title Catch and Release
fandom; pairing Avatar; Zuko/Katara
rating PG-13
prompts 029. waiting, 043. gentle, 014. fill, 004. secrets, 039. neutral, 024. anger, 025. shame in that order, separated by dashes.
an I wrote this a while ago and at first, it was only one scene but as it went on and on, I thought I should just expand it. It's based on prompts for my lj user"50scenes" challenge and uses up seven. I quite like it.

summary When Zuko contracts a fever, Katara agrees to heal him. But alone in a room with a delusional Zuko creates awkward situations and secrets she can't understand. Shit summary. Better fic./blockquote

It's early evening when Toph tells her of his fever. She stumbles to her feet, a morbid curiosity tinkering in her face. There's a slightly delicious thought in his weakness so she ignores the lazy feeling within her legs. "I'm coming," she huffs with a sigh and patters deeper and deeper into the temple, his room almost a million miles away from her own.

She glances through the windows and marvels at the sky as the colours bleed into the horizon, the sun lashing out towards the sky in a mournful manner and then she remembers him.

She pushes open the door and furrows her brow at his state. Slumped on his bed in the corner, she listens to his ragged breathing and the strange impatience in her heart.

"Zuko?" she whispers and his ears prick up. "Zuko," she says louder and he opens his eyes enough to see her move forward and sit on the edge of his bed. He heaves himself upwards and a weary sigh escapes.

He looks at her and she shudders.

There's something mesmerising about his sleepy eyes. With a distant haze within them, he looks at her with a strange certainty, as if she is the only one he wants to see. "Are you okay?" her voice is barely a whisper and she leans forwards so he can hear her.

He doesn't reply and his lip twitches. There is something mesmerising about him so she does not pull back when he sits forwards and is only a breath away. Afraid of this strange awkwardness, she places a hand over his forehead. The heat brands her skin but she keeps it there for a second longer, just to prove she won't flinch. "You've got a fever," she says in a thick voice. His hand reaches up and pries her fingers from his forehead and intertwines them with his own. He looks at the hands held fast and she can feel aprehension and anticipation in each quite dull of her heart. His eyes snap to hers and she freezes. He glances over her face and he comes forwards and his lips are against hers.

Slow and smooth and soft, his lips steal a passionate and longing kiss from her own. She can feel the stars and the universe against his lips and she does not know what to do. His hand travels up her arm and delves into her hair, his thumb on the corner of her jaw. His fingers caress her hair and there is a strange tumult within her. He pulls back slightly so their noses brush against each other and she gasps. He has stolen a kiss and her hand reaches up to touch her mouth in shock.

But he still has not looked away. And then he blinks and realisation sparkles onto his face like firecrackers.

"I'm sorry Mai," he whispers with a hoarse and sorrowful voice. "I thought you were someone else."

She's too shocked to read between the lines, to understand his words. She pulls back and jumps off his bed. He stares at her with those mesmerising iguilty/i eyes and she clenches a fist. After a moment, after she tries to straighten all those knots out of her heart but fails, she whirls around and runs out of his room.

The sky is all darkness now. Only the twinkling stars are her company and she resents how bright and charming they look tonight. Her fingers touch her lips and she grimaces, afraid of the whirlwind inside of her.

He's filled her with a strange sensation, parted from his breath inside her. She felt eternity within him, a thousand suns and that one quite inexplicable reason in his lips. A sacred and special gift that she doesn't know quite what to do with.

She swallows hard, unsure of herself. Biting her lips together, she wonders whether it would be easier to ignore him completely, to phase him out of her existence now but a voice tells her it would be useless. The voice tells her she cannot forget this. She drops her hands to her sides and tells herself to get a grip and to go to him again and demand an explanation. To demand that reason.

She agrees with herself and nods in emphasis. By the time she gets to his room, she decides to despise him. She decides simply to tolerate him since it's easier than any other emotion. But when she pushes open the door and sees him lying on his bed with a strange look of sadness and regret on his unconscious face, her heart bounces and tells her she's wrong; hatred is too difficult.

She sits by his bed again, waiting for him to awaken so she can smooth out the creases he has just conjured within her again.

Halfway through the night, his body begins to turn and shudder. "Zuko?" She leans forwards, thinking he's about to awaken but he continues. She reaches out to touch his shoulder and gasps at his cold, clammy skin.

His slight muttering in his sleep unsettles her but she tries to ignore them as she pulls the water from the bowl beside his bed. Her hands and his forehead glow as she tries to heal away the fever. In long graceful movements, she sweeps down to his chest and then back up to his face, her hands lingering over his scar. He gasps and she cranes her ear forwards to listen to him. "Father please... I am your loyal son!"

She pulls back immediately, her back ramrod straight and her hands held to her chest. It's as if her favourite toy has been snatched away and snapped in half, as if her nightmares and heartache have come true and she forces herself to look at him.

His pale pale skin, slightly damp from the water and sweat, gleams and her heart clenches. "I shouldn't have..." she withdraws from him, unsure how to act on this betrayal and sits herself down on the chair in the far corner of the room.

For a few moments he quietens and then without warning, his body lurches forwards and she jumps up at the movement. His hand reaches for his scar as he gasps for air. He stays like this, his hand on his scar and his body slumped, completely unaware of her before he sighs heavily and leans back to sleep again.

In the corner, she watches with tight eyes, both angry and afraid.

He feels exhausted. As if he's never slept. There's an aching calm inside of him that tells him it will not always be like this. He releases a tight breath and his eyes sting as he opens them a little. The sun and her rays, his kith and kin, blind him for a second. When he opens his eyes finally, awake and aware, she sits at the corner of his room with her arms crossed and an unexpected anger smothering her pretty pretty face.

There is a storm behind her silence. He knows it very well, has met with her anger often and fought with it too many times to count. He can see the storm flash and strike and dazzle and hurt in her eyes.

Like the lightening his sister spins, it weaves out of her eyes and aims straight for his heart.

Catch and release, he hopes. Catch and release, except he's not quite sure how to hold her hate.

"What do you want from us?"

He blinks.

"Why are you here?!"

Her voice is harsh and he hasn't used his yet.

"To help you defeat my father."

"Really?"

He thinks about pointing out the obvious, that he's here, half-naked, probably being hunted and most likely having flames tossed onto the miniature doll of himself from his father and sister alike.

"Of course I am."

"That's not what you said last night."

Last night. The words are strange and foreign, and perhaps for her, they hold some meaning, but for him, they are hazy and scrunched up like unread letters.

"Um... what happened last night?"

She looks hard at the floor slightly, her face flushing red and he wonders if she thinks he's lying, if he's feigning sudden amnesia.

"They're your family."

"Were my family. We don't share anything. I've disowned them and they've disowned me. We're nothing to each other." The cool in his voice causes her eyes to narrow.

"But they're your family."

"Who's side do you want me to be on?!" he says angrily and her frown tells him that she's already quite familiar with this plight. "Look I'll do anything possible to keep you safe. You've got a job to do and I'll make sure it gets done."

"I'm sure you will," she says with a small smile.

"I'm not going to betray you again! Why can't you let it go?!" His outburst causes her to flinch and he realises this was not what she meant.

His tongue suddenly feels quite silly in his mouth, as if it shouldn't be there, as if it doesn't quite fit. "I'm sorry..."

"It's okay," she offers but they both know it's not. Still, the air thins slightly, an uneasy truce weaving between them until she suddenly decides to hate him again.

She ups and leaves, her boots patting on the floor lightly. She stops as she opens the door and turns her head back to look at him but not quite make contact. "I still don't like you," she informs him as if to prove a point.

She shuts the door with a smack and he doesn't understand what she's just said.

fin

afn With Katara's comment in the last scene, the "I'm sure you will", you can interpret it in two ways: 1) that she's actually being nice and Zuko misunderstands or 2), she actually means it in a mean way but at Zuko's outburst, is shocked into seeming nice. Because I'm mean like that. May write a sequel to this, but that depends on the response to this. I have totally worked my ass off on this, writing and rewriting and making sure it flows properly, so I really hope you guys like it. ;)