Chapter Text
The quiet evening in Republic City was deceptive. Beyond the windows of the ruling palace of the Four Nations, life was in full motion — distant bursts of firecrackers, the shimmer of lights reflecting in the dark waters of Yue Bay. But here, within the marble walls, a heavy, almost sepulchral silence reigned, broken only by the soft rustle of parchment.
Katara sat at a wide desk strewn with papers. Invitations to the United Republic Council Summit. The list of delegates seemed endless. Her fingers, usually so deft in healing, now felt wooden. The exhaustion was not only physical. It was the weariness of a soul that had pretended for far too long that everything was fine.
She heard the footsteps before the door even opened. She always recognized his stride. The stride of a warrior accustomed to carrying not only the cloak of the Fire Lord upon his shoulders, but the weight of responsibility as well.
The door creaked.
“Katara…”
Her name, spoken in that low voice so painfully familiar, rang out like the strike of a gong. She did not look up. Only scoffed inwardly, though her back instantly stiffened and her shoulders tensed. She wanted to appear relaxed, an indifferent statue. She pretended to be absorbed in the lines upon the page.
“I’m looking for Sokka,” his voice came. “Have you… seen him?”
Katara shook her head without raising her eyes.
“No,” she forced out. The word was dry, like sand in the Si Wong Desert.
Zuko lingered in the doorway for another moment.
He should have left, so that they would not have begun any conversation at all. That was what he did best. She was already close to celebrating a small victory when she heard the heavy oak door shut. But not quietly, as befitted a well-raised Fire Lord — rather with a dull, irritated slam that made the crystal pendants of the chandelier tremble.
He closed the door from the inside.
Katara finally lifted her head. Her blue eyes, in which an ocean of life usually stirred, now resembled the ice of the northern glaciers
They looked at one another in silence across the room.
Silence became the third presence in the chamber, pressing against their ears, swallowing all the sounds of the city beyond the windows. Katara’s breathing quickened, her chest rising beneath the blue fabric of her tunic, and she cursed herself for being unable to control it.
“Will you stop this?” Zuko said at last. His golden eyes burned with that same inner fire she knew so well.
Katara felt bitterness rise in her throat. She did not want to answer that question, because the answer would shatter the fragile balance she had built for herself.
“Within these walls,” she said quietly, though with the steel she once used to scold an uncrowned prince, “doors are not slammed.”
Zuko did not look away. He accepted the verbal blow as he always did.
Silence again. Katara rose, gathering the papers.
“Where is Aang?” Katara asked. She needed to say his name aloud, to remind herself — of her place, of her status.
Zuko’s shoulders eased slightly. Speaking of Aang was safe territory.
“He left on Appa with Kalik and those two monks — I don’t remember their names. To the Air Temple Island. To check on the building as well. They’re nearly finished…”
Katara felt something cold tighten around her heart.
“Ah, with Kallik…” she repeated, and there was a faint, bitter smile in her voice. “And once again, he didn’t tell me.”
She turned away sharply. Her resentment toward Aang was only a small spark compared to the fire Zuko ignited in her, but it was easier to hide behind it.
Katara grabbed a stack of papers from the desk, using them to conceal her face. Her movements were sharp, restless.
“Don’t take it personally,” Zuko added quickly. He took a step forward. “He knew you were busy with these invitations for the summit. He didn’t want to distract you.”
Katara wasn’t listening. She moved toward the massive redwood shelf in the corner of the study. She needed something to occupy her hands, or they would begin to tremble. She tried to place the folder on the upper shelf, but the papers slipped from her damp fingers, scattering across the floor.
“Damn it,” she whispered, dropping to her knees.
“Let me help,” Zuko was beside her in an instant, crouching down.
His hand brushed hers as he gathered the scattered sheets. At that touch, an electric current ran along Katara’s skin.
“Don’t!” she snapped, yanking her hand away, nearly tearing an important document. “I don’t need your help. Go find Sokka. He’s probably with Suki, in the industrial district.”
Zuko ignored her tone. He silently gathered the remaining papers, straightened the stack, and held it out to her.
They were still very close now, and she could hear his breathing. Could hear that it was uneven. That, too, was a betrayal — his own.
Katara took the papers without looking at him. She placed them on the shelf and lowered her head. She could hear him standing behind her.
“Are you avoiding me?” Zuko’s voice sounded right by her ear. “It’s been a long time… I thought we had moved past this. Can’t we just… can’t we be like friends?”
Beyond the glass, the city stretched out — lights, hundreds of lights, yellow and white and orange — and the park below lay like a dark, quiet stain among them. Somewhere out there, deep within the districts, Sokka and Suki were probably laughing at something. Aang was flying above the clouds toward his bison. The whole world was alive and moving, and only here, in this room, time stood still.
“Friends?” her gaze was directed toward the window “No. We can’t be friends. I won’t pretend that I am your friend.”
She fell silent. The quiet rang in her ears.
“Then who am I?” Zuko asked.
The space between them shrank into an intimate, dangerous closeness. Katara turned and looked up at him from below.
“You are Aang’s friend,” she said, each word precise, sharp as a shard of glass. “Not mine. You are only a friend of my boyfriend.”
She saw it. The flash of pain that passed through his golden irises. And, may the spirits forgive her, she was glad for that pain. She wanted him to choke on it, the same way she once had.
“That’s what you wanted,” she continued, pressing forward. “When you rejected me.”
Zuko lowered his eyes. He stared at the floor, at the pattern of the carpet, at anything to avoid her face. But Katara did not look away, drilling into him with her gaze.
“You’re… still angry with me?” he asked, finally lifting his eyes.
“No,” she cut him off. “I just don’t care about you. Anymore.”
She lied. And he knew it. She wanted to hurt him, wanted him to feel at least a fragment of the agony she had carried inside her for a year.
The silence in the room pressed in from all sides.
“Alright,” Zuko exhaled. His throat shifted. “As long as you’re happy.”
There was a faint note of pain in his voice.
She did not look away. Her lips stretched into a smile, though the corners of her eyes already burned with unbidden tears.
“I am happy,” she said, and her voice trembled only for a moment. “Very happy with Aang. Do you understand? Everything is exactly as you wanted.”
And it was then that Zuko noticed how, in the dim light of the lamps, her eyes had grown wet. Two crystal tears trembled on her lashes, ready to fall.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” he said quietly.
Katara’s eyes betrayed her completely. She could no longer look at him. She turned away sharply, hiding her face, twisted by the spasm in her throat.
“Leave me,” her voice came out muffled as she stared into the darkness beyond the window, where the night city glittered with foreign lights.
“I’m sorry,” Zuko said.
Katara turned her head. A single tear was already sliding down her cheek, glinting in the dim light like a liquid diamond.
“I won’t forgive you!” Katara turned back to him again, and now her eyes revealed everything: hatred, longing, and the love that had never gone out. “You hurt me. Again. I’ve learned already that forgiving you isn’t worth it.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.
Another tear fell from her other eye.
“Oh, of course,” she wiped her cheek with a trembling hand, smearing the moisture. “You wanted what was best for me. I remember. How beautifully one can rephrase ‘I don’t love you,’ isn’t that right?”
Something in Zuko’s chest snapped. He could no longer remain silent. The lump in his throat made it hard to breathe.
“No.” He took a step toward her, and his voice was thick. “No, it’s not like that. I said it because it was the right thing. We both know that. Not because I don’t love you. My feelings never—”
He reached out, trying to touch her shoulder, her face — anything, just to feel her.
“My feelings will never change.”
“No!” Katara jerked his hand away as if burned. “Don’t touch me!”
She drew a sharp breath.
“To lose you…” her voice broke.
She hadn’t wanted this. She had imagined this conversation so many times, and in none of them had she cried; she had always been cold and steady and free. “Forgetting you was so hard, I could barely survive it. I thought I would die in those first months! Don’t hurt me with these words now! Don’t you dare speak of feelings when you destroyed everything yourself!”
He withdrew his hand.
Katara covered her face with her palms. Her shoulders shook, and she hated this moment. Hated herself in this moment.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, and there was nothing of the Fire Lord in his voice. Only pleading. “Don’t cry. Please.”
He raised his hands again, this time carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal. He took her face in his palms. His hands, rough with calluses from the sword, were impossibly warm.
And this time, she did not push him away.
Her own hands fell helplessly at her sides. She lifted her tear-filled eyes and looked straight at him. Through the veil of tears she saw his face — so familiar, with that cursed scar she had once kissed in moments of tenderness between them.
He could feel her heart pounding beneath her clothes. Wild, rapid, in unison with his own. Zuko gently brushed his thumb along her cheek, wiping away the salty trail of a tear.
Katara closed her eyes. She did not resist. She simply stood there, allowing him to touch her, feeling the last bastions of her pride crumble within her.
Zuko pulled her closer and embraced her. He rested his chin against her forehead, breathing in the scent of her hair.
Katara froze. Her hands did not rise. She stood in his arms like a pillar of salt. She felt his lips lightly touch her forehead. It was a kiss filled with such pain and tenderness. He swallowed, trying to force down the knot in his throat.
“It’s hard for me too,” he said at last, his voice vibrating near her temple. “I know this is the right thing. We both know it.”
Katara squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Every word he spoke was like salt poured into an open wound.
“I thought it would pass if I didn’t see you,” he continued. “I thought it would get easier… A year, it seems, was not enough.”
“Be quiet,” Katara whispered. She sobbed, pressing her forehead against his chest, where beneath the fabric she could feel the steady beat of his heart. “Don’t you understand that this is hurting both of us?”
She couldn’t bear it anymore.
Her hands, which she had kept pressed to her sides, slowly lifted. Her fingers clutched at the fabric of his crimson robes at his back. She embraced him in return.
“I miss you so much,” Zuko breathed into her hair. His voice cracked, revealing the full depth of his suffering. “I’m so sorry we can’t do anything about this.”
Katara pulled back. She looked straight into his eyes, her hands still on his shoulders. In her gaze, everything was mixed: rage, passion, self-loathing, and the love she had tried to drown in work and in her care for Aang.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to strike him, as she had back then in Caldera, when he had spoken those painful words. She wanted to kiss him the way she had in all those endless nights in the royal palace of the Fire Nation capital, when they had stolen hours of happiness from fate.
She felt herself falling into an abyss.
The only shore she had clung to this past year had been her steady, proper relationship with Aang. She had poured all of herself into it. She had promised herself she would love Aang as deeply as her broken heart was capable of. She would be his support, his strength, his ally, his lover. She would give him the love she had most wanted to give to another.
Because that other did not deserve it. That other had rejected her and said it would be better this way. That other had made love to her in the embrace of night, and then said it could not continue, because Aang was his brother, and it was wrong.
That other had given her to Aang. And now she would be his.
She had done everything to become happy without that other. She had believed it for a year. She had even stopped crying every night, remembering the warmth of his kisses on her body. The longing no longer devoured her alive. She thought she was free.
She hated herself now for her weakness. For these cursed tears. For the fact that her hands were still trembling on his shoulders.
But most of all, she hated that only now, in his arms, she was truly happy. That which she had called happiness for the past year had been a carefully painted decoration, a cardboard façade behind which emptiness hid.
And the most terrifying thing was that she wanted this never to end.
She looked into his golden eyes, filled with torment, and understood that they were both doomed to burn in this flame.