Chapter Text
Day 1
Zuko sat bolt upright in bed. His wound, the mark Azula had left on his torso with her lightning, blazed with pain at the sudden movement.
Katara lay next to him, in an exhausted doze on top of the blankets, worn out from the healing work she’d done to stabilize him. Despite her best efforts -and she had done absolutely everything she could- it throbbed with an aching heat.
It was sunset. The eerie darkness of Sozin’s comet had passed, the sky returning to its usual blue. But now the sky was stained orange again as the sun fell into the west.
Zuko couldn’t explain it, but something was wrong.
He swung his legs out of bed, forcing down the cry of pain that fought its way out of his throat. His hand flew to his bandaged chest.
At his movement, Katara woke up.
"Zuko!" She said, jumping up and reaching for him, "what are you doing?! You need to rest!"
The commotion started a minute later, deep within the palace. A riot of noise that sent a spike of terror running through Zuko.
"We have to go," he said, pushing himself to his feet with a grimace.
"What?" Katara rose too, looking confused.
Zuko grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head, "We have to go. Now. Hurry."
She reached for him, "Zuko…"
He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
"Trust me," he said. "Please. We need to go. Now."
Katara, confusion still in her eyes, nodded. She gathered her things. Zuko grabbed his as well. He twisted a little too fast and spent a long minute bent almost double over the bedside table, waiting for the stab of pain to pass.
Katara came up beside him and pulled his arm over her shoulders, her other arm circling his waist.
Elsewhere in the palace, the dangerous noise only grew. Sounds that were unmistakable to Zuko: the sound of his father taking out his anger on anything and anyone who happened to be in his path.
Aang had failed. Ozai was alive. And he was coming for them.
———————
3 days earlier
Aang pulled up his glider and landed lightly on the windowsill of Katara’s room. It was pretty late, but Katara was often awake long into the night. And Aang really needed to talk to someone.
Katara had been avoiding him ever since their night at the Ember Island Players. He felt kind of bad about what he’d said to her on the balcony that night. He shouldn’t have been so pushy with her.
He still wanted to be with her, of course. It was Katara. They were meant to be together. He knew it. Why else would she have been the one to find him when he was frozen in an iceberg? She was his forever girl.
But he didn’t even need to talk about that right now if she didn’t want to. He just needed to talk. He was so worried about Sozin’s Comet and his impending confrontation with the Fire Lord. He knew he needed to defeat Ozai to end the war. But if he couldn’t do it without killing him…Aang wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Katara would know what to say. Katara always knew exactly what to say.
But that night her room was dark, and her bed was empty.
“Katara?” He called, jumping into the room and landing on the rug.
She wasn’t there. Her bed didn’t even look like she’d been in it yet. The door to the room was just slightly ajar. Like she’d gone out for a late night stroll on the eve of the biggest fight of their lives.
“Katara?” He ventured again, tiptoeing airbender-light toward the door, and the hall beyond it.
The whole house was dark and quiet. The others had all gone to bed ages ago. No lights burned, and the only sound was the soft rush of the waves.
What if something had happened to her? What if she needed his help?
He crept frantically through the house, searching for her. And that was when he heard the soft voices coming from the second floor. He rushed down the hall, leaping into the air and landing in front of the open doorway…
…and he halted just in time, because Katara wasn’t alone.
They sat with their backs to him, sitting on the floor, legs dangling out over the edge of the hole in the wall that Aang had thrown Zuko out of just a day ago. The figure on the left was Katara.
The other was Zuko.
Katara’s hand rested on the floor between them. Zuko’s hand was on top of hers.
“It’ll be ok,” Zuko’s voice came, low and husky in the half light.
“How do you know?” Katara asked.
“Because it has to be,” Zuko said. “If my father gets what he wants…I don’t know if I want to see that world.”
Katara leaned over so her head rested against Zuko’s shoulder.
“We won’t let it happen that way,” she said, soft determination in her voice.
Zuko heaved a heavy sigh. Then he turned and pressed his lips to the top of Katara’s head.
Aang’s heart decided to relocate somewhere near his knees.
“Do you think he has it in him?” Zuko asked.
“Aang?” Katara asked.
“Yeah.”
“…I don’t know.”
Aang recoiled like he’d been struck. Katara… She thought he couldn’t defeat the Fire Lord? After everything, is that what she really thought of him?
Zuko put a gentle hand under Katara’s chin, lifting her head from his shoulder.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “we’re a team. You and me. Even if…”
He trailed off. Something wordless passed between them. Something that Aang could only guess at, but that they understood without even having to speak. They tipped towards each other until their foreheads were touching, drawn into each other like gravity.
“Promise?” Katara asked.
“Promise.”
Zuko kissed her.
And she kissed him back.
Katara’s hand reached toward Zuko, her fingers threading through his hair. She melted against him with all the ease and comfort of deep, trusting intimacy.
It was everything Aang had ever wanted from her. And she was giving it to Zuko.
His chest hurt. He didn’t want to see this anymore. He shouldn’t be watching this at all.
He couldn’t look away.
But Aang wrenched himself away from the door. He slumped against the wall with his hands on his knees.
…He’d been right the first time. The impulse he’d had when he’d first woken up on a captured fire navy ship after Ba Sing Se fell, the one that Katara had talked him out of, was correct.
He was going to have to do this on his own.
Aang fled Ember Island and did not look back.
———————
Appa was gone.
Zuko had led the way through the palace, sneaking through all the secluded half-used hallways to the courtyard where they’d housed the flying bison. They hadn’t encountered any danger yet, but even the short walk had left Zuko exhausted, his chest burning with pain and his breaths coming hard and ragged.
And Appa -their escape, their way out of the palace- was gone.
“Where could he have gone?” Katara asked, breathless, already scanning the skies.
“I don’t…know…” Zuko said, between heavy breaths. “But we don’t…have time…”
It was miraculous that they’d made it this far without being spotted and detained. How on earth were they going to get away now without being caught? Without Appa to carry them safely away from Father and the palace…?
“Come on,” he said, pulling himself away from her and leading them back the way they’d come.
His knees buckled almost immediately.
“Zuko!”
Katara hauled him back to his feet. The pain deep in his chest was like something out of a nightmare. But his father’s anger was something out of Zuko’s nightmares too. And he had a hunch about which one of the two would be survivable.
“Which way?” Katara asked, taking most of his weight against her shoulder.
“Back to the hall,” he gasped, teeth clenched tight, “then left.”
They staggered back into the palace, Katara following Zuko’s muttered directions, weaving back into the depths of the twisting halls.
“Hey! Stop!”
A troop of guards appeared in the hall behind them.
“Go!” Zuko shouted, pitching himself forward, dragging Katara with him.
“Halt! In the name of the Phoenix King!”
They were almost there.
“Third door on the left!” Zuko shouted.
He scrambled for the knob and threw his shoulder against the door. It flew open. Zuko took two stumbling steps and fell. Katara slammed the door shut, locking it, and reached for him.
Zuko picked himself up, growling against the pain, “I’m fine. Block the door.”
She did, grabbing a nearby chair and bracing it under the door handle just as the soldiers on the other side began pounding on it. Bursts of flame followed, making the door shudder and sending sparks through the cracks.
They were in an old, disused study. If Zuko remembered right, there was a door to the tunnels beneath the palace somewhere in this room.
“Zuko…” Katara called to him anxiously.
The heavy door began to glow in places, like it was made of embers, as the firebenders outside pummeled it. Katara wrapped her bending water around her arms, ready to fight.
Zuko just had to find the right place on the wall…
Staggering deeper into the room, one hand pressed firmly to his burning, bandaged chest, Zuko yanked the framed artworks down from the far wall.
“Zuko!” She called again, panic rising in her voice.
Zuko snarled and pulled the last piece of art down from the wall near the fireplace.
There.
A metallic lever was set into the wall. Zuko threw all his weight at it.
With a series of grinding, mechanical clicks, a panel in the floor slid back, exposing a dark staircase. Zuko summoned a flame in his hand and held the other out to Katara.
She ran to him, pulling his arm back over her shoulders. They stumbled down the staircase into the darkness as the door finally exploded inward with a wave of heat that Zuko felt on the back of his neck.
There was a matching lever at the base of the stairs. Zuko reached for it, grimacing. Katara got there first, shoving it upwards. Then she doused it with water, freezing it to ice, locking it in place. There was an awful grinding noise as the men above tried to throw the lever again, but the frozen mechanism held.
“It won’t last,” she said.
The heat in the tunnels was thick and intense. Ice would melt fast.
“Good enough,” Zuko gasped. “Let’s go.”
Lit by the flame in Zuko’s hand, the tunnels took on an eerie, flickering cast. It was a maze down here, but Zuko knew the way. They just had to get to the edge of the palace complex before their pursuers caught up with them.
If only he could get a full breath without feeling like there was a dagger in his chest. He tripped over his own feet and the flame in his hand sputtered.
Katara’s hands tightened around him.
They staggered onward. Even keeping his head up was getting difficult. They paused at every intersection for Zuko to get his bearings. Every time, it took an extra moment for him to puzzle out where they were.
His limbs felt heavy. He couldn’t breathe.
Then the sound of heavy, booted footfalls began to echo off the walls. Katara cursed. Zuko gritted his teeth, growled, and forced himself to move faster. He stumbled over his steps. Katara was practically dragging him.
They couldn’t get caught. Not now. Not when they were so nearly free. Not when being caught meant facing his father. With everything Zuko had done since the Day of the Black Sun, and with Katara at his side, they would be lucky if all he did was kill them.
The noise of their pursuers was right at their heels.
Zuko spun free of Katara’s grasp. He parted the wave of fire the first attacker threw at them. It billowed around them harmlessly. Zuko threw a punch, the resulting flame making the guards at their back scatter.
And he collapsed, the cry of pain tearing from him unbidden.
Katara leapt. She barely had any water left in her flask, but she wielded it through the air like a knife, slashing at the guards faster than his dulled mind could track. There were three of them, and she dropped them all. None of them rose.
Zuko couldn’t get up. He tried again and folded back to the ground with a wrenching groan.
Only one of them was going to make it out of here, and it wasn’t going to be him. He’d already made it though more of this day than he’d expected to.
“Get…out of here,” he gasped between gritted teeth. “Two lefts…one right…and you’ll be…out of the palace.”
“Shut up,” she snapped.
She dragged him upright, bracing her shoulder under his. He cried out.
“You already gave yourself up for me once today,” she growled. “I’m not letting you do it again.”
“Katara…” he protested.
“Zuko!” She snapped his name like a reprimand. “I’m not leaving you! Two lefts and one right, yeah?”
She staggered a few uneasy steps. He took as much of his weight back onto his own feet as he could manage.
“Two lefts,” he gasped. “One right…”
That was the last thing he would remember clearly.
————————
They fled into the darkest corners of the city. Guided by an instinct Katara hadn’t quite realized she possessed, she led the way deep into Caldera’s underbelly.
Zuko’s weight was heavy on her shoulders. Thankfully, he was still on his feet. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to carry him if he collapsed completely. But his steps were unsteady and his head hung low.
She readjusted her grip on his waist and kept moving.
They had to get off the street. Somewhere where they couldn’t be spotted easily. Somewhere where Zuko could sleep.
In the twilight, every shadow looked threatening. The few people who moved on the streets in this seedy part of town did so furtively, darting from shadow to shadow. Katara kept to the shadows herself as the city turned into a slum.
Finally, she spotted a small structure that appeared to be abandoned. “Structure” was a generous term for the hovel in front of her, a half-collapsed assortment of crumbling brick and fractured wood, but it was empty, and it had a roof. She steered Zuko inside.
The moment they crossed the treshold, Zuko’s knees buckled, like he’d been holding on until they reached safety and had used every scrap of his strength. Katara went down with him, landing in a heap on the dirt floor. She picked herself up and gently turned him onto his back.
The front of his shirt was stained with blood. His breathing was strained and he fought to keep his eyes open.
“It’s ok,” she told him, putting a hand on his cheek, “it’s ok. Rest. We’re safe.”
He shut his eyes, relaxing into her touch, and was asleep or unconscious in moments.
She turned to his wound. It had reopened as they fled, blood seeping through the bandages. She removed the bandages, coated her hands in water, and set to work healing him again, coaxing the blood to clot, the skin to seal.
When she finally lifted her hands, Katara was exhausted. So much healing in one day, coaxing and focusing the natural strength of the chi in Zuko’s body to where it was most needed, left her fatigued beyond belief. She sagged forward. She took several deep breaths. She swayed.
And she too fell to the floor. She collapsed next to Zuko. Her arms shook as she tried to pick herself back up, and she folded against him again. There was nothing for it. Even if someone came for them, neither one of them had the strength to fight back.
She tucked her head into the crook of Zuko’s shoulder and fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.
.