like admiration was even worse, especially considering the current circumstance. “And it did a whole lot of good, didn't it!” He spat the words at her. “The Avatar just blew up the entire catacombs because I saved him from being electrified!”

Everything he did was always wrong.

[creativecreatures9980]

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New to Tumblr! Been getting requests to join so here I am! Starting my new page off with some art. #zutaramonth2024 prompt 9: "You're Married!?" Follow my Instagram for more art and faster uploads! I'm also working on a Zutara fanfiction!

[zukosdualdao]

a soft place to land

zutara month, day 16: injury recovery, @zutaramonth

summary: in the aftermath of an assasination attempt on katara, she finds herself safe in his bed, zuko looking after her from the bedside.

warnings: assasination/murder attempt, complicated thoughts about punitive judgment and executions, etc, excessive use of adverbs, lmao.

other notes: title taken from "a dream is a soft place to land" from waitress.

Katara’s eyes flicker open. She immediately sets to prop herself up on her elbows, struggling not to groan with fatigue and discomfort as she does. 

The sheets underneath her are gold and silken, the room around her faintly familiar.

She’s in the Fire Nation. She’d been here as an Ambassador for the latest treaty revision. A servant… a man dressed as a servant, anyway, he’d served her tea in the private chambers kept for her here, and her throat had begun to swell, panic building as it did, chest burning as the door slammed ominously shut behind him. She remembers lifting her hand shakily, trying to guide her blood to keep the toxins from working through it, but she couldn’t tear it out of her without extracting her own blood, it was no use, she couldn’t think—her head met the floor, brow slick with sweat, she was going to die…

As she looks around in the darkness, it occurs to her exactly where she is now.

“Zuko?”

He’d come looking for her just in time.

The last thing she remembers before her awakening is the taste of something herbal and sickly sweet, being overcome with sick and the aftermath of bile, Zuko’s gentle hand cradling the back of her head, and then succumbing to the darkness.

“I’m right here,” he says quietly in the dark, and when she turns just slightly to her right, she can see shadows cast over his house face. He’s sitting in a chair by her bedside, folding in on himself and wringing his hands until he casts his worried gaze up to meet her eyes. “It’s okay. You’re really okay.” He sounds almost disbelieving. “How do you feel?”

It’s quite the inverse of the last time she was here when he was the one prone on the bed, marked by lightning, and she waited up all night for him to wake again, too wired to sleep, needing to keep a weathered eye on his wound.

“Not amazing,” she manages a bout of shaky laughter. “But I’m alive, so that’s something. How did you know what to… ?”

Zuko was alone when he arrived and fed to her what must have been the antidote, though she thinks she remembers the patter of other footsteps arriving after the fact, possibly a sea of medics.

At this, Zuko leans back in his chair a little, rubbing an embarrassed hand at the back of his head. “Oh—my mother learned about plants and things from her mother.” Zuko’s mouth tilts into a frown. “I think she was an herbalist? I’m not sure.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know what they’d used but—we keep something stocked here. It’s not a cure-all, but…” Shrugging again, he sighs. “Thank Agni it worked.”

“Forget Agni,” she murmurs. “Thank you.” Something that might have been panic if not for her weariness swells in her chest suddenly. “The man… ?”

Even through the darkness and the haze she still finds her mind in, she catches the way his pupils dilate, the way his posture stiffens. She’s seen him angry like this before. Protective-angry. She imagines his fingers are probably curling hard against the edge of his chair as he grips it, but looking down to check seems difficult and unnecessary. “Hired assassin.”

“Oh.” It’s sort of strange to think she’s an important enough figure that someone would try to assassinate her, that her death wouldn’t be a simple murder but rather to make some political statement or another. “That’s new. For me, anyway.”

Zuko’s had a few attempts on his own life in the past year, as she recalls. Most of them she read about through letters after the fact—she was here for the last one, though, and thank the spirits for that. Stab wounds are simple enough to heal with her bending—if they don’t bleed out first, which can happen more quickly than one might expect. Needless to say, Katara’s glad she was around.

Zuko says the next like an oath. “The assassin is being dealt with.” With a confusing mix of shame, fear, and relief, she wonders how. Zuko’s not the type to execute, certainly not without trial, which is how things would have been done in the Fire Nation in days past. Mostly, she’s relieved for that, but still, she finds herself wondering whether she’ll regret being such a ready proponent of the right to trial and imprisonment over execution in the weeks to come. There is a swallow of fear in her throat, but it might wisp away once this isn’t all so fresh. 

But perhaps that’s something to think on later.

 “So are his benefactors,” Zuko spits out the word like it’s full of poison itself. “I’ve written to your father and Sokka and to Aang,” he adds. Katara’s stomach clenches unpleasantly in a way she suspects only has a little to do with the day’s events. Zuko doesn’t know she and Aang haven’t spoken in months, that they’re no longer together. “Spirits, Katara, I’m so sorry.”

Katara frowns as she leans back against the pillows. “What for? You didn’t poison me.”

“It was done on my watch, in my palace, because some group of fucking noblemen I’ve been trying to appease are—I keep trying and failing to make things better, and instead…”

“Zuko,” she glares at him in the hopes that it will quiet his self-recrimination. It does, quite efficiently, and she smiles. “Not everything gets to be your fault. Will you just accept my thanks for saving me instead?”

At this, she yawns, and she watches as his expression softens in the dim light of his bedroom.

Zuko rolls his eyes then, but there’s a faint smile playing on his lips, too, and she’s glad to feel the mood lighten again, though she can feel weariness starting to take her once more.

“That’s what you and I do,” he allows quietly after a moment, his (pretty, she thinks hazily, so pretty) amber eyes shining with the truth of what he’s saying. “We save each other. Get some more rest, Katara.” 

Still a little awake, but with her eyes closed, she asks drowsily, not even sure she manages the words, “Will you be here when I wake up?”

Zuko’s answer is quiet but certain. “Of course I will.”

Katara hums as she falls back into the allure of sleep, safe with the knowledge Zuko is watching over her. 

[zukosdualdao]

through all of the shadowy corners of me

zutara month, day three: (re)meet ugly/meet cute. @zutaramonth

summary: as katara's plans on the anniversay of her mother's murder fall apart, she ducks into a teashop to wait out the storm and finds herself familiar with the rude tea server she comes face to face with and promptly bursts into tears. because of-fucking-course.

warnings: grief, nightmares, references to kya's murder (and ursa's disappearance, though that is less explicit), and references to ableism wrt facial differences. also, just, some lightly gratuitous swearing, on behalf of katara's no good very bad day. she deserves it.

other notes: title taken from landon piggs’ falling in love at a coffeeteashop. because i am basic in that way.

Katara’s pretty sure the universe is conspiring against her.

First, it was the fucking felt-tip markers being all dried up—damn it Sokka—she needed for the posters for the protest she was supposed to head.

(She tries not to think about how really, first, it was the dream she woke up from, that she wakes up from often, but especially on this day, the dream with fearful eyes and the ominous drip of blood and the feeling of too late too late too late. The dream that is also a memory.)

Someone had to make the posters—because seriously, why was the school shutting down the campus food bank when a third of the student population was food-insecure?— so she missed her first class of the day to get new ones from the closest craft store, over half an hour way with traffic. There was supposed to be a quiz, too, and the professor is notoriously stubborn about absences and make-ups. 

And then there was this huge storm, so they couldn’t even have the protest today like they’d planned.

Now, as Katara ducks out of the rain and into the tiny little hole-in-the-wall ambient tea shop—The Jasmine Dragon, the sign had said—which is all warm lighting and soft ringing laughter from the bare few patrons inside, she figures she can at least get a cup of something hot to drink. It’s been a truly horrible day, and she can’t wait to get back home, sleep for ten hours straight, and wipe it from the record of her memory, but right now, this is her one saving grace.

So, when she gets to the second place in line, very patiently waiting as the server at the front snipes at the man in front of her, part of her wants to reel up to confront him. Sure, she knows customer service can be a day-in, day-out nightmare—she didn’t spend her first two semesters waiting tables because it was fun—but really, he could at least try to be a little nicer. The man wasn’t doing anything wrong, as far as she could see.

When she gets to the front, Katara opens her mouth to say—something, she doesn’t know what—and is caught off-guard to find that she recognizes him faintly. With his eyes the color of amber, swoopy, dark hair, and a shiny, painful-looking burn scar set against the left side of his face, on her right—yes, he was a boy who was in Sokka’s class back in high school. And he was a total jerk, barely speaking a word to anyone except to get into arguments, whether with teachers or other kids. She didn’t know him all that well herself, but she’d never liked him from the stories Sokka told or for the way he seemed to bristle at everyone and everything as she watched from a morbidly curious distance.

Zuko. Yes, she remembers him.

“Can I help you?” he asks, his voice almost a snarl when she spends a beat too long taking in his features, though he’s not looking at her, instead glancing down at his scratchpad. “I’m supposed to tell all of the customers we’re out of the oolong,” he adds in a rough voice, without looking up.

Katara wants to rage, wants to scream, why does he think he gets to treat people like that, god, at least have the decency to look me in the eye and treat me like a person when you’re being a dick—but instead, she bursts into tears. 

Very loud, messy tears. It’s been a long day.

And, well. He certainly looks up then. 

“Um,” Zuko says in lieu of an actual reaction, his right eye wide. His expression has softened considerably, his mouth shaped in surprise, his browline furrowed. “We have jasmine?” he tries.

Well, she thinks as he stands there stiffly, the perfect image of a deer in headlights, before reaching over the counter to push the napkin dispenser toward her, this is humiliating.

At least it’s not terribly busy in here. There’s no one standing beside her, and she only feels one or two worried glances from the tables, the shop mostly empty.

“Sorry,” Katara says through her tears. “God, I’m sorry. I just—I’m having awful day,” she says, motioning to her face as a way of explanation before yanking a napkin out from the dispenser to dry her face.

Zuko’s lip curls in what she thinks might be sympathy. 

“Me, too,” he admits on a sigh. “Sorry. What can I get for you?”

“Um,” she says, shaking her head and smiling through still teary eyes. God. “A cup of jasmine tea would actually be nice.”

“Sure.” 

She pays quickly and tries to ignore his eyes as they follow her over to the tiny round table she chooses in the corner. One cup, she thinks. She’ll drink one cup of tea and be out of here quicker than even the lightning flaring outside, before anyone can say anything about it, and then head back to her apartment and think through every turn in life that got her there, sobbing in line at a tea shop as a mean boy she knew from high school tried not to call her on it.

But he has other plans, because when he brings her order to her, he doesn’t just leave like he’s supposed to, standing there for several awkward moments that feel as though they’re spanning lifetimes.

Yeah. The universe is definitely conspiring against her.

“So… you’re… good now?”

Katara stares at him blankly for a moment, feeling her jaw grow a little slack.

“Are you… checking on me?”

A beat. “I’m just very committed to customer service,” Zuko deadpans, and Katara can’t help but laugh.

“Right,” she says. “Yeah. I’m… good. Thank you.” He nods—just once, a rigid jerk of his head—and starts to turn on his heel to leave.

But for some reason, she suddenly doesn’t want that. He’s being… almost kind of sweet, and it’s so incongruous with the memory she has of him that it kindles a new kind of curiosity.  “We went to school together, you know,” she says quickly, before he can fully turn around. He pauses in his tracks. “You probably don’t remember, but—”

“I remember you,” Zuko says before she can even finish. She frowns, intrigued. “You always wore your hair up in a braid and those loops. And once, even though we barely knew each other,” he adds with the faint traces of a smile, “you told off that kid when he was… uh…” The smile fades.

Katara remembers suddenly. It was an overcast day, not unlike the way this one had started, and Zuko had been sitting alone in the courtyard, not bothering anyone (for once) as Katara made her way to lunch when she saw some other kid go up to him to start needling him, saying horrible things about his scar. Very loudly.

Katara hadn’t liked that, so she’d marched right over and told the kid so. Also very loudly.

She’s pretty sure that’s the only time she and Zuko even tangentially interacted, and even then, they hadn’t spoken any actual words to each other. Everything else she knew about him came from stories and distant observation.

“When he was being a dick,” she finishes for him.

“Yeah,” Zuko says. Peering through his eyelashes, he adds more quietly, “I’ve always remembered that.”

“Really?”

A shrug of his shoulders. “You didn’t have to do that, but you did anyway.”

“I don’t like cruel people.” He nods, hands in his pockets, eyes suddenly downcast and looking almost a little ashamed. It makes her sort of sad. “Do you have time to sit?” Katara asks suddenly.

He looks surprised as he glances back at up her. “What?”

“I mean, I know you’re working, so don’t worry about it if not,” she adds in a hurry, tripping over he words. “I just thought maybe…”

“My shift’s actually over,” he answers, and suddenly, there’s a soft, sort-of-shy smile playing on his lips. “I—I could sit.”

He pulls the chair out and sits while Katara sips at her tea. It really is quite good.

“This is almost making up for the rest of my day,” she laughs, and his face scrunches up, maybe almost amused.

But then, the expression morphs. “Why was your day so bad, Katara?”

She’s surprised to find he ever knew her name, let alone remembers it now. He really is full of surprises. 

She could tell him the simple version, the actual events without the why she was taking it so hard, without divulging what it was really about… but, well…

He seems sincere enough in asking, at any rate.

“I just… I lost my mother when I was really young,” she begins to explain, feeling sort of choked-up and tight in her chest again, but no tears threaten to fall right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, and she looks up to meet his gaze, swimming with undeniable sympathy. “That’s something we have in common.”

She looks at him for a long moment, surprised. This is something they share, then. Something they can understand about each other. “I’m sorry, too. It’s awful. And… today is the anniversary. I usually just try to keep busy, but…”

“But everything went wrong?”

Katara hums.

“That’s the fucking worst,” he says bluntly, and Katara laughs then. He has very little tact, it seems, but also, yeah. It is. And it’s nice for someone to be able to… just say it. To feel it with her.

“It is the fucking worst,” she agrees. “But… I really am doing better now.”

“I’m glad,” he says, but he frowns, staring down at his hands, which are splayed on the table. “I really shouldn’t keep you from your day."

“I mean… the rest of my plans for the day have sort of fallen apart, and I should probably wait out the rain anyway, so I might, uh,” she says, feeling suddenly shy and hesitant. “I might stick around for a while. Get one more of these,” she nods down to her cup, warm and solid in her hands. “You know.” She takes another sip.

His smile glints, but it’s soft, too, definitely as shy as she feels. “I could do with a cup.”

Katara’s own smile grows wider.

The kindly older man who runs the shop—Zuko's uncle, Katara learns quickly—brings them out another round of jasmine, two cups this time, and Zuko slowly raises his in a cheers motions motion, a little awkward and a lot funny.

“To awful days?” he says with a raise of his brow.

“And to perfect storms,” she adds in agreement, laughter bubbling in her chest.

They clink their teacups together.

[zukosdualdao]

i'm a worst case kid / in a plague pit town

zutara month, day 1: reluctant allies

summary: ever-slight canon-divergence in which zuko accepts katara's offer to heal iroh after feeling his too-weak, dying pulse, as his injury is bad enough zuko is unsure he will survive otherwise. not much else changes. it was never going to.

warnings: canon-typical depictions of injury, violence, and trauma responses.

other notes: title is a lyric taken from tommy lefroy's "worst case kid". starting pov is zuko's, ending pov is katara's. two pieces of dialogue are directly taken from the show.

*

The wind is whistling in this dry, abandoned, dead town, dead like—

Zuko does not shiver, and he does not cry.

He used to be able to tell himself things like that and mean it. When did that stop being true?

Uncle’s pulse is so faint, for a moment, he thinks it isn’t there at all. Even when he feels it, he knows it might as well not be. He might not have long at all.

Zuko hears the other footsteps approaching, their silence loud and almost mournful, but he bristles on instinct. They can’t see him like this, can’t see Uncle like this—how could he be so stupid as to turn his back on the enemy? 

“Get away from us!” he shouts as he looks back. They’re all staring at his uncle’s prone form, and Zuko turns back to him, too, heaving heavy breaths. He needs to do something, but he is weak, useless, outnumbered—

“Zuko, I can help,” the waterbender insists, and Zuko wants to snarl, yell, reach for his fire, and he raises his hand to do so—and frowns. 

What does she mean?

He looks back to where Uncle lies prone.

A heartbeat shouldn’t feel like that. The Dragon of The West shouldn’t go down so easily.

Uncle shouldn’t be able to seem so small and worn and fragile.

Slowly, Zuko lowers his hand and looks to her striking blue eyes. There’s no pity or malice there, he doesn’t think, she just looks… still cautious and unyielding, but sad and sincere, too.

He’s fallen for tricks like this before, though—Azula has always loved how easily she could fool him—and it feels a little like he’s standing on the edge of a steep precipice.

It would be naive to just… trust the word of an enemy. She has no reason to want to help him. He knows this.

The rest of them still watch his uncle’s maybe-dying form, but the waterbending girl stares at Zuko unflinchingly, almost as though in challenge.

Uncle groans brokenly, the noise like that of a wounded animal. 

“How?”

*

The world is dead silent.

The prince of the Fire Nation is staring at her with tears threatening to fall from his right eye, though not the left, which is twitching lightly. She’s never before noticed how he can’t seem to open it fully due to the scar tissue set against it. She’s never had much reason to take in his features as anything more than the face of their enemy. 

His gaze is still steely and untrusting. In this light, his scar looks violently red and painful. He asks after her offer with a voice that cracks, though he doesn’t seem to pay that any heed. His hair is short but growing in, and he’s traded out his Fire Nation attire for earthly green and brown robes. He looks so different from when they last saw him. 

He looks so… young.

It’s all a little bizarre.

“Be careful, Katara,” Sokka insists from behind her, though when she glances back, his focus is on Iroh, a complicated expression playing on his features. Aang is staring at him, too, eyes wide and verging on teary. She doesn’t yet know Toph very well, but Katara can tell her body is rigid, her feet tense as her toes curl into the dusty ground beneath them. Toph doesn’t know that Iroh has been their enemy. But Iroh also helped them at the North Pole, and again just now against that princess, Zuko’s sister, she supposes, with her calculating eyes and strange blue fire.

Katara nods but says nothing further. If Zuko was going to make a move against them, he could have done it when his sister vanished.

They had turned away from their futile attack against her, and he’d already been kneeling at his uncle’s side.

She approaches slowly, circling to the side opposite him. When she kneels and reaches for her waterskin, Zuko nearly growls and takes hold of the edge of Iroh’s sleeve tightly, like he might try to drag him away.

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Katara says, flush with indignation. The dirt beneath her chafes her knees even through her clothing. “I need space to heal.”

“I’m not moving, so forget it.”

Katara tilts her head and looks into his eyes as he glares back. He now looks every bit the angry, hateful prince that had tracked them around the world for months, but she can see something else filtering through his expression, too, something like fear.

She almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. Why should he be afraid of them?

“Fine,” she allows after a moment. “Just don’t get in the way.”

He nods tightly, and at the agreement, Katara opens her waterskin. She calls the water to her and sets it against Iroh’s the right side of his chest, his robes black and charred. Closing her eyes, she calls out to his chi and focuses her energy on it. She doesn’t know if she can do it, doesn’t know if Iroh is truly too far gone…

After a few long moments, his breathing evens, and Katara sighs. Across from her, Zuko’s features soften just a fraction, but when she meets his eyes, somehow, she knows exactly what they both are thinking, united in nothing but this.

It doesn’t change anything, Katara's thoughts insist as her friends draw closer. Zuko tenses again. It can’t.

[zukosdualdao]

i can be what it is you need

zutara month, day 9, “you’re married?!”, @zutaramonth

summary: when katara needs a little back up during a trip to the market on ember island, zuko is there to oblige.

warnings: a creepy older man hits on katara, but nothing further than that happens. putting a harassment trigger on here jic.

“Here he is!” Katara says as Zuko makes his way to where she's standing at one of the seafood stalls. They’d separated at the market to budget their time more efficiently, but he has since procured the rice and spices they were low on and elected to look for her again.

Her voice is bright and cheery, but Zuko can tell from the rigidity of her shoulders that she’s tense as she pulls him in by her side. The man at the food stall is staring at her with an intense, uncomfortable gaze. “My husband,” she adds with emphasis.

What.

But Zuko can’t forget the tension in her shoulders or the urgency in her eyes when they met his, so he only bunches his fingers against the red fabric set against her waist and pulls her closer to him. He tries to keep his posture straight so that he stands at his full height.

“... Here I am,” he agrees. “Is there a problem here?”

The vendor only looks at them bemused. “You’re married?! Aren’t you both a little young?”

Yes, Zuko thinks, so why were you hitting on a girl half your age?

“We’re in love,” he instead says bluntly. Katara coughs slightly beside him.  “How much for the fish?”

They make their payment awkwardly and walk away arm in arm, Zuko holding their supplies in the one not wrapped up in hers.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, once they’re far enough away from the stall.

“Yeah,” Katara sighs, then she turns her head to flash him a smile, laughter in the lilt of her voice. “Thanks for playing along, husband.”

If his face flushes, Katara politely does not comment on it. Zuko laughs along with her as they walk the path back to the house. “Any time."

[zukosdualdao]

and if you feel like night is falling, i wanna be the one you're calling

zutara month, day 12: kiss at midnight, @zutaramonth

summary: around midnight, katara realizes zuko has disappeared from his own post-coronation celebration and goes looking for him in the palace gardens.

other notes: yes it's another secret relationship fic god bless <3 it's still very New though, and this fic might be better titled Zutara Having The Relationship Talk. as it stands, the title are lyrics from someone to you by banners.

"What are you doing out here?" Katara asks as she finishes traversing the path to the palace gardens where Zuko stands. Between his thumb and the forefinger of his right hand, he is holding a pale pink petal. After months of seeing him in his casual dayrobes, finely made and threaded with traces of gold but looser, more casual, and worn over time due to their travels and battles, it's strange to see him in his Fire Lord regalia, especially with his hair pulled back into a top knot. She's gotten used to not just looking, but placing her hands against the soft, worn fabric of his shirts as they kiss in stolen moments, and to constantly pushing that wild hair out from his eyes before glancing around to see if anyone caught the too-intimate gesture.

It's not a bad look on him—nothing would be—but it is taking some getting used to.

"It's cold, you know." It is, surprisingly—colder than she thought it could in the heart of the Fire Nation, but then, it's nearing the end of the summer, and it's nearly midnight at that. It's strange for Zuko to be out here, too. "Are you alright?"

It's almost strange to look at him as it is strange to be wearing the clothes she's in, formal dress robes in the cut and style of the Fire Nation, yet in a grey-blue shade that reminds of her father's old whetstone.

Somewhere inside, her father and her brother and her friends are still laughing and eating and celebrating in the wake of Zuko's coronation. Soon, there will be much different trials to bear—Katara's dreamt bout the end of this war for as long as she could dream, but now more than ever, she knows that just because Ozai's been defeated, that doesn't mean the aftermath will be easy.

Katara wonders if that's what's on Zuko's mind.

She wonders a lot of things. Like how this... thing between them will work, now that the war's won. If it will at all.

"I just needed space for a minute," Zuko says, turning to her, lip half-quirked. "All of the... people, and everything, it was just a lot. Everything's fine."

"I can go," Katara offers, feeling sympathetic. She's not as introverted by nature as he seems to be, doesn't get as overwhelmed, but she definitely has moments when she just needs to be by herself. She doesn't want to leave, but she will if he asks it of her.

Zuko's smile grows, and he shakes his head. "That's not—I don't need space from you," he promises.

Brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, Katara laughs a little. "I don't count?"

"No," he says bluntly, looking her straight in the eyes as he does. "I always want you around."

Katara's breath catches. He has this charming, ridiculous, earnest way of saying things that always manages to catch her off-guard. And like a dam that breaks, Katara is taking one long stride after another to reach him. When she does, he drops his hand from where it had been holding the flower and places it on the small of her waist, gasping as she kisses him with urgency, rubbing small circles against the fabric of her dress with his thumb.

Katara pulls back, remembering he's still injured when he makes a small wounded noise—there are bandages underneath those fine robes he now wears—"Are you alright? Did I hurt you?" Her hands hover by his sides as she scans his body up and down.

"I'm fine," he insists, eyes sparkling. "Come back?"

Katara huffs but relents for a moment, placing another gentle kiss against his lips. The touch warms her up from the inside out.

"We really need to figure out what we're going to tell the others," Zuko says after a moment. "About us, I mean."

It's going to be an awkward conversation for more reasons than one: Toph will gloat and make constant jokes, Sokka will be happy only after he's been ridiculously overprotective (which Suki, probably her most reliable ally in this, will point out to him), she has no idea what her father will say, and Aang...

She knows he'll be hurt. That might be better as a private conversation.

Still, despite herself, Katara lights up a little. He's thinking about this long-term. "There's an 'us' to tell them about?"

Zuko exhales something that's almost a laugh and leans forward to gentle a hand against her cheek. She blinks up at him.

"There's an 'us' for me," he promises, his eyes shining with affection, "if there's an 'us' for you."

Katara has to kiss him again, then. It would go against the laws of nature not to, she's pretty sure.

They can figure out the rest of it later.

[zukosdualdao]

the moon will sing a song for me (i loved you like the sun)

zutara month, day seven: divine intervention, @zutaramonth.

summary: when zuko takes the lightning aimed for katara, it takes a little more than her usual healing to get him back from the brink. feat. yue's words of encouragement and empowering influence on katara, medically necessary bloodbending, and a zuko who is too out of it to understand much of what is going on, but that's okay. katara has him.

content warnings: general references to violence and wounds, nothing more explicit than the show.

notes: title is from "the moon will sing" by the crane wives. yes i do too many lyric titles. no i will not stop <3. idk when sozin's comet officially ended but for fic purposes we are imagining the timing makes sense for the moon to be out after the agni kai. two pieces of dialogue were taken from the show.

Zuko groans as he's being turned over. His bones feel like liquid, his skin set alight, his heart like a crater in his chest.

Katara, he thinks, he tries to say, he doesn't know.

Katara looks at him with a worried expression, her lips turned in a frown, her eyes wide with fear and sadness as she presses a watery hand to his crumpled, prone form.

She is worried but alive. She is alive, and if she is here, then she must have defeated Azula.

Katara is alive. That is what counts. This was his destiny, then. To save her.

It wasn't a bad note to end on.

Zuko closes his eyes. There's a hammering thud in his chest. He is so tired. Normally, he'd associate the feel of it with exertion, or else desperation, and he would feel frantic. But he is so tired. He has been so tired.

"No," he thinks he hears Katara say. It sounds like she's underwater, or perhaps he is. "No, Zuko, don't you dare."

He struggles to open his eyes again because he doesn't want her to sound so angry with him and doesn't want her to be sad. It only feels like a moment has passed, or maybe it has been hours.

She is looking up. Pale, yellow light shadows her.

Katara is speaking with the moon.

The moon is also a girl.

Someone told him a story like that once.

A spirit, he thinks a little redundantly, with white tresses of hair and a glowy form and a gentle smile. The moon spirit?

Zuko jerks, a spasm of his body as he lights up again with the pain, and Katara looks back to him, alarmed.

"—but you know another way," the moon-girl insists softly to Katara, whom Zuko looks at as her mouth sets in a thin, determined line. Unless he's imagining it all, which is possible. "And I am here with you now."

After a moment's hesitation, Katara nods and sets her left, water-encased hand against his chest again and raises her other in a motion he faintly recognizes.

"This is going to hurt," she says warningly, sadly. "But it will help. I think. It has to." She shakes her head, torn.

Zuko doesn't know what's going on, but if Katara says it will help, that's all that really matters.

"I trust you," he slurs. Is that him? Does he sound like that?

Katara blinks. Zuko watches tears slip from her cheeks.

And then, it starts. She did not lie about it hurting. Despite himself, Zuko feels his body rising from the ground in pain and panic, and Katara has to keep him pressed down. His blood is boiling, his chest swelling. This must be what dying feels like. But then, he's pretty sure he was dying before. He supposes it's a process.

"—sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry—" Zuko makes out the words, faint in his ears, though Katara sobs them out.

Eventually, though, the beat of his heart evens. His blood begins to simmer down. The pain melts.

He watches as Katara pulls back, resting on her knees. The moon-girl smiles down on them before fading back into being just the moon, high in their war-torn sky again.

Nothing that just happened makes any sense, Zuko decides dazedly. But it was Katara who saved him, and that made all the sense in the world.

"Thank you, Katara," he rasps, looking up at her through heavy eyes. Looking at her made everything in the world seem alright again.

She looks down at him with a soft expression and a watery smile.

"I think I'm the one who should be thanking you."

[zukosdualdao]

these the things that blossom

zutara month, day 19: rumors, @zutaramonth

summary: in the days after the war is won, rumors abound in the fire nation royal palace.

In the days following the final battles of the war, there are rumors amongst the remaining palace staff, the Fire Sages. Did you see the way he ran to catch that lightning? one of them says. A brave gesture, some call it. What we sacrifice for love, say others. She weeped as she healed him.

Some make crude insinuations about what goes on in the young man's chambers in the nights following, as she refuses leave of his bedside.

Not worthy, the dissenting voices come, as they always will.

A member of the cooking staff in the palace kitchens goes out to pick fresh fruit from the gardens not many days later. When she gets there, she spots the vague silhouettes of not-yet-crowned Firelord on the arm of the waterbending master who fought bravely and defeated the princess. He is leaning his weight against her. She is helping him walk, but smiling as he shows her a bloom the color of the sky at dusk on the bushes. Faintly, from her place at the precipice that separates the courtyard and the gardens, she thinks she sees his thumb running gentle circles against his friend's wrist, a quiet, intimate gesture while she says something that makes him laugh, the sound of it a light ring in the wind.

Humming quietly to herself, she picks the supply of Zankan cherries and says nothing of it, turning her gaze away from them as the young pair stays in the center of the garden.

Love, she muses as she hefts the basket against her hip, must be allowed to bloom on its own course.

[zukosdualdao]

give your all to me / i'll give my all to you

zutara month, day 10: secret, @zutaramonth

summary: the night before they're set to leave to face ozai, katara can't sleep. neither can zuko. "tell me a secret," she asks of him.

warnings: references to ozai's abuse of zuko, kya's murder and katara's discovery, and ursa's disappearance.

other notes: title is a lyric from all of me by john legend. yes this is the second fic i've written about zutara the night before they're supposed to leave for the final battle. no i will not change <3

Though there are several rooms in the Ember Island house, on the first day everyone was here, they’d dragged all the blankets and pillows from them and instead set up in the open room at the front of the house, and that’s how they usually all fall asleep, near to each other—a holdover from Katara and Sokka’s days growing up in the Southern Water Tribe.

Aang is somewhere else, though. She doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he’s thinking.

She doesn’t know what will happen tomorrow.

Toph is snoring lightly, on her back and feet planted firmly on the ground, but Katara’s gotten used to that. That's not why she can't sleep. Sokka sometimes snores, too, but tonight, she can hear his easy, even breathing. Suki is silent in a way she wouldn’t be if she was awake, and Katara knows she’s pulled Sokka up to her side as she always does in sleep.

Zuko is awake. She doesn’t have to look at him or hear anything to know that. 

“Tell me a secret,” she says quietly to the ceiling and to him.

“Like what?” Zuko asks, matching her volume, not bothering to pretend he doesn’t know who she’s asking. Even in the darkness, they have come to understand each other.

“I don’t know. Anything.”

It takes a long moment, but then Zuko says, “Okay.” Another pause, and then: “I use my bending to get the temperature right for the tea. Sometimes.” He says it almost a little guiltily. 

Katara snorts and then looks over to make sure she hasn’t woken the others. Toph shifts in her sleep but otherwise only snores again. When she turns, resting her chin on her hand, Zuko is already staring back at her in a mirror image. His amber eyes are two bright points in the dark.

“That is not a secret. You’re not as stealthy as you think.”

“Oh.” She can just make out the way his frown shifts into a slight smile.

“Try again,” Katara says again. “Something I don’t know. Something real.”

He takes a moment to think it over. “The day of the eclipse,” he says finally.

“Yes?”

“My father… he said something.”

“Was this before or after he shot you with lightning?” she asks. It’s rude, abrasive, but—she can’t help it. He’d said that almost casually today while training Aang, and for a moment, that uneasy anger she’d felt when he first came to them resurfaced. Only now, it was for him as well. 

How could he ever choose to go back to that? she’d thought. To someone who would do that to him?

“Before,” Zuko says, matter-of-fact, not seeming bothered by her intrusive question. Katara blinks, brought back to the moment. “He said… he implied… I don’t know. He said she might be alive. My mother. I don’t know if it’s true, or if he just…”

Katara’s heart stutters. Knowing something like that was awful. Knowing that no matter how she wished for it, her mother would never return this earth was an awful burden to bear. Remembering what it felt like to run with everything she had, only to find… 

But not knowing? Being made to wonder? There’s a different kind of cruelty to that.

“If we win,” Katara starts, then pauses, shaking her head. “When we win—you should look for her. And I'll be there with you,” she promises.

There’s a long, silent moment in the aftermath of that. 

“You will?” Zuko asks, sounding sort of choked. Katara smiles softly at him. 

“Yeah,” she insists. “You helped me. Remember?”

The journey to find Yon Rha… it hadn’t been easy, or particularly pleasant. But it was what she needed. And Zuko helped her get there. Told her what she needed to know. Guarded her. Respected her choice to walk away without a word one way or the other, no approval and no dissent.

Zuko stares at her for a moment, discerning. “You don’t owe me anything, you know. It—it wasn’t about that.”

“I know. But I still want to help you.”

“...Okay,” he replies in a soft voice. Then:  “Now it’s your turn.”

“Hm?” Katara asks, her eyes starting to feel heavy with sleep.

“To tell me a secret.” 

Katara winks an eye open again. Mulling it over, she leans just a touch closer and reaches over to smooth his wild hair out of his eyes and touch a gentle hand against his face, against his scar. 

Zuko leans into her hand.

“I’m really glad you’re here.”

[zukosdualdao]

to leave the sun behind

summary: the gaang is about to leave the sun warrior civilization after aang spends a few weeks learning there. katara has a goodbye to make. she really doesn't want it to be goodbye.

other notes: didn't come up in the fic itself but this is an au in which ozai never gave the stipulation that zuko could be un-banished if he captured the avatar, which is why he did not do All That. instead, iroh took him to the sun warriors. also, yes there is a work study joke in here. if atla can make jokes about not qualifying for vacation time then i can do this also! (i think i am much funnier than i am.)

It's their final night staying at the ruins of the Sun Warriors—not so ruined, as it turns out. They had planned to stay for longer, and Katara still thinks maybe they should—Aang has been training every day, with the warriors and with the dragons, but there's still so much more he could learn. With the comet still months away, though, Sokka had finally pointed out that there were people searching for them, and if they didn't want this secret, ancient civilization to be destroyed for real as Azula and company pursue the Avatar, then it’s time for them to leave.

There's a banquet being held in honor of their departure tonight. They pull out a large table of stone and set with golden and orange gems, and the rice and kimodo chicken is piled high atop it.

It's genuinely a lovely evening—she smiles as she watches Sokka and Aang try their best to pretend the spices aren't getting to them, and as Toph answers questions about badgermoles from Iroh—but Katara can't help but notice someone missing and ducks out a little early, making an excuse out of an imaginary headache.

Really, though, Katara is making her way to a familiar room of stone, preparing to say a final goodbye to the Sun Warriors' apprentice.

When she and the others first arrived, it was him that found them stranded after Aang first set off a floor of spikes and looked back at the rest of their group with alarm.

The apprentice had looked at them with an unimpressed, quirked brow but didn't seem otherwise perturbed, reversing the trap and leading them to the warriors and to his uncle. From there, Aang had been judged worthy to study under the dragons and the warriors themselves.

Zuko trains with them, too, every day, diligent. All these weeks, he'd barely said three words in front of the others, but the second night, unable to sleep, Katara had stumbled across him late in the evening, practicing on his own. When he'd spotted Katara, she had reeled back at first—he seemed like too much of a loner to want company—but he'd raised his brow again, like a challenge. They'd spent the evening sparring with their respective elements, water meeting fire blow for blow, the blood in her veins soaring as they did.

After, they'd spoken until the sun was nearly risen. She'd regaled him with the stories of her travels, and he was mostly quiet, still, but when she asked questions, he answered.

Yes, he and his uncle used to be royalty, and his father was the Fire Lord as the Warriors said. No, he didn't leave home because he wanted to; he was banished. No, he no longer wanted to go back. No, he didn't want to talk about it. Yes, he'd been training with the Warriors for years.

Katara didn't ask about the scar, but her thumb ran gentle circles over it when she first kissed him.

Things have gone on like that for a handful of weeks they've been here, sparring and learning new moves from each other, talking, and kissing, sneaking away moments in the dead of night or when the others are distracted.

And now...

"I'm going to miss you," she sighs against his lips after he lets her in. His eyelashes flutter open.

"Don't say that," Zuko says wryly. "You'll give me the wrong idea." He leans back down.

"Maybe it isn't so wrong," Katara says, a little breathless as he kisses down her neck. "You could come with us, you know." She pauses. Wait. That's brilliant. Then, Aang could keep learning, and it wouldn't feel like half her soul was being torn in half as she left. (How did things happen this quickly? How does it feel like she aches wherever and whenever he's not touching her?) "You should come with us!"

Zuko freezes, looking into her eyes searchingly.

"What? Why?"

"I'm serious," Katara insists, placing her hands against his chest. Maybe he doesn't want that. "Aang's learned a lot while he's been here, training with you and the other sun warriors," she adds, feeling a little pathetic even as she hopes the argument convinces him. Zuko now looks unsure and rigid.

"I'm not a teacher," Zuko insists, his voice sounding sort of hollow. "I'm not even officially a Sun Warrior yet."

"Oh, you are in everything but name; all the elders say it," she points out. "You're just not old enough yet. You'll be of age soon, and then you will be." Katara purses her lips as he takes in her words. "Maybe this will help. You know. Hands-on experience. Like a work-study?"

Zuko laughs, some of the tension bleeding out of his gaze as he does. The sound of it is light and breathy and lovely. Katara likes that she can make him laugh. She's only ever seen his uncle accomplish it, otherwise.

"You can teach Aang," Katara promises. "You're better than you know."

His eyes don't quite meet hers, but they haven't let go of each other's embrace. "Don't say things you don't mean."

"Zuko?" She uses her fingertips to tilt his chin up, though he still avoids her gaze. "I mean it."

His eyes swim with an emotion she can't name. Katara waits for his answer, hopefully seeming more patient and less desperate than she feels.

"I'll come," Zuko says finally, the words wrapping around her like a promise. "I'll teach the Avatar. If that's... if that's what you want."

She sighs. Oh. He thinks that's all she wants. That's easily solved, then.

Katara leans her forehead against his. Time dwindles down. It is just them in here. "I want you with me," she admits as his hands tighten ever so slightly against her waist. "That's what I want."

Zuko captures her mouth in a long, gentle kiss before pressing their foreheads together again.

"I'll go wherever you are."

[zukosdualdao]

a wound to close, the whole thing open

zutara month, day 2: journal/diary.

summary: when katara searches the attic of ember island, she comes across a journal, hidden away on an old bookshelf.

warnings: implied/referenced child abuse wrt ozai's treatment of zuko. what's referenced here is emotional abuse and i would say at show-canon levels.

other notes: title is from gracie abrams' "camden". also, this fic is very much 'picture taken moments before mild disaster', because i imagine after the end, katara still finds ozai's baby picture, thinking it's zuko, and her thought process is 'well that was sad but look at cute baby zuko!' oops!

Katara knows she’s wrong to snoop, but it’s just so hard to resist now they’re somewhere a young Zuko once lived for stolen weeks of golden summers at a time. For so long, she’d never wondered about him much at all—she’d had, after all, no reason to want to know the boy who chased them around the world in his pursuit of capturing Aang—but things are different now.

First, there had been the catacombs of Ba Sing Se, and she’d caught another glimpse of that boy, another side of him. Wearing Earth Kingdom robes two sizes too big for him, with grief and sympathy that matched hers shining in his eyes, saying strange things about destiny and curses and seeming so lost.

Katara had spent long weeks after the fact wondering whether any of it was true as she struggled to capture sleep on that stolen Fire Navy ship. 

Of course, that was far from the only anxiety on her mind. Wondering when Aang would wake up, if he would at all… Sokka’s growing plans for the invasion, and what it could mean for all of them… being with her father for the first time in years, how half of her wanted to light up at the comfort of it but the other couldn’t dare because he went away and what if it happened again?

And Zuko…

She would turn to her other side, her chin resting on a flat hand, and wonder about him. He’d seemed so sincere, but Katara had wondered often how that could be the case when just moments later, he was catapulting rage and fire in her direction. 

But then he’d come to them and begged for a chance to prove himself. 

And even before she wanted to, far before she felt ready for it, she’d started to come to know things about him. How he would get up at dawn every morning—rising with the sun, she’d thought bitterly—to practice his own firebending forms before his lessons with Aang. How he’d sometimes frown when making the first batch of tea for them around a campfire and then make a second and always seemed to light up when their meals had a little extra spice to them.

How he would sometimes squirm just a little and hesitate a beat and sometimes even bristle before smiling shyly when the others teased him, as though it took a moment to steady his footing and catch up to the fact that it was only teasing.

She had started to know him, to really know him, before she’d wanted to, before she’d forgiven him, before she decided it was safe to let the distance between them shrink.

But now they’re friends. And with the comet looming in the coming days, with things a little tense and strange between everyone since that disaster of the play, and with the vestiges of Zuko’s childhood right here, it’s hard not to be curious.

And, as she reasons to herself while setting the cooking pot of solid silver atop the bookshelf, at least she has deniability. 

The shelves are lined with old books, with gold thread traced through their spines, and old scrolls with white parchment coloring yellow, with shiny maps, and…

Katara’s brow scrunches as she catches sight of what seems to be an old journal, bound by leatherskins, poking out from behind one of the old tomes, clearly meant to be hidden away.

She reaches for it. It’s such a small, delicate thing, really, but it feels heavy in her hands.

When she flips to the first pages, she recognizes the symbols for Zuko’s name, written out in a long, intense, careful scrawl. She’s never seen his handwriting before, but it matches what she might’ve guessed it would look like, teetering between bold and delicate.

Katara flips past the first pages, which seem to mostly consist of Zuko practicing his letters, and comes across what seems to be a draft of a letter he’d written to Iroh, certain lines crossed out or words respelled after an ink-permanent error. He asks after when Iroh will return from the war—and she shudders to think that the kindly old man who'd helped them on more than one occasion had once been much different, the terrible Dragon of the West, laying siege to Ba Sing Se.

But in another line, Zuko writes to his uncle about a festival and paper dragons. Her heart swells to think he was once so young and even playful.

Atop the right corner of the page, there is a tiny, shaded-in sketch of a blooming fire lily. Katara smiles.

She flips through more pages, most of which are much the same as the first several, but then pauses. On this one, there are dark patches—the kind that she can tell came from water drying on the parchment, and it’s now wrinkled. Once, she might have been able to salvage the page with her bending, but the water has long-since dried up and left only deterioration in its wake.

It’s…

The page is tear-stained. He’d cried when writing this.

Gulping, Katara squints her eyes to read his small script, so much shakier than the previous pages had been. She can’t read most of it, for the smears and the wrinkling of the page, and she’s not sure she even wants to, anyway, because what she does manage to scan through makes her feel a little sick, her stomach clenching.

—don’t know what I can do, he had written, and it’s all too easy to imagine a much younger version of her friend with tears in his eyes, sobs wracking his shoulders, a lonely figure in a dark attic. — to better, to not so weak. 

There's a series of words Katara can’t make out, but she does catch Father and love.

And then, one shining beacon of hope:

But Mom says—

The writing stops there. She will never know what his mother used to say.

She flips through the rest of the journal, but the pages are hauntingly blank. There are no more entries after that. 

Katara places the journal back where it was tucked and has the vague sense that she’s back where she started.

A strange guilt gnaws at her. Somehow, she thinks she understands Zuko both better and worse than she did before.

[zukosdualdao]

ashes of yesterday / rise of tomorrow

zutara month, day four: ashes, @zutaramonth

summary: the night aang blows up at them, before they’re set to leave, katara finds zuko sitting alone on the pier. he is burning a leaf, and he wants to be alone. one of these things is true.

warnings: implied/referenced abuse and many implied complicated feelings. not terribly explicit, but there is a reference to ozai trying to kill zuko in the day of black sun.

Zuko is the shadow of a lonely figure set against the growing night, his back turned as Katara walks the length of the boardwalk. She’s discovered a love of watching summer sunsets in the Fire Nation, the way the glowy orange morphs into a dark umber just before fading into a color like that of charcoal and then finally into deep black. 

She’s been coming out here sometimes, later in the night, just to get a moment to breathe, to watch the sunset. Faintly, she wonders if she’s been stealing Zuko’s spot.

“What are you doing?” Katara asks as she approaches, standing as he sits with his legs hanging off the pier's edge. She squints to see what he’s holding—and finds that it's a leaf that he’s burning slowly from the inside out, that singes as he twists the stem in his hands. Glowing red and deepening black overtake it, the hole that results growing steadily wider.

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don't know. Thinking, I guess."

Katara tilts her head and watches. His control is impressive.

With Aang blowing up and storming off, things have been tense all day. Tomorrow, they begin their journey to the Fire Nation Royal Palace. They will either win, or else the world may burn.

She finds she's not so surprised that maybe Zuko needed a little space to breathe, too.

Ozai has to die for them to win. Zuko knows this. Zuko has said this. She tries to think what that might be like for him. Even as he advocates for it, even as he insists upon it, Ozai is his father.

The Firelord is not a good man. Katara knows this. She doesn't think he can be much of a father either—she still remembers the unpleasant roll of her stomach as he told them about redirecting Ozai's lightning—but he is still Zuko's father. That will never not be true.

Sitting down beside him, she swings her left leg over the edge of the pier, and then pulls the other under her, her body angled so that she can take in his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks softly.

A lot is wrong, of course. It could be any number of things.

“I want to be alone,” Zuko says stiffly, instead of answering with one of them. Katara tilts her head, watching as he looks straight ahead, his eyes on the line of the horizon. Though he’s not yelling and his eyes are mostly blank, numb, the look of him, his forlorn posture, reminds her of the boy that batted fire to scare them away in that abandoned Earth Kingdom village, the boy that seemed so lost and alone in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se.

Katara couldn’t recognize it then, but she can now. Now, she knows him. It was like he was once holding the world and all the people in at a distance so that he would not be hurt. It's like that again now.

Katara does not want to hurt him.

“I don’t think that’s true,” she counters softly, with a slight shake of her head, catching the way he pinches both eyes closed, his lips pursing. “But if it is, tell me again, and I’ll go.”

Zuko says nothing. Katara inches ever-slightly closer to where he sits, erasing the gap between them, and turning forward to watch the sky with him.

After a long pause, Zuko takes a shaky inhale and leans over to rest his head on Katara’s shoulder. Her heart skips a beat. She leans into it, too.

They watch together as the final remnants of the leaf fade, dark ashes falling away from Zuko’s tight fist and into the still, dark, shimmering sea beneath them.

[zukosdualdao]

one single thread of gold tied me to you

zutara month, day 15: scarf, @zutaramonth

summary: when zuko and the rest of the gaang arrive in the south pole for the winter solstice festival, katara notices something strange: zuko's flush with cold, even though he could easily firebend to avoid it.

other notes: title taken from invisible string by taylor swift.

Katara’s used to the frigid air of her home, the flurries and full-blown storms of wind and snow, the ice that can crystallize against one's skin if they're not careful, the grey skies in the deeps of winter, the crunch of her footfalls against the ice and snow.

In a way, she’s missed it. The cold caresses her like an old friend she grew up with and that welcomes her back with open arms.

It’s a little strange but mostly funny to see the way their other friends react to it, though, as they arrive for the winter solstice festival that their tribe is celebrating this year—a way of marking the newly-ended war.

Aang, of course, has been here before—when they first met and many times in recent months, regaling Katara and Sokka with stories of his travels. Toph’s teeth chatter, yet she refuses to wear more than the basic parka she’s offered, though she’ll gladly accept a hot cup of tea—and has tried to accept mulled wine before Katara pulled it away from her—and hold it close to her chest. Suki doesn’t complain, though that may have more to do with how she can simply huddle closer to Sokka whenever she starts shivering.

Most of them have been by already once or twice since the end of the war. Zuko, though, committed as he is to his new role of Fire Lord, has only been here once before—and things between were decidedly different then.

As they make their way to walk down the iced-over river to release glowing lanterns, Katara glances to her side—Zuko has been gravitating near to her ever since he arrived, which makes her smile—and sees that his nose is darkly flushed and his arms are crossed over his chest and tucked into his sides as he tries not to so obviously shiver, which makes her frown.

Like Aang, she knows he could ward off the cold—though she thinks it may take more intention with firebending, the other elements are fascinating but sometimes still mysterious to her—or use his breath of fire to warm himself up, so why isn’t he?

Looking ahead, she sees their other friends, Toph with an arm slung around Aang’s shoulders and making some loud, obnoxious joke, Sokka and Suki snickering, and beyond them, her father, and Gran Gran, Bato, and the children of the tribe.

Zuko’s trying not to firebend in front of them. It’s… sweet, actually, and probably smart for his first visit here—but she doesn’t want him to suffer for no reason.

Katara pauses and pulls him aside as the group marches on. Sokka turns back briefly to check on her, and then to make aggravating kissy faces when he sees who she’s pulled aside—he’s certainly noticed and commented on the letters they’ve been exchanging back and forth—but she only waves him off.

“Are you cold?” she asks, and she can’t help laughing as he mock-glowers at her.

“No,” Zuko insists. Katara raises a brow at him, amused, and waits. “...Maybe.”

Giggling before setting her lantern in the snow, Katara then unwraps her own scarf from her neck and casts it over his head, circling it around his neck and moving a step closer to tie it for him. His flush darkens. This near, she can hear Zuko gulp, his heart stutter. 

“Better?” she smiles up at him.

“Yeah,” he smiles back, and then offers her a gloved hand, the one not holding his lantern. "Thank you." Katara takes it, picking up her own lantern from her other side, and joined in hand, they walk briskly together to meet again with the group.