Disclaimer: This story was inspired by the hauntingly beautiful song, Where the Wild Roses Grow. Highly recommend you listen to it. I wanted to do Zutara for a long time, who was and still is my true OTP from Avatar. This year I wanted to do a Halloween story, and thought, since this is my first time writing about them why not combine the two. This fanfic is especially special to me because it's both a dedication and birthday gift to two great friends of mine: kaze senju the wolfwarrior girl and mnmskittle. Hope you two like it. Hope you readers like it.

There were many legends that surrounded her small village in Paris, France, being a famous ground-site in many historical tales and tell-tales consisting of anguish, war, blood, and love. Legends such as the errer enfant, a little girl who beckon a kind stranger with her sweet smile, lure them into the catacombs where she claimed her dog ran away, and use her pearly white teeth from that adorable smile to rip that kind stranger into pieces. A princess giving her virtue to the foreign enemy in order to save her lover only to bring total destruction to her people. A weeping willow mother whom people claimed to this day roamed the streets of Paris looking for her lost child, stream of tears forever flowing down her face.

All were told and speculated innumerable times over the years, but there was one that was the most popular of them all.

One that was a personal favorite of hers.

The legend of the Rose Keeper.

There was more versions and different interactions on that legends alone than all others combined, with so many passing the story on, spinning their own web on the tale.

Some say he was the doomed lover of the princess who lost her dignity along with her neck. Others say he was a mysterious phantom that made it his life goal to destroy anyone who planted roses, seeing them as a mockery to his own.

She preferred her grandmother's spin on the story.

According to her grandmother, the keeper was once a simple man who came from a high noble-blood family, whose beauty was so striking it took breaths away, highly gifted in the arts of persuasion that rivaled the serpent. He charmed admirers' hearts and outwitted rivals and obstacles, cheating his way of out traps and deaths innumerable times.

However, there was one thing the man could not cheat himself from, no matter how sly he was: love.

He had fallen in love with a girl, one of lowest status whose future lay either on the bottom or flat on her back. Such a girl shouldn't have affected him. Yet she beckoned him so easily. All it took was one glance into her eyes, seemingly frail with unshakable fire burning within for him to fall hard. The fairest rose of them all. He believed such a girl like her should be treated better than the peacocks paraded in his mother's courts, gifted with wonders that were more than jeweled and dazzled.

Something rare. Something from the heart.

He planted her roses.

Not just any roses, but extraordinary roses. Roses the color of bright crimson red, each petal strong as steel and smoother than the world's finest silk, the sweet perfume so intoxicating it was like experiencing heaven through inhalation.

He wanted the roses to last forever, a symbol to his beloved that his love would never die, so he did something crazy. He made a promise to the devil through a powerful blood oath that he would be his personal servant if he could make his wish come true.

Winter came and it went. The roses remained as beautiful and strong, unaffected by the forces of nature. And continued to be so through the spring, summer, autumn, and winter again in a continuous loop, immune to the strong winds and pouring rain, unfazed by the blazing sun and heavy snow.

Rejoiced, he decided that after a year of planting and waiting to make his move. He left a letter for his intended to meet him by the riverbank, where his red roses grew wild and free.

She appeared, leaping into his arms, accepting the proposal and roses with a great passionate kiss pouring with love and a bright smile that outshone the heavens.

Yet, later on that night, that bright smile would turn into a stunned expression forever marked onto the girl's face. A promise was a promise. It was foolish for one to believe they could gain their wish through a contract without giving something back in return.

And the devil was one to hold onto promises concerning him, intending they be seen through.

That night, the man had taken his first victim.

Centuries passed by, and people steered cleared of the riverbank in the West woods, cautious of the love-twisted man whose spirit supposedly haunted the woods.

People believed that he was sentenced to eternal misery, a punishment for his naïveté against a powerful man, luring victims in with his beauty and roses, then leading them down to hell. Others believed his once loving heart turned to black stone, and he vowed to crush every loving heart that dared displayed affection near his roses

Her grandmother had her own theory.

Just as love was the thing that changed him, it was the thing that kept him bound to earth. He believed that he would find his love again, his fairest rose, and vowed he would bring her back to the river, where a blooded-red, rose-bed awaited her.