Work Text:
All because of you
I haven’t slept in so long
When I do I dream
Of drowning in the ocean
Longing for the shore
Where I can lay my head down
I’ll follow your voice
All you have to do is shout it out
“The Good Left Undone” // Rise Against
“Aang, I thought you could do this,” Katara said, trying to be gentle but instead coming out strained. “You have to do this.”
Aang trembled with anger, his eye wide and round with betrayal as he paced back and forth across the sandy backyard of the Ember Island beach house. “How can you say that, Katara? I thought you of all people would understand! The monks taught me that all life is sacred. That includes Fire Lord Ozai. How can you—how can any of you expect me to kill him?”
“Because he’s the most evil guy in the world and he’ll kill us all if we don’t stop him?” came Sokka’s terse reply from the stone steps of the beach house.
It was three days until Sozin’s Comet. The air was warm and muggy from a rain shower earlier in the afternoon and the setting sun made the courtyard look like it was studded with diamonds, the scattered raindrops ethereal in the intense golden light. Bruised clouds still hung low in the sky, thick with the damp of seawater. It would’ve been beautiful, a painter’s paradise, but none of the teenagers that stood around the backyard cared about the view. There was a crease between Sokka’s brows that hadn’t been there since the invasion and Katara kept drumming her fingers against her waterskin in a hectic rhythm.
“I know, I know!” Aang clutched his head in his hands. “But using violence to end violence isn’t right. Isn’t there, I don’t know, a Plan B?”
“No,” came the chorused reply.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this sooner?” Katara asked, her hands settling on her hips and patience steadily wearing thin. “All this time we’ve been training and you didn’t say a word. Sozin’s Comet is in three days.”
“You can’t possibly have been planning to show him his baby pictures and all the happy memories would make him good again,” Zuko bit out. His whole body was tense, and he clawed his fingers through his hair as he spoke. “What were you thinking?”
“I was hoping you could help me come up with ideas,” Aang admitted as he wrung his hands.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Suki groaned.
“You don’t get it, Twinkletoes. This is war, not some fancy temple where everyone is nice to everyone and civil conversation is the only socially acceptable way to work out your issues,” Toph snarled from her place against Appa’s side. Katara couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the earthbender so angry. “You might not be able to bomb your way out of every problem, but you gotta fight according to the nature of the threat.” She punctuated her point by punching her fist to her hand. Aang winced.
“The kid couldn’t even smash a melon,” Sokka grumbled to Suki. Aang’s head whipped around to pin him with a furious glare.
“You guys are asking me to do something that goes against everything the monks have taught me! Why can’t you see how difficult this is? Do you have any idea what I’m going through right now?”
“Aang, we’ve all lost something to this war, but you have a job to do.” Katara was having a harder and harder time keeping a leash on the anger threatening to spill over. The longer she spoke, the more it swelled with all the ferocity of a polar storm. She could feel it burning beneath her skin, pressing her from all sides, trying to reach its claws out and sink them into Aang so he would come to his senses. “People are counting on you to take out the Fire Lord because that’s the only way this war will end.”
“I’m sorry, but…” Aang shook his head, unable to make eye contact. “I can’t.”
“Tough,” Toph grumbled and folded her arms across her chest.
“You’re not the only one with nightmares from the things you’ve seen and had to do to keep the people you love, and yourself, alive,” Suki snapped. Katara glanced at the Kyoshi Warrior and felt the fury inside her knot at the pained expression she wore as she glared at Aang. “But you don’t get to avoid your destiny any more than we do.”
Aang threw his hands up. “But that’s just it! Maybe we were wrong. Maybe my destiny isn’t to kill the Fire Lord, but to end the war a different way. If you could just help me come up with ideas…I thought we were all on the same side!”
“I thought we were too,” Zuko retorted, “but apparently not. The monks taught you that all life is sacred, but won’t depose of the man responsible for killing hundreds of thousands, even millions, of innocent people. You’d spare his life over theirs. That’s not very peaceful, if you ask me.”
Sokka added, “Think about it, Aang. The Air Nomads fought defensively when the Fire Nation attacked. Monk Gyatso didn’t hide in a closet and wait for the violence to fizzle out before it got to him.”
“That’s…that’s different!” Aang cried, his voice shrill. “Killing out of self-defense isn’t the same as violence for violence’s sake. Fire Lord Ozai has done terrible things, but—”
“Different?” Katara echoed incredulously. She stalked toward him and Aang took a stumbling step back as she towered over him. The weight of her mother’s necklace felt leaden around her neck. “You think this his raids on the Southern Water Tribe were out of category?”
“Katara, I—”
“He willingly slaughtered his own men for tactical gain, burned and banished his own son, and plans to raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground!” Zuko’s voice rose as he counted off examples. He was beside Katara now and the heat from his body gave her a momentary reprieve, and her mind began to string together all the scattered pieces she had been collecting for some time now and just hadn’t, or couldn’t, acknowledge.
She had only found Aang in that iceberg because he had run away from his responsibilities. All his time traveling the world and he’d learned nothing from the other people he’d encountered, simply walked away with a reinforced sense of cultural supremacy.
Now, she could see the pedestal she’d put Aang on and how she’d treated him like a gift from the spirits and not the twelve-year old child he really was. She had been soft where she should’ve been sharp, gentle where she should’ve been insistent, and it had accumulated into a sense of superiority, almost narcissism, that had been allowed to grow unchecked until it had left him apathetic.
Children were burning. Villages were disappearing off maps. For all Aang’s grief at the burned forests and displaced refugees in Ba Sing Se, for all his talk about how it was his job to change those things, he still wouldn’t deliver the final blow that could well and truly end them—because of ethics. As if anything that had happened in the world in the last hundred years was ethical.
Now that he had decided that dead children were bearable, the fight was as good as over.
“Here’s a question to consider,” she interrupted in a voice hard as steel. She didn’t bother trying to stop the flow of anger that came torrentially; if Aang wanted to kick away the last few stones damming everything inside, he would drown in his own flood.
“What were you planning to do if you had found the Fire Lord during the eclipse?”
All the blood drained from the Avatar’s face.
“Were you going to talk him out of his plans? Tell him all about peace and pacifism until he saw the error of his ways and decided to back down? Or were you going to subdue him in ice and wait for someone else to arrive so you wouldn’t have to get your hands dirty?”
Later, she would feel bad for the almost murderous sense of satisfaction she got from the crushed expression on Aang’s face as his mouth worked silently and eyes darted around in search of an answer he knew he couldn’t find. But in the moment, unbridled fury roared in her chest and pushed her to keep chipping away at his last defenses, to force him to see how dangerous this game really was and the price they would pay if he didn’t wake up.
“What do you think happened to all the men and women you wiped out as the ocean spirit?” Zuko chimed in alongside Katara, his tone equally scathing. “Rescue ships picked them up at sea?”
Aang choked and turned his glassy eyes to the rest of the group, hoping for an ally, only to be met with angry glares. Trembling, he spun and made to run out of the courtyard but a loud hiss had his ankles encased in sand and he toppled to the ground with a surprised shout. He twisted to look at Toph, who stood with her arms raised and her face livid.
“Don’t you dare run away from this, Twinkletoes,” she warned. Her voice was amplified in the shocked silence that gripped the air. “Whether you like it or not, you’re the Avatar and it’s your job to can your feelings and all that preachy mumbo-jumbo bullshit you keep spewing and start living in the real world. This isn’t the fucking Eastern Air Temple. This isn’t about you.” Somehow, her hazy eyes seemed to stare straight through him. “Not everyone has the luxury of running away from their problems, but when you run away from yours, everyone has to deal with the consequences.”
Aang bowed his head. Dark droplets appeared on the tunic of his shirt. It was this that made the last frays of Katara’s nerves snap and with a sound of disgust, she turned away.
“I can’t be around you like this,” she snapped. “When you decide to get over this pacifist superiority complex of yours, come find me.” With that, she stormed down the beach to the where the water bit lazily at the shore, completely at odds with the turmoil unfurling in the house just meters away.
Her movements were fueled by white-hot fury as she yanked the waves with titanic force and choked them off into two watery columns, rising high above her head and clearing a sandy path directly down their center. She barely felt her feet sink into the waterlogged bottom as she stalked through. With a cry, she released her hold and allowed the water to sweep her off her feet.
She somersaulted through the unrestrained surf like a piece of seaweed and relished the way the salt stung her eyes and flooded her mouth. She surfaced choking and sputtering, her hair clinging to her face and shoulders, and immediately dunked back under. Floating in the endless open space, the tropical water a balm to the fear inching its way up her spine like ice, she felt like she could finally breathe.
And yet no ocean could wash away Aang’s words. The fear was still there, looming like ash from the sky, an omen for the terror to come. If Aang couldn’t kill Ozai, the rest of the world was as good as dead.
It’s a full three days until the comet, right? We have time.
But they had collectively pointed out that there was no alternative to killing the Fire Lord.
Katara surfaced shoulders-deep in the waves, their gentle caress almost a mockery of the panic unfolding inside her, and it threatened to drag her under and keep her there.
The sun’s slow descent toward the horizon turned the colorful stretch of Ember Island into a muted assortment of oranges and purples, the hot sand cooling with the loss of the daytime heat and the tide receding into a muddy sandbar. A warm evening breeze lulled the leaves of the palm trees and rippled Katara’s Fire Nation silks, which were still crusty with dried seawater she hadn’t bothered to extract, and she sat with her toes in the surf. Footsteps approached her from behind.
“Go away, Sokka,” she muttered.
“Do you want to take a walk?” came Zuko’s voice.
Startled, she scrambled to stand. “I thought you were Sokka,” she explained as she brushed sand off her skirt.
Zuko chuckled. “I told him I’d talk to you while he made dinner.” When Katara looked horrified, he said, “don’t worry, Suki’s keeping him in line. I don’t think he’ll be able to burn the house down with her supervision.”
Only slightly reassured, Katara nodded and joined the firebender as he beckoned her to follow him down the beach. They didn’t speak at first, the only sound the lapping waves and crying pigeon-gulls from somewhere offshore. Katara found herself relaxing. This was what she liked about Zuko; his silence held no expectations.
When the beach house had receded to a reasonable speck behind them, they sat on the water’s edge with their feet in the waves. It was a while before Katara spoke, “You know, I’d never gone swimming before I met Aang.” She chuckled and stared unblinkingly into the setting sun. “A waterbender who can’t swim, can you imagine? It’s too cold in the South Pole and I had never been given the chance to leave the tribe and practice elsewhere.”
“Now you could split the ocean in half,” Zuko laughed. Then he looked left to right as if to ensure no one would overhear, and said, “I used to measure my progress by you, you know. You’ve always challenged me more than anyone else in the group. I had barely mastered the basics when we first met, same as you, but by the time we met at the North Pole both of us could hold our own.”
“Really?” His words made her glow. “I kicked your butt though,” she reminded him. and nudged his side with a grin.
“Until the sun rose,” he snorted and dodged her swat with a laugh. “If it weren’t for Azula, you would’ve had me in Ba Sing Se, too.”
It brought her back to the question she found herself mulling over more than she’d admit to anyone, when the full moon called to her in the navy blue midnight of the Western Air Temple while the rest of the world slept on. Whether Zuko’s betrayal was a step in the wrong direction, or the right one—a necessary deviation that led him exactly where he needed to be. Because somehow, he had found his way here.
“My mother used to say that the spirits didn’t hand you your destiny on a silver platter,” she mused out loud. “Instead you had to work for it and meet them halfway. I used to hate you for what you did in Ba Sing Se, but I think it needed to happen for you to join us for good.”
“We have the same goals now,” Zuko agreed. “You were the first person outside my family to show me an alternative path, to…trust me. Even though you didn’t have to. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.”
It was hard to know for sure in the dim light, but it looked like a blush was creeping up his cheeks. He cleared his throat and held her gaze. In that moment, it felt like she was seeing him for the first time—or maybe just seeing what had always been there.
The sun painted his hair golden brown, and his eyes—once so haunted and cold—glittered like fire at midnight, made his entire body glow. The sight was arresting.
“I used to think my destiny was to capture the avatar and restore my honor,” Zuko went on, shifting closer in a manner that could’ve been as unconscious as it was deliberate. “But it wasn’t until I sat at my father’s side in another war meeting that I realized it was the other way around. I had to capture my honor and restore the Avatar.”
“I’m proud of you,” she told him, the truth of it filling her with warmth. “That’s…I don’t think I ever told you either.”
“So we’re even.” Zuko’s face split into a breathtaking smile. “Thank you, Katara.”
They watched the sun dip its last fingers below the horizon, sitting closer than necessary, neither making a move to shift away. Katara wondered if Zuko felt the electricity buzzing through her senses because she was sure it was going to set her alight. He kept casting surreptitious glances at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.
When Katara’s heart was pounding so hard she was certain Toph could feel it, Zuko announced in a rush, “I had an idea.” He paused as if searching for the right words, then barreled on, “If Aang subdues the Fire Lord and can’t kill him, maybe we can hand him over to a council. Let the Imperial Court decide what to do with him if the Avatar won’t.”
It took a moment for the shock to wear off before she was able to say, “And you just came up with that?”
Zuko looked taken aback. “I…yeah?"
This boy never ceased to surprise her. “The war won’t truly end unless Ozai’s reign is over,” she said slowly, piecing it together, “and I guess having him removed by high-ranking officials would be the equivalent of the Avatar taking him down, kind of. Whatever happens, we can’t let your dad rot in a cell where he has the potential to poison someone else.” She dug her fingers into the sand, brushing them against his. “Politically, it’s a good idea.”
“It would placate his enemies and dampen the agitation of his supporters.” Zuko shrugged. “It’s worth a try, right?”
A few moment passed before she said, “I think that counts.”
“What?”
“Destiny. Meeting the spirits halfway. If the Avatar won’t do it, we’ll take matters into our own hands.”
Zuko’s hand found hers and her pulse skyrocketed. “That’s…a good way of looking at it. I like that.”
The sun had set and Ember Island was shrouded in the quiet calm of blue hour. The breeze carried the muted call of crickets and a ship’s bell from somewhere far away, and with her mind clearer, the night’s events began to creep back in like morning mist over water; not entirely unwelcome, but unsettling all the same.
Aang’s refusal must’ve left a particularly deep wound on Zuko because Zuko’s own family was responsible for the turmoil that had wracked the world for a century. The raids on the Southern Water Tribe, the genocide of the airbenders, the fall of Ba Sing Se. This was a chance to nurse back to health villages that had been burned to ashy wood, to stitch broken families back together, to sow the seeds of love and peace where once only hate had grown. And Aang had all but told Zuko it wasn’t enough.
When Katara said as much, Zuko just shrugged. “The same can be said for you,” he pointed out. “Aang is walking on your mom’s grave right now. I wish there was something I could do to make it better.”
His words made her blood freeze and tremble in her veins simultaneously. Sometimes it seemed like he was the only one that truly understood where she was coming from, like he could sense how she felt and what she needed before anyone else could, or bothered to try.
“You’ve already helped,” she whispered and cupped his bad cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. “You’ve done more than anyone else could’ve done in a lifetime. You helped me stand in front of my mother’s killer and didn’t judge me for a single moment of it. I’ll spend the rest of my life finding ways to say thank you.”
With Zuko, she didn’t need permission to be angry. He brought out the boldest and darkest parts of her in ways that set her free. He accepted the things that Sokka and Aang could never hope to grasp, and he had been the first to show her that convenience and assumptions weren’t enough to keep people stowed away in boxes, that the world was far more than shades of black and white. It had been a bitter pill to swallow at first, and his betrayal in Ba Sing Se had stung all the more because of it—for a shining moment they had been on equal grounds, and he had shoved it back in her face.
But he had said it perfectly; they had the same goals now. They were battle-forged, equals, and in that moment she realized she wouldn’t want anyone else by her side in the upcoming battle but him.
Thank you for challenging me in ways I didn’t know I needed. Thank you for seeing me. And thank you for being you.
For once, the desire to tamp down on her feelings for someone else’s sake didn’t override her desire to act on the truth.
She hadn’t realized she’d moved closer to him until his face was inches from hers, and his eyes searched her face with a mixture of disbelief and—dare she hope?—anticipation. She held his gaze steadily, asking permission, and then leaned further in.
She wasn’t sure who crossed the threshold first, but when their lips met she tried to pour into the kiss all the words she didn’t know how to say, words that weren’t enough to speak the truth that sang in her bones.
For a moment Zuko didn’t move and she feared she had crossed a line, but then his hand tentatively touched her hair and the other held her waist and his mouth moved slowly but insistently against hers.
After a few breathless moments, Katara broke away. She felt her eyes flutter open, still not quite believing any of this was real, but deciding it was worth it to get her hopes up anyway.
“Was that—”
“I liked it,” Zuko told her, his voice catching at the end. “You, uh, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
“Really?” Katara’s heart soared.
In answer, Zuko pressed his forehead to hers, a lopsided smile on his face. Katara allowed herself to smile too and for a moment she could almost forget the catastrophe earlier in the evening. Almost.
“Is it hard for you?” she ventured finally. “Plotting against your own family? I know they’ve done terrible things, but they’re still your family.”
Said firebender smiled wryly. “My father gave me this scar, you know.”
She felt he had taken a hatchet and buried it in her chest.
“A general was going to use new recruits as live bait while experienced soldiers mounted the real attack from the rear. I didn’t realize that by speaking out against the general’s plan, I’d spoken out against my father. He challenged me to an Agni Kai, a fire duel, and I refused.”
All this time and she’d had no idea. It couldn’t’ve been easy, carrying the weight of the past on his face, but leave it to Zuko to never give up without a fight.
“You were right, though,” she protested. “Didn’t anyone else agree with you? No one tried to back you up?”
“No one else would dare disrespect the Fire Lord.”
“Disrespect? He was going to send loyal soldiers to their death! There’s nothing respectful about that, nothing honorable—”
She broke off and Zuko smiled dryly.
“Now you’re getting it,” he said with a humorless laugh, “but self-righteousness will get you killed in the Imperial Court. I know that now, and I joined you because I realized there was no way to be the person I wanted to be, the person I was, and still please my father.”
Katara tried to imagine a life where she didn’t have her father’s unconditional love and support, where oil and water were thicker than blood.
“Is that why your were banished?”
“And ordered to find the Avatar, yeah.”
“But the Avatar hadn’t been seen in almost a century,” she pointed out, confused. “Why did he…” she trailed off. Cold realization settled in her gut. She recalled all her encounters with Zuko over the past year, how he’d tracked them with steadfast determination that had been infuriating in its tenacity, and now it all made a depressing kind of sense. She almost felt bad for how strongly she had despised him.
“Your father is a monster.” She had to fight around the tightness in her throat, and as if sensing her distress, Zuko rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.
“The first time I left the Fire Nation, I was banished.” His voice held a touch of resentment, and then his face became steely, and pride shone through like the first rays on sun on a cloudy day. “The second time, I left on my own.”
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.” She kissed him, and he pulled her into his lap.
“I’m not afraid of him anymore,” he confessed when he pulled back, his arms wrapped around her so tightly it was as if he was afraid she would drift away. “I stood up to him during the eclipse, and I’m ready to do it again if Aang fails. I’m not alone this time.”
“You don’t have to be alone again,” she promised. “We can end this war together if we have to.”
“You’re the only one who’s ever managed to get an edge on my sister. I’m pretty sure you could do it singlehandedly.”
When she looked up at him, his face had clouded over. “But I don’t want this—” he squeezed her impossibly closer to him, as if the increased contact would act as reassurance, “to belong to my father, or Azula, or any of the people that have made my life miserable. This isn’t because I’m scared of what Aang will or won’t do, it’s because I…” he got visibly flustered, his eyes darting to the side and fingers flexing on her hip. He swallowed and continued, “I like you for you, Katara, not because I’m afraid to lose you. I mean, I am afraid, but this isn’t out of desperation or any of that. It’s…” he trailed off, but he didn’t have to say anymore. She understood.
She ran her thumb over the edge of his scar, and Zuko closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. “What does this mean?” she whispered.
Zuko smirked. “It means I’m going to have to kiss you again.”
The moon had long since risen by the time they made their way up the winding path to the beach house, and sounds of clanking dishes intensified as they stepped onto the front porch. Their hands kept brushing in a gesture that was benign to an onlooker but static to the two of them.
They had spent the last few hours talking about everything from the time Sokka had gotten two fishhooks stuck in his thumb to their fears about the impending battle. It had dampened her rage from a roaring blaze to dull ache. She was still angry and didn’t know what she would say to Aang next time she saw him, but she felt better than she had in a long time and Zuko had assured her she owed no apologies.
“Thanks for helping me,” she murmured. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek as they approached the front door. She felt his sharp intake of breath.
“It was hardly help,” he managed a little weakly, voice high.
Katara giggled. “If you ever need anything, I’m here for you.”
“About that,” Zuko started, the redness in his cheeks evident even in the darkness. “Do you…ah, want to come to my room later? Not like that!” He threw his hands up as Katara raised an eyebrow. “I mean to talk! Talking. This was nice.”
“I’d love to,” Katara replied, and Zuko pressed his lips to hers. She could taste the hunger there, chaste but fiery, and it sent electricity down her spine.
“Sugar Queen! You’re alive!”
Toph burst through the front door with a knowing smirk on her face and the two teens leapt apart, Katara sure she looked as guilty as Zuko, who had reached up to rub the back of his neck in a gesture that was painfully suspicious. Before Katara could open her mouth, Sokka’s voice floated through the doorway, “Is that Katara? Katara! I tried to make dinner but I burned the rice and Suki showed me how to prepare fish but I think I might’ve accidentally destroyed it, its eyeball is rolling around the kitchen floor somewhere—”
Katara must’ve looked horrified because Zuko doubled over with laughter. “Some things never change,” she muttered as Toph’s unseeing eyes settled on the two of them, far more knowing than she liked. She shifted uncomfortably and said, “Do you need something?”
Zuko took that as his cue to slip past them and leave the two women alone. Toph’s smirk grew impossibly wider and Katara’s stomach fell to her feet. “Did I ever mention I mastered sandbending?” she asked with a wicked grin. “Because your heartbeat is a whole earthquake, Sugar Queen.”
Katara groaned and pressed her hands to her face.
“I’d be willing to keep the others out of the loop if you massaged my feet every night and made Sparky carry me on his back. Now that I think about, it should be pretty easy to convince him considering your heartbeat is a cricket’s compared to his—”
“Toph!”
It was going to be a long few days.
But she wouldn’t have it any other way; Zuko’s idea was their best shot if Aang didn’t come around, and her mother’s words rang back at her as she stepped through the front door and into the mayhem unfolding in the kitchen. She didn’t know what the spirits had planned, but they could make their destinies come to them. They would.
And with Zuko at her side, she felt like she could do anything. The two of them had trust, loyalty, empathy, compassion, and friendship. And they had built it from the ground up.
Maybe Zuko was the world’s hope, but in a different way.