Day Three: Voices

Day Three: Voices

Zuko pushes the heavy drapes aside a little and peers out of the window, gazing at the horizon – at how the rising sun, this pale disc obscured by the mist, painting the dark blue night sky soft pink. The door to his chambers is creaked open – he can hear the servants bustling, coming and going out in the hallway, talking, some singing.

His fist clenches around the curtain, the tendons standing out, muscles tense under the skin.

She used to sing, too, her voice echoing in the vast rooms during those days after the Comet, when, for the time being, the palace was hauntingly quiet, when nothing was certain, when he was still bedridden, still healing – then she would sing, stealing a little sliver of life into these old, dark rooms. She would sing old Water Tribe songs, taught by her grandmother, stylish Earth Kingdom tunes she heard in Ba Sing Se, traditional Fire Nation ballads she must have picked up traveling the outer islands, where they were still sung.

She would sing, sit by him, attend his wound and kiss him. She would say she loved him and he would say it back.

But this little, personal heaven only lasted until they were together, until Aang and the others arrived, victorious, with Ozai in chains.

After that she only had smiles and soft words for Aang.

He observed it for days in silence, with a breaking heart, before calling her out on it.
They were standing right here, in front of this very window. He remembers every little detail: how she was resting against the window frame, how the setting sun cast a halo over her head; how her hair was a little tousled, how her eyes were a little red.

“You lied to me,” he accused her, his voice cold, hurt.

She shook her head.

“I didn’t,” she said, her words no more than a powerless whisper. “I do love you.” She avoided his eyes. “It’s just you are stronger than Aang.”

He shook his head. He didn’t understand it. He still has problems understanding it today.
But Katara felt it; she knew it. She always did, always has, always will. She has long since known him better than himself.

“By some mysterious way of the spirits, you both love me. If I choose you – and La help me, I so want to choose you –, it would destroy Aang. He won’t bear it. It would be wrong. Who knows what would happen. But if I choose him – you are strong, Zuko, so strong,” she reached out and placed her hand on his bicep. He remembers how he shuddered under her touch. “You’ll live on. You’ll get over me, get on with you life.” She let go of him.

“This is stupid!” he exclaimed, angry, stubborn, and so, so young. “This is stupid and you know it. Katara, please, listen to me…” He reached for her hands, feeling the silky soft skin under his fingertips. He remembers feeling her pulse racing, her body subtly reacting to him. He was ready to beg – to grovel, to do everything to make her stay.

She pulled her hands from his grip and turned away.

“Please, stop,” she pleaded. “Don’t make it harder than it already is.” She let out a sigh and pushed a wayward lock from her face. Her hand was trembling. “We are leaving tomorrow. I won’t be back for a long while. If you must write – address it to Sokka or Aang, not to me. It’ll be the best, you’ll see.” And with that, she walked out of the room, out of his life.

As much as it hurt, he did what she asked. He never wrote to her. When they met – because they met, from time to time; it was inevitable –, he was civil and polite, but kept his distance. Years went by before they had a real conversation again.

He looks down at the garden now, at the servant who is busy putting out the torches that light the pathway during the night. Just there, just over that bend, on the old bench – that’s where they sat, years later. That’s where talked, really talked again.

She was pregnant – for the second time. Kya, no more than three at the time, was playing with the turtleducks not far from there. Katara’s eyes hardly moved from her daughter.

Apart from them the garden was empty; he was free to talk, to tell her everything he wanted, without having to be afraid of being overheard.

And yet, he couldn’t find the words.

So she spoke instead of him.

“I regret it sometimes, you know.” He didn’t say a word, but turned his gaze on her. She didn’t look at him, but must have felt his eyes on her, because she continued: “Not choosing you, I mean. When life gets too much – when we just won’t stop traveling, when Kya is grumpy and I haven’t seen a friend in weeks, when I can’t be more… more than the Avatar’s wife, who takes care of him – who mends his clothes and cooks his meals – and stands by him, smiling, always smiling, and then at night he slips under the covers, holds me close, whispers that he loves me, and then…” her voice broke. She touched her cheek. “Then I imagine that it’s you beside me, not him. It’s pathetic and wrong, I know, but I can’t help it.”

He didn’t say a word, just nodded, his mouth dry, his heart clenched.

“I still love you,” she breathed, almost ashamed, like it was some dirty, sinful thing.

In some aspect, it was.

“As I love you,” he replied, covering her small, but strong, weathered, hand with his own. “But still – you’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t really need her answer – he knew her, but Katara still nodded.

“But why?”

“Because there are things bigger than us,” she replied. “Fate and duty and future.”

“And Aang.” Aang was bigger than life.

“And Aang,” she agreed. “It might not make me the happiest I could be, but my place is still beside him. It’s my duty, my fate.”

She squeezed his hand.

Unshed tears hurt his eyes.

“I just wish it was me, not him.”

Katara hung her head for a moment.

“Maybe it’s time you fulfilled your duties, too,” she said, looking at her laughing daughter again, free hand on her rounded stomach. Imagining amber-eyed children playing with fire, without doubt. He knows he did.

Zuko turns away from the window and walks over to the bed, where his ceremonial robe is laid out for him, ready to be worn. He picks it up and, with heavy heart, slips his arms into the sleeves.

Even that day, he knew what kind of duty she was talking about. The same duty his advisors had been bothering him about for years. And finally, he has bowed his head to this duty. He placed the needs of the Fire Nation before his own heart.

And today is his wedding day.

In the end it was his council that chose – the girl, his bride, is nice. Young – maybe too young – and pretty. Well educated, moderately clever, too. Not too independent and rarely has own ideas. And, according to the midwives, fertile. Which is, in the eyes of the nobles, is the most important thing right now.

He believes they will get on well, although he has no illusions about love.

He steps in front of the mirror and reaches for the comb.

Today is his wedding day – it’s still hard to grasp; it’s not exactly how he imagined it years ago, as an idealistic teenager who fell in love with a girl who sang ballads by his bedside –, and Katara is not even in the country.

She wanted to come, she even told him so in her letter – they are past the stage where they don’t even correspond; the letter, now wrinkled from having been read so many times, is lying on the dresser, under his crown – but was unable to, as she had just given birth to her third child. A boy, again. An airbender, finally.

“It’s fortunate, really, that I finally gave birth to an airbender,” she wrote, “because I don’t think I would be able to carry another child. It was a difficult pregnancy and a difficult delivery, and I am still weak, but Tenzin – that’s what Aang named him – is healthy and strong, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

He picks up the crown, his fingers brushing against the now soft paper – by now, he knows it by heart. He raises the golden hairpiece to his head, and secures it with a pin.

He is ready.

He walks to the door, but before he exits the room, he looks back one more time – his gaze moves over the bed, the window, the dresser, one more time. He can almost see himself, his younger self, and Katara amongst these walls. He can almost hear her voice, belting out those songs he once grew to love.

And then a step and he is out of the room, closing the door behind himself.

“In this life, fate wasn’t kind to us. But maybe… maybe in the things will be different. Maybe we will be able to have each other then. I’ll be waiting for you. But until then – be strong. I love you.”