Chapter Text
Maybe.
It's the faintest tendril of a chance, but when her fingers whisper feather-light across his scar, Zuko believes she can do it.
Maybe she can fix what no one else could.
Maybe he can finally be rid of the scar.
Maybe things can finally be okay.
But then the wall bursts inward with such force that it shakes him to his bones, and he has to broaden his stance to keep from falling. Without thinking, he angles himself to block the worst of the debris for her, and even with his eyes squeezed shut, he can feel Katara tense and lean closer.
Even before the last of the rumbling dies away, Zuko turns toward it, hands raised, ready to fight. Katara is close—so close—to him, and from the corner of this eye, he sees her poised for battle too. It's strange, standing beside her now after so many battles facing one another as enemies, but it warms something inside him.
"Am I interrupting something, Zuzu?"
He knows that voice, that tone. High and mocking and just so Azula. His hands clench into fists.
"My, my, big brother. I put you in here to keep you safe while I got the disturbance at the palace contained. Not to give you a chance to canoodle with the Avatar's pet."
Katara lets out a hiss and Zuko edges toward her. He knows this game too well. The teasing, the mockery is just a distraction. This is what Azula does. He can't afford to fall for it. Not again. Not this time.
"I'm a bit disappointed by your manners. Where's my thank you?" Azula looms nearer, eyes cold and shrewd over a blistering smile. "I came for you. I could have left you to rot with this—" her coppery eyes flick toward Katara, "—Water Tribe filth. Really, Zuzu, you should be grateful that I came back to save you from your own bad taste. I didn't have to."
Zuko's jaw tightens. This is bait. It has to be bait.
He sees Katara tense.
"What do you want, Azula?" he demands, fighting to keep a furious tremor out of his voice. He can't fall into another trap. He won't fall into this one.
Azula clucks her tongue. "The direct approach again. You really have spent too much time with Earth Kingdom peasants." She pauses to smooth the locks of hair framing her face. "Fine. If you must know, I want to offer you a trade."
Azula always lies. Azula always lies. Azula always lies.
This time, he doesn't speak quick enough.
"What kind of a trade?" Katara's eyes spark, and her stance doesn't so much as waver.
Zuko wonders if there will be enough water in the cavern for Katara if it comes to a fight. There will be no stopping her, he knows that much. And though he of all people should know better than to trust a waterbender, the inexplicable fact remains that she has not left his side. For that alone, he feels a measure of—not loyalty, exactly, but something. Something strong enough that he doesn't want to see her face Azula unarmed.
Azula curls her lip into a derisive sneer. "Not a trade with you, waterbender." She faces Zuko. "I want your help. In exchange, I can offer you your freedom."
Zuko snarls. "I've made better bargains with pirates."
"You wound me, brother." Azula clasps her hands behind her back, tone and expression equally untroubled as she strolls in an arc around them, vulture-like.
Zuko cranes his neck to follow her movement, but he doesn't quite dare to turn his back on the gaping hole where she first emerged. He can't shake the feeling that there is somebody—possibly many somebodies—just out of sight in the blackness.
"All I want," Azula says, meandering closer as she spirals around them, "Is a bit of help from an ally I can trust. No more than a day's work."
Zuko shakes his head. There is a catch. There's always a catch with Azula. "You're lying," he rasps.
Azula pretends not to hear. "And in exchange, I can offer you something you've been searching for." She leans in, near enough for Zuko to feel her breath on his scarred ear. "A way home."
A chill runs up his spine, but Zuko hardly notices. He is numb.
Home. The Fire Nation. The palace. The familiarity of flame-red and obsidian-black on every surface. Father.
His heart roars in his chest at the thought, and he is vaguely aware of his hands dropping to his sides. Home. It isn't a mystical undoing of the past contained in a vial of blessed water. This is better. Not a way to erase the past. This is a future. One that doesn't have to mean forgetting—all of this. One where the past three years mean something. One he has earned.
His mouth won't cooperate when he tries to speak, but he is ready to accept, to agree to all of Azula's conditions. Anything if it means that he can go home, that he will deserve a place at Father's side again.
"Why?" Katara's voice cuts through his thoughts, clear as a bell stroke. "Why would he ever go back?"
A million reasons. The gardens. The morning breeze in summer. The cherry blossoms in springtime. The music. The spices. The turtleducks. But before he can form the words, Katara is speaking again.
"He told me what happened. Your people took his mother from him. They banished him. They've hunted him all across the Earth Kingdom!" Her voice rings through the whole of the cavern, and she stares, fearless, into Azula's eyes. "What kind of a home is that to go back to?"
Zuko wants to tell her to stop. That she doesn't know what she's talking about, that he doesn't want to hear it. That his mind is already made up. But her rage, once awakened, will not be silenced.
"What kind of father sends his own son away on an impossible quest? What kind of sister attacks her own brother and throws him in the catacombs to rot?"
He tries to speak. He tries to stop her, but no words come. Some part of him, some horrible, treasonous part keeps his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and steals the breath from his lungs. It whispers that he should listen. That he should agree with her. That a part of him has always agreed with her.
His head is spinning, and it hurts to breathe.
"If this is how the Fire Nation treats its own children, then it doesn't deserve to have them back."
The last of Zuko's breath leaves in a rush. He knows that he should disagree, that he should argue and fight, but the traitorous part of his mind tightens its grip and suddenly he can't tell which side of him is yelling louder. Or even remember which side is which.
Azula faces no such conflict, and her eyes flash, cold and burning all at once. While Katara's rage is bright and passionate, Azula's is frigid.
"You have no right to speak, peasant."
Katara begins another retort, but before her lips can so much as part, Azula drops into a familiar stance, drawing broad, crackling circles in the air with her fingertips.
There is no time to think.
When the lighting surges from Azula's fingertips, Zuko is already moving. He plants himself in front of Katara and catches the bolt in his left hand. Up the arm to the shoulder, down to the stomach, across to the shoulder, out the other arm. Electricity jolts through his body, the force of it pushing him backward, closer to Katara, closer, too close, before he releases it back in Azula's direction. The bolt strikes at her feet and throws her backward.
He is shaken. Can't move, can hardly even think when Katara races to his side, summoning what little water she can.
He sees the Dai Li flooding into the chamber even as Katara shapes her water into whips and readies herself for battle. He should help, he thinks dimly. There is only so much Katara can do to protect them.
But without the power of the lightning coursing through his veins, he can't find the strength. He thinks he might collapse. Nothing is amiss so far as he can tell, he is not hurt, but he is adrift, and standing seems entirely too difficult.
He is numb when Azula stumbles back to her feet, when the Dai Li close in, when Katara's meager supply of water fails to keep them at bay.
He is still numb when an agent twists his arms behind his back and knocks him to the ground.
He is still numb when Azula stares into his eyes and gives the order to lock them both away.
"I'm sorry about this."
Katara peers back over her shoulder. He is hunched on the opposite side of the bars, back-to-back with her. She's surprised to hear him speak—even more surprised by the softness of his voice.
"About what?" She can make out the reddened, ruined edge of his scarred ear but little else. "Did you have something to do with this?"
"What?" He twists around too, peering at her from the corner of his perpetually narrowed left eye.
"Azula's your sister."
"That doesn't mean I'm working with her." Zuko exhales and turns his back again, but not before she catches a glimpse of the ragged edge of his sleeve and the branching red marks on the back of his hand.
Katara frowns at the back of his head. "So why are you apologizing?" She settles back into place, a little unnerved by the gentle warmth radiating off of his back. Being so near him shouldn't feel—comforting. She pulls her knees up to her chest and stares at the damp stone wall in front of her. She is not going to think about this. She can't.
She hears him inhale as if to respond, but no words come. And after a weighty moment of silence, he sighs, and a fresh wave of heat rolls through the bars. It's a pleasant contrast to the chilly dampness of the cell and Katara involuntarily presses closer.
Silence hangs between them for another few minutes.
"She's going to kill me." Zuko's voice is still quiet, and the angry edge she's come to expect from him is absent. He sounds certain. Resigned, almost.
She sees it over again, the bolt of lightning meant for her, caught in midair and turned away. She sees Zuko, ropes of electricity twining around his arms until he turns the blast back on his own sister. She still isn't sure how he survived such a direct strike, and she doesn't dare ask. It isn't that she cares, exactly. This is Zuko. The fact that she didn't want to watch him die doesn't mean she cares about Zuko.
She swallows back her emotions. "That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while."
This time, he turns fully around, and she mourns the loss of the steady warmth against her back.
"You've met Azula. There's no way she's going to let me live after—that."
Katara turns to face him, expecting sparks of anger in his eyes, but by the time her gaze finds them, they are turned downward. Away from her. He slumps to the side, resting his shoulder against the bars.
"That's not the stupid part." She laces her fingers through the steel barrier. "She's completely nuts, I know that from experience."
"So what, then? She's going to have me executed. What's so stupid about that?" He frowns and scratches at a muddy streak on his knee.
Accepting it, she wants to say, but the words catch in her throat. She likes this version of Zuko better than the one who chased after them for months, but she will not get her hopes up. Out of the faint glow of the crystal catacombs, reality looks too harsh.
"If we know anything," she says in a half-voice, "It's that Zuko never gives up." She feels him look her way, but she refuses to meet his eyes. "That's what my brother said about you at the North Pole. When you decided to fight a waterbender at night. On a glacier."
The words feel a bit harsher than she intends and she sees it in the way Zuko pulls abruptly away from the bars.
"Do you have a point?" he asks, the words sharp.
Katara swallows again. They're not friends, she reminds herself. They will not be friends, but right now, she needs an ally. He does too. "My point is that giving up right now doesn't seem like a very Zuko thing to do."
He meets her eyes for an instant and her stomach erupts with fluttering. She pulls her eyes away.
"I'm not giving up," he says, his voice the barest rasp. "I'm just—accepting my circumstances. My uncle would be proud of that."
"How is that any different than giving up?"
He runs a hand through his hair. It looks kind of nice this way, Katara realizes. It looks soft. It looks smooth. For a brief, idiotic moment, she wonders if it would be too weird to reach through the bars just to touch his hair.
"What else am I supposed to do?"
Flames erupt in her stomach and she feels her expression harden. "Escape."
He rolls his eyes and lets his head thump against the bars. "Wow. What a great idea. Why didn't I think of that?"
The sarcasm is unexpected, and it prickles her. Katara scowls. "My friends and I freed an entire Fire Nation prison rig. Don't act like it's impossible."
With a sigh, Zuko pushes himself upright again. "Believe me, I heard. But I can't tunnel through a mile of rock, and even if I was a good enough firebender to melt steel, we'd be roasted before I finished." He frowns and fidgets with the scorched edge of his sleeve. His voice drops even lower. "I was never going to make it very long anyway."
She watches him in profile, his head hanging, his shoulders slumped. She's never seen him so tired, so subdued before. So hopeless. She decides she doesn't like it. Zuko isn't quiet, he isn't subdued. He doesn't surrender. Not ever.
Part of her—the part that shares a sliver of Sokka's pessimism, his paranoia—hesitates. Less than a day ago, Zuko was her enemy. Part of her isn't convinced that that has changed, but when she catches sight of the scorch marks trailing up his sleeves and the branching red lines on the backs of his hands, she presses the uncertainty back down. She couldn't ask for better proof of his intentions. Loyal to the Fire Nation or not, Zuko risked his life to keep her safe. She needs an ally, and Zuko is her best—her only option.
"Maybe you can't blast through steel," she says in an undertone, "but I can cut through it."
She gathers the moisture from the corners of the little cell, and the murky water comes to encase her hand. She feels less certain than she sounds—she's never attempted anything like this alone. But Zuko is watching, and Aang isn't here to help her, and Katara refuses to surrender. She will make it possible.
He's not sure he's ever seen bending like this before. The water is a tool in Katara's hands, narrow tendrils lashing at the bars in quick succession. She is precise, ruthless in her efficiency. He sees her forehead crease in concentration and effort, but she never stops. She never slows.
He wishes he could help, but in a space this small, he knows better. He might have a chance to withstand the heat it would take to sever the bars, but Katara is a waterbender. By the time he feels the ill effects of the flames, she will have wilted entirely away.
So he tunes his eyes and ears to the corridors instead. The Dai Li won't leave them unsupervised forever.
The first time he detects footsteps between Katara's measured slices, his warning earns him a frigid glare. Zuko pulls back from the bars. He knows her anger well enough to keep his distance. But the pause is long enough for her to hear the approaching steps and her eyes widen.
She grabs him by the front of the tunic and hauls him back down against the bars.
Zuko thinks he can hear the roar of her pulse as she nestles against his back. He stiffens. It feels strange to be so close, but the guards are still coming. He exhales and does his best to relax.
The guards hardly pause at their cells—a glance to confirm that they haven't escaped, and they are alone again. Zuko is too absorbed in the sensation of the girl resting against his back to notice when silence falls over them again.
But Katara isn't so easily distracted. She lets out an anxious breath and turns her head to whisper a thank you next to his ear. It sends a small shiver up his back, and for a moment, Zuko can feel the lightning coursing through his palms again.
He should regret it. He should loathe himself for turning the lightning off its path to save this enemy girl. But as she scrambles to her feet and goes back to work, whittling away at the bars, he can't find any emotion quite that strong inside himself.
Katara is still alive, and as much as the thought of his sacrifice cuts at him, Zuko can't help but think that the world might be better for it.
When the guards come and go a few more times and Katara's efforts begin to show, a dark, desperate feeling passes over him. She is close now. A few more strikes and there will be nothing left between her and freedom. And his cell is still untouched. She could cut her way out and never look back.
For a moment, she seems to consider it, hovering in indecision, but then she inhales and turns his way.
"Stand back," she says in a voice scarcely over a whisper. "It takes a lot of force to cut through steel. I don't want to hurt you."
His heart skips in his chest but he scrambles back as she turns her water on the bars that separate them.
He doesn't quite believe it. Doesn't quite dare to hope, but one sharpened lash of water strikes, then another and another. And though Zuko knows better than to trust anyone, much less a waterbender, much less her, he starts to believe that she means it. That she really will help him escape.
Long before the bars fall, Katara's arms begin to ache, her eyelids to droop. But there's no time for rest. Not here. Not when she's still in the Dai Li's grasp, not while her fate rests in Azula's hands.
She thinks about running when her passage to the corridor is nearly clear. A few more swipes and she can cut the bars through and be gone long before Zuko can even try to slow her down. She can go back to the life she knows and leave this day in the past. She can forget, in time.
But even before she glances his way, sees the lightning marks trailing up his wrists and remembers the flash of blue light encompassing his entire body, she knows that she will never forget. The life she knows is gone.
So she turns her efforts to bringing down the barrier between them, not daring to pause for fear that she might second-guess herself, that regret might settle in if she takes the time to think. She can't afford to linger on her doubts.
Zuko keeps watch, warning her each time the guards approach, and each time, it grows harder and harder. She doesn't want to stop. She doesn't want to wait. She wants to escape, to get as far from here as possible, but she knows that Zuko is right. She can't let them see her bending.
It's even harder to start again. Her arms ache, and it grows more difficult to keep her water from splattering across the cell. She hasn't seen the sunlight in far too long. For all she knows, they've been down here for days already. But she keeps at it, cutting at the steel bit by tiny bit.
Zuko tries to tell her to rest—if she just stops until the guards pass again, they can make their escape when the next opening comes. They can make the most of their time and they will both be rested.
Katara shakes her head. No. She will not wait any longer. She will not stay locked up, and she will not slow down. The last thing she needs is time to second-guess her choice to help him.
She cuts the bars until only a thread of steel still holds them in place, and Zuko kicks his way into her cell. He spares her a glance—worried, she'd think, if she didn't know better—then rams his way through the bars into the corridor. Half-dazed with exhaustion, she follows.
Zuko takes up one of the fallen bars as a weapon—she thinks she hears him say something about fire being too dangerous for confined spaces like this, but she's only half listening. Zuko seems to recognize the droop in her posture, the heaviness in her limbs. He points her toward the surface, and when she reacts too slowly, he grabs her by the hand.
"Have you ever ridden an ostrich horse before?" Zuko asks in a whisper.
Katara stares a moment too long and blinks. "Is it like riding a sky bison?"
Zuko starts to ask her what riding a sky bison is like, then stops himself. There isn't time for this. Katara is exhausted—even if he gets sense out of her, it will burn precious moments of their escape.
"Never mind." He tugs once more to be certain that the supplies are secure. "She looks fast, that's all that matters."
He swings himself up into the saddle and pauses a moment, staring over the moonlit valley. He could leave. Katara wouldn't be able to stop him. She's worn out from the hours she spent slicing them free—if he wants, Zuko can snap the reins and let his new mount run as far and as fast as she can. He can be alone. He's good at that. Or at least he's better at being alone than being with people his own age.
But he watches Katara yawn and scrub at her eyes with the back of her hand. The only reason she's still here is because she decided to free Zuko too. She could have left him behind. She could have been free, making this escape on her own hours ago. But she didn't. He can't repay that sacrifice with treachery.
"Here." He reaches down to secure her bundles alongside his. "You'll ride behind me. Even with the two of us, we should make it a few miles before they realize we're gone." He only hopes that those few miles will be enough.
Katara accepts his outstretched hand and swings up behind him. For a second, her hands hover by his sides, uncertain, as he looks back over his shoulder.
"Do I—"
Zuko swallows and gives a small nod. "Hold on. You'll get hurt if you fall off."
There is the briefest hesitation—for an instant, Zuko thinks that she's finally alert enough to realize who she's with, how little she trusts him, but then her arms wrap snug around his waist. Zuko stiffens. She almost seems comfortable with this arrangement. But then she yawns in his ear and he reminds himself that she is exhausted, that their escaping together is a matter of necessity, nothing more.
Nothing else matters. Not the fact that no one has been this close to Zuko in—he can't remember how long, not the fact that he doesn't feel that compulsion to push away like he always does with Uncle, like he did with Song and Jet and Jin.
He inhales. None of it matters. Only escape matters.
He cracks the reins and the ostrich horse breaks into a trot.
He isn't sure where he's going, but Zuko rides east from the city. They travel by road for a distance, a road worn well enough to leave no trace of their passing, then he cuts across a field, then another and another, faster and faster. This ostrich horse is a finer beast by far than the one he rode across the desert and it carries them both with ease. Zuko tries to be reassured by that. By now, their escape will have been discovered, but maybe, maybe they can move fast enough to keep out of Azula's reach.
He feels Katara sway once or twice before her head comes to rest on his shoulder. He starts, and a moment passes before he finds the courage to peer back at her.
She is asleep. The sensation of her even breaths against his neck sends chills up his spine, and he can almost feel the lightning jolting through his arms again. His grip on the reins tightens. He should regret it. The reddish lines the electricity traced into his skin still tingle, an inescapable reminder of how close he came to losing everything for a girl who only sees him as an enemy. Who he should still consider an enemy. But this—her soft warmth, the comfortable weight resting against his shoulder, the arms twined loosely around his waist—it feels pleasant. Even right, somehow.
He swallows, willing away the dryness in his mouth. Uncle would tease him for this. Uncle would wink and waggle his bushy eyebrows and make pointed comments, but Zuko pushes that all out of his mind. He doesn't feel that way about Katara, and she certainly feels nothing for him. As it should be. They are allies of convenience and necessity, nothing more.
But when Katara begins to slip, her arms loosening further and her head sliding off his shoulder, a jolt of panic strikes his heart, and Zuko swings an arm back to keep her from falling. Pulse racing, he slows the ostrich horse as he settles her sleeping form into a safer position. She doesn't wake, but when he pulls her arms more tightly around his middle and wraps his own over them to keep her from losing her grasp, she gives a small sigh. She nestles closer, her face tucked into the crook of his neck.
His breath leaves him in a rush and a fresh wave of tingling chills washes over him. He can't think about this. He can't afford to dwell on the bizarre feeling that this is right. That Katara sleeping against his shoulder, the top of her head brushing the rim of his twisted, deformed ear, means anything. It doesn't. Katara doesn't know where she's sleeping or who she's snuggling against.
But that knowledge doesn't make it any easier when she nuzzles against his scar. Zuko feels as though his insides are dissolving. It doesn't hurt. He almost wishes it did. Maybe then he wouldn't be so desperate to surrender to it.
Maybe then he wouldn't be weak enough to close his eyes and lean into her contact.
Somehow, he manages to ride on until the sky fades from black to a faint lavender-gray before he too is swaying with exhaustion. Bleary-eyed, he steers the ostrich horse south, toward a distant range of rolling, forested hills. Katara still sleeps against his back, and when he finds a sheltered overhang against the base of a cliff, he pulls the ostrich horse to a stop.
Katara feels small when he gathers her up, but Zuko staggers under her weight, so tired that his legs don't want to hold him. He lays her down a little less gently than he intends and blinks at her for a second before retrieving a blanket from the saddle and draping it over her.
A part of him, a small, foolish part, wants to give in and lie down beside her. She looks comfortable and soft, and he misses the warm weight of her head on his shoulder. But even muddled in a sleepless fog, he has the sense to stumble to the next patch of dried grass.
Exhausted, he closes his eyes.