The Return - A Zutara Fanfiction

Liar

4 years ago

She tried to see the pavement in front of her instead of the selfie currently sitting guarded behind her phone's lock screen, waiting for her next perusal of it. She tried. Really, she did. But the only thing she could bring herself to focus on was the reflection of his phone camera's flash in his brilliant irises, the weighty shadows beneath his eyes that looked like his skull piercing his pallid skin, the way his hair fell across his forehead and flirted with his eyelashes. The jetlagged smile adorned with the message 'Just landed!'. It hurt to look at him almost as much as it hurt to miss him, to study the frozen features of his familiar face and know this was the only way she could ever see him. She felt the final press of his lips to her forehead at the airport and wanted to claw the memory right out of her brain. She begged herself not to watch him leave her for the thousandth time, not to recall the ache that plagued her everywhere she went now. Just a steady hum beneath her usual operations.

There was one memory she did not try to forget, though. One instant she let herself pore over again and again and again, memorising it from every angle, capturing every taste, touch, word in that place in herself where moments once captured in time were now captured in stone. Even now, walking to her next lecture, she remembered how he had kissed her. The clarity that brought his eyes into sharp focus as he had held her face in his hands and pulled her to him. The heat of his lips and his hands on every part of her skin. The way the floor had fallen out from beneath her and it had just been him and her, Zuko and Katara, aloft and alone.

They had exchanged messages in the week since his departure, but she kept lingering on that one photo he sent her, evidence that he was real and alive and someone she had cared about. Someone who had cared about her. Someone it hurt to care about now.

"Katara?"

A rehearsed exclamation laced with feigned surprise. Katara knew she'd need steadying just from the confident delivery of those three syllables. She folded her arms. Took a breath. Turned around.

"Azula!" She wondered how forced her smile appeared from three feet away. "Hi!"

The afternoon sunlight bounced off Azula's assault of a smile as she approached. "What are you doing here?" As if they hadn't had this exact encounter on at least two previous occasions this year alone.

"Class." Katara nodded in the general direction of the lecture theatre she had been aiming for. "You?"

"Class." The same word, but Azula decorated hers with a tinkling soprano and a widening of her grin. Katara suppressed the urge to retreat a step. "I almost didn't recognise you just now, without your usual accessory."

Katara was perplexed enough to walk into the trap completely undefended. "What?"

"Zuko." And Azula's eyes widened as if she enjoyed the twitch of horror that spasmed across Katara's face. As if she fed on it. "There was a moment there when I thought you two had been joined at the hip!" Azula winked. Katara clenched her fists.

"Yeah, well..." Her thoughts tangled and her words hung, unresolved.

"But I must confess, I was more than a little relieved when he announced he was moving." Azula shifted forward, dropping her voice to something more appropriate to two conspiring friends. Katara leaned away. "I didn't want you getting the wrong idea."

Katara felt the uncomfortably abrupt rush of adrenaline dotting her cheeks pink. "The wrong idea about what?" She shouldn't ask. She did anyway.

Azula sighed. Dared to touch a hand to Katara's sweater. "Your feelings for him weren't exactly a secret, sweetheart."

Katara bristled. "I don't know what you're talking about." It was more difficult than she had imagined to speak through clenched teeth.

"Oh, come on, Kitty Kat. Your little crush was... quite obvious." Katara felt the weight of Azula's condescension like a toddler clinging to her shoulders. "I'm just glad it ended when it did. I couldn't bear to see you broken-hearted."