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Katara is unsure at what point she fell asleep, exhaustion had been pulling at her all day. Between healing Zuko and dealing with ‘holy shit the war is over’ there had been little time to sleep the past few days.
Sleep had been captured in small handfuls, glimpses of bliss between work and responsibilities.
All of them were exhausted so it wasn’t a surprise that the instant she had even a minute of free time, Katara dropped into a deep sleep. She sat on the chair next to Zuko’s bed, ran a hand through her tangled hair and allowed sleep to claim her.
Her dreams were filled with fragments of barely remembered memories, flashes of a lost time. Her mother was there, a face almost lost to time smiling at her so warmly.
When she wakes, eyes still heavy with fatigue and body aching, the patient’s bed beside her is empty. Zuko had left.
The first instinct is annoyance, it’s easier to be angry or frustrated than face the new found protective instinct that Zuko had somehow awoken in her. Katara sighs, eyes clenching shut and lips drawn in a tight line.
She stands on shaky legs, weak with inconsistent eating habits and even less regular sleep, ready to hunt down Zuko and drag him back to bed by his ear if necessary.
Zuko had always been bad at accepting help, or at least he had been since he joined the group. Desperate to prove his worth through independence, he would patch up his own injuries and sit alone after nightmares.
It was horribly unhealthy, something Katara had battled out of Sokka after countless nights spent huddled together grieving their mother and their wartorn village.
Katara walked with purpose, almost marching. Her hands were curled in tight fists and her face scrunched in a determined frown. Zuko would accept her help if she had to force it on him.
She scanned countless corridors, brushing pasts servants and guards without a second thought. It wasn’t until she made it to the council room that she found Zuko.
He was half hunched, back bent but stood up, an arm wrapped around his side, gripping bandages.
Hakoda, face set in an uneasy grimace, stood between Zuko and the council room door. Her father’s hands were up in surrender but she was too far away to understand the situation fully.
As she moved closer she began to take in more of Zuko’s appearance, face flushed with fever, sweat matted hair and eyes so glassy there was no way he was fully with them.
“What’s going on?” The question isn’t directed at anyone but it is clear Zuko is in no condition to be answering questions in his current deluded state so she turns to her father for an answer.
Hakoda hesitates a second, mouth opening and closing with no words, before finally answering.
“Fire Lord Zuko is trying to enter the council room.” Hakoda shrugs helplessly “There isn’t even a meeting going on. I just want him to go back to bed.”
Zuko shakes his head frantically, hands trembling as they clutch his side tighter. When he speaks his voice is wrecked, hoarse and desperate.
“I need to,” a dry swallow “I need to attend the meeting.” He turns to face Katara, eyes finally leaving the floor. They’re unseeing and blank.
“Father will be so angry,” fear bleeds into his voice, a hardly there tremble and an almost silent pleading.
For a second, Katara considers snapping him out of it then and there. She holds no wish to pry into Zuko’s hallucinations. Hakoda puts the plans to rest swiftly.
He was well meaning but in a haze of sickness, faced with a raised hand, Zuko panicked. Hakoda had placed a hand on Zuko’s shoulder, planning to guide him back to infirmary to rest.
Zuko was immediately scrambling back, flinching wickedly away and dropping to his knees with a sickening crunch.
The teen slipped into seiza position easily, clearly a rehearsed move. His hands were shaking as they grasped his silken trousers and his breaths were gasping.
Hakoda watchs, horror forming in his eyes, as words begin to spill from Zuko’s lips.
“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t mean to disobey.” Zuko’s breaths are shorter, fueled by panic. “I-I just need to obey my father. I can’t- I can’t disobey him again.”
Zuko looks up, eyes shining with unshed tears “It hurt so much last time.”
It is then, on the brink of a serious invasion of privacy, that Katara steps in.
“Dad, I think you should go,” Hakoda nods uncertainly, throat bobbing with emotion and eyebrows furrowed. Katara turns her attention to Zuko.
He is still in seiza position but his gaze has been set back to the floor. Katara swallows around the discomfort in her throat.
“Zuko-“ she begins, her voice soft and quiet. The reaction is instantaneous, a flinch then a horrifying choked whimper.
“ Mum? ” Katara stops, hand halfway to Zuko’s shoulder, her heart stills in her chest and her brain blanks for a second.
“Mum, you came back?” Zuko is smiling tentatively through tear stained cheeks. Katara couldn't find it in herself, a kindness that had survived the war, to deny Zuko the glimmer of hope he had found.
“I won’t let you down again.” He shifts closer, shuffling on his knees, looking the furthest thing from a Fire Lord you can get “I won’t make you angry so you don’t have to leave again. I promise I’ll work super hard and you’ll be proud. ‘Kay?”
Katara swallows “I’m already so proud of you, Zuko.” Zuko practically melts, shoulders falling and hands relaxing.
“Let’s go back to bed now, okay Zuko?” He nods easily, face lax in a halfway dreamy expression.
The journey back to the infirmary is painful, Zuko barely able to stand on his own two legs but flinching away from any offer of help.
He stumbles several times, knees bashing into the floor. By the time they return, tears are brimming in the corner of his eyes as his knees turn shades of purple and red.
There are bleeding spots where the skin had been bashed too many times, blood dripping down his shins.
“Zuko, I need you to go lay down alright?” Katara makes sure to keep her voice low.
Complaint as ever in his current state, Zuko immediately sits on the bed, perched uncomfortably at the very end.
“Can I please go to the meeting?” Katara hesitates, lips moving around words too dangerous to voice.
She chooses to ignore the question, instead focusing on the injury at Zuko’s side. The bandages are coming loose and the visible skin is red and angry.
“ Please ,” a tear drops to the floor, so loud in the silent room “I won’t disrespect the Fire Lord again. I’ll stay silent.”
“Let's just get you healed up, okay?” Exhaustion pulls at her eyelids but the fever probably means Zuko is in dire need of another healing session so she pushes through.
Water bending comes as easily to her now as breathing. It feels like home. It feels like Sokka and Aang and her mum.
Zuko goes still under her touch and for a second the fever and delusions and upcoming political battle are forgotten as she works.
Water shifts on his torso, swirling and bending with every movement of the master’s hand.
The water is cold against Zuko’s fevered skin; fire bender’s naturally run hot but his skin was almost burning to the touch.
Moan and whimpers slip though his lips the whole time. His eyes are closed but twitching underneath the lids.
An hour later Zuko falls into a fitful sleep and Katara allows herself to rest. She pulls the water back into the gourd tied to her hip.
In sleep, even feverish, Zuko looks the most peaceful he has in a while. His eyebrows relax from a scowl and his chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm.
Easing herself into the bedside chair, Katara finally allows her muscles to relax, day old aches fading. Sokka shatters the momentary peace with his arrival.
The doors slam open and in comes Sokka, Aang, Toph and Suki, a flurry of emotion and noise.
“Katara! Dad says Zuko was sick?” Sokka is so loud that Katara worries he may wake Zuko but the Fire Lord barely shifts in his sleep at the sudden outburst.
She hushes him regardless.
“He’s asleep now but he did have a nasty fever,” she pauses, uncertain over how much to reveal “He was pretty delusional. He thought I was his mum.”
Toph shuffles to the bedside, face revealing no emotion but everyone knew how much she respected Zuko, as a bender and as a friend.
“He’ll be okay though?”
Katara smiles fondly at her “He’ll be fine. He just needs a good nap and friendly company.”
They sit in a relative silence from then, no words need to be exchanged. Instead, they watch over Zuko- taking in every twitch of the face or tremble of the muscles.
Suki watches the door with such vigilance that only a Kyoshi warrior could possess. Aang corrects Zuko’s blanket several times, hands worrying over silken sheets.
Toph keeps her feet on the floor, checking for any inconsistencies with the heart rate and Katara watched.
She watches Zuko’s chest rise and fall, watches his dark hair shift with every twitch, watches his flushed face.
Golden eyes eventually peak open, as blearily as a newborn.
“-Katara?” He begins, eyes focusing in on her as she pushed a strand of hair off of his face.
“Is Chief Hakoda mad at me?” Katara ignores the question. Her dad is the furthest thing from mad but engaging in the conversation will probably prevent Zuko from relaxing.
“You’re alright now Zuko. Just relax.” And he does, closing his eyes again but not falling back to sleep. He smiles against the easy chatter Sokka manages to spark up and the warmth of the candles adorning the room.
The day passes in hesitant, delicate peace.
When evening falls, pink skies and golden sun, Katara decides to check the lightning wound again.
“I won’t touch it,” she reassures as Zuko flinches away from gentle touches “I just want to check for infection.”
The bandages come away easily, unraveling to reveal mottled pink skin with an unnerving white zigzag cutting through.
The injury still radiates faint heat but seems clear from any complications. Aang exclaims something about ‘scar buddies’ and Sokka winces sympathetically
“It looks fine but it is going to leave a nasty scar.” Katara warns.
Zuko huffs a forced laugh “What’s another scar from a family member?”
The room goes still. No one dare breathe or move. Katara’s hands stop, hovering above half done up bandages.
Zuko seems to pick up on the sudden tension and looks down out his bedsheets in shame.
“You didn’t know?” His voice takes on the same hesitant, childish quality it had held when his brain was still addled with fever.
“Know what, Zuko?” Katara asks. Zuko is in a stable sense of mind now so she feels no moral qualms asking into such a topic.
Zuko hesitates before bringing his hand up and gesturing at the scar maring the left side of his face.
“My father.” He says simply. Two words and it shakes Katara’s world to the core.
When she had imagined the Fire Nation, Zuko’s face had come into mind. His scar set his face in a permanent scowl and the red burn was so different from the white that laced their warriors.
And now, faced with new information, the reality of the Fire Lord Ozai’s cruelty left her feeling sick.
“I- um I spoke out in a war meeting against some stupid genral. I was told to fight in an Agni Kai. I thought- well I mean you can fill in the blanks? I couldn’t fight my father so I begged for forgiveness and got a scar and an impossible mission for it.”
Katara reaches across, resting her hand on his and interlocking their fingers together.
“Zuko,” he looks up to meet her eyes and for a second the honey gold is enough to steal her breath “Your dad was cruel. You didn’t deserve that.”
He nods “It took me a while to realise but I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that I deserved better. It’s probably thanks to you.”
Katara feels her cheeks heat and ignores Sokka’s fake gag in the corner.
“I earned your forgiveness and you accepted me.” He runs a finger over the top of her hand “That means more than you will ever know.”
Distantly she is aware of the other’s leaving, a hushed order from Suki barely registers but when Zuko’s lips meet hers, hot and desperate, it hardly matters anyway as the rest of the world fades away.