Zutara Week Day Five: Unrequited
Part 2 of my three-part Zutara Week installment.
Girl of Walls and Secrets, Part 2
(Look for Part 1 here and Part 3 on 7/19)
She was fairly certain most of the people in the room felt when he saw her too. It would have been something silent and private, a glance between two people, if it had been anyone but the Avatar.
A funnel of air swished up around the band, causing the poor flutist to all but swallow his instrument in the sudden disturbance. Katara’s eyes met Aang’s as he rushed (nearly floated) over to her. Such an instinctual thing it was, to look at him. When had she last done that? Had it really been seven months now? The way her body responded to him made it seem like much more recently. She still knew exactly how to feel about him—protective, instant and unyielding devotion, the kind that choked everything else.
“Katara.” The way Aang said her name made her think he had rolled those letters through his mind many times since she’d left him. “Where have you—why?”
Her mouth dipped open. She’d rehearsed this, oh, she’d rehearsed this until she couldn’t see straight.
I’m sorry, Aang. I needed to get away. I’d only intended to leave for a little while, a few days, maybe, but—I forgot. I forgot, Aang, how it was to breathe air that isn’t you. I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was okay.
I’m sorry that I’m not sorry at all.
She curled her tongue against the roof of her mouth, jaw clamped tight. Aang’s gray-blue eyes flew over her face, watching, waiting, begging her without saying a word. He was so good at that, conveying emotion in wordless waves. Dredging up passion or anger or hope or guilt with one look. It was unintentional on his part, she knew, but that didn’t make it any less taxing.
“Are you okay?” His brows slid up, pointed over his perpetually childlike face. Such innocence—already she could feel it tugging at her, looping strands around her heart that had taken years to break. “Sokka said he got a letter from you a few months back. But I…I just want to know. From you. Are you…happy?”
Katara almost laughed. She knew he wouldn’t be angry with her, but he should have been. She was angry at herself for leaving him, knew it was a stupid, selfish thing to do, and yet he was asking if she was happy.
She forced her mouth open. “I—” Talk. Talk. She needed to say something. She needed to explain herself to him, to get him to understand so he’d stop looking at her like that, like she was blameless and perfect when she was anything but. She wouldn’t get sucked back into his world—he was so good, so maddeningly good, at whisking her up into a breathless whirl, and she wouldn’t do it, not again, not again—
Trumpets. Where Katara had managed to sneak in without proper introduction, whoever this guest was had not. She sent a silent prayer of thanks for the interruption and pivoted to the door.
Only to suck that prayer of thanks right back in. No, not thanks at all—she’d rather the trumpets have signaled an attack than the guest who entered.
Katara shoved into the crowd, twisting haphazardly through the people before Aang realized she had left him. Again. Maybe this time he’d be angry with her; maybe when she saw him next, he’d yell at her, spit all of the hateful things she knew she deserved.
“You abandoned us at the start of something important, Katara! We’re forging a new world, and you just…left. How could you? How could you turn your back on people who need you?”
How indeed?
Because of this feeling. This suffocating barrage of sensation that encased her now—this was how she had felt the moment Aang and Zuko had united in their effort to create a better future. After the war, it had been a dream, a dalliance while Aang toured the world, healing wounds, mending damage; while Zuko stayed in the Fire Nation, cleaning up his own battered country. But once all immediate concerns were fixed and they’d come together, spent their collective time on what they called Republic City—
Katara could barely handle the tornado that was Aang. Every day had worn more and more on her resolve to tolerate the eternal state of suffocation in his presence, forever caught up in how his every action trumped anything she could ever do. It was selfish of her, and she knew that, which was why she had lasted at his side as long as she had.
But on top of that, she could not handle, would not handle, absolutely refused to handle…
“Fire Lord Zuko,” a steward announced once the trumpets had ceased and Katara was halfway across the dining room. “And Fire Lady Mai.”
