Boxes

The problem with Zuko, Katara decided, was that he didn't fit. Everyone else in her life packed themselves away into nice, neat little boxes, and she resented it when they wouldn't stay where she left them. Aang was the hero that was going to save the world, and he was going to be its master. Sokka was her brother, and he was meant to be annoying and stupid, and mostly get things wrong but always pull through for her in the end. Zuko was meant to stand for the fire nation, he was meant to be pure evil: easily destroyed without regret.

And sometimes he played along with her. Sometimes he charged at her, swore at her, lashed out at her with destructive fire, and she countered him with her smooth unyielding water because that was how things went. That was how they fit together, and that was how it was meant to be.

But then Aang the saviour would tell her how Zuko the evil rescued him from death, and Jet the noble would turn out to be a psychopath and Haru the perfect would leave. And Sokka the stupid would hold her as she cried, and wouldn't make any smart aleck remarks, and she the hard-working would fail to master a bending technique and the boxes would fall apart and everything would rush out all jumbled up and wrong.

And it was when everything fell apart that she would see Zuko collapsed on the ground, or looking at her half-pleadingly, promising her he wouldn't hurt her or her brother if she would just help him please and he'd tumble out of his 'evil enemy' box and then he'd just be a boy around her age, trying to make sense of a world gone mad. And in that moment it wasn't a case of her healing and him destroying, or him taking and her saving, but they were just two kids who were trying to make things right, trying to keep their families safe from insanely powerful monsters.

That was the problem with him she would say, after he had left and she went back to putting everyone back in their proper places. She would dismiss Sokka's moments of self-doubt, and how his hand would sometimes touch hers just so in a way that made her squirm with unidentified somethings and she would dismiss the fact that Aang seemed to have no earthly idea what he was doing. She would dismiss the fat old man standing in the background, and the pretty people who were putrid underneath. And then finally, once everyone else was back in their boxes, she would dismiss Zuko's pleading face, Zuko's despairing tone, Zuko's desperate honour and put him firmly back into his evil enemy box and tape it shut.

And all would be well, for a while. But then Zuko would turn up and he would smile, or snarl, or maybe both, and once again the boxes would come falling down.