Borealis: A Zutara Story | By : jaded_priceless Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality Views: 33965 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 4 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, any historical figures or events, or easily recognizable persons, places or things. I make no profit from this work of fanfiction |
Chapter 16
Once they were back in his room Zuko retied Katara’s hands in front of her and summoned a servant to bring a small basin of water to clean up with. He watched her carefully and slapped her hand when she coated it in water. “No bending.”
“Fine,” Katara said dipping the towel in water and dabbing at her injury. She rinsed and wet the towel several times but it wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding.
“Your face is cut. I’m taking you to the physician.” Zuko said quietly.
“What’s the point of taking me to the physician when you won’t let me heal it?” Katara huffed in frustration.
“How do I know you’re going to heal it and not try to kill me?” Zuko asked.
“You don’t,” she said wiping more blood away.
He blew out a puff of smoke, “Fine. Heal it.”
Katara covered her hand in water and pressed it to her face. Zuko watched as it glowed removing all signs she’d ever been injured.
“That day in Ba Sing Se, you really would have been able to take my scar away wouldn’t you?” Zuko murmured before he realized he was speaking.
“I don’t know. It’s an old injury, I’m not sure if spirit water would have helped it,” Katara admitted.
“I’m sorry. For throwing fire at you when you offered to help my uncle. I thought you were trying to finish what Azula started,” Zuko said quietly before asking, “Why did you try to help us anyway? I mean after all we’d done...Most people would have been happy to see their enemy in pain. ”
Katara snorted, “Yeah well being a stupid peasant teaches you a lot about adversity. I guess it made me think that suffering is too harsh of a teacher for some lessons even for my enemy.”
Zuko locked her in the closet and went to take a walk. Of all things to say, she had to choose something that was eerily similar but the exact opposite of what his father said the day he burned him. You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher.
He went to the kitchen to get bread for the turtleducks then imagined how his mother would react to him raping a girl, shoving her face first into a stool then locking her in a closet. He asked the chef to prepare a snack for them as a way to atone for his actions then went back to his room to fetch her.
“Come on, we’re taking a walk,” said Zuko gruffly.
Katara knocked away the hand he extended to help her out of the dark space but demurely followed Zuko down the hallway. She’d seen the lustful way men were looking at her when Zuko took her to the apartments where the various mistresses and concubines for the nobles were housed. They were very disappointed when he left with her in tow after obtaining something more suitable to wear in the palace. She tried to memorize the path they were taking, but Zuko seemed to take a deliberately circuitous route to confuse her. She was delighted when they stopped in front of a pond.
“Zuko, what are those?” She asked when he knelt down in front of the water and numerous fuzzy creatures began waddling up to him.
“Turtleducks. I used to come here and feed them with my mother,” he replied bitterly.
Zuko quickly dispersed the bread and took Katara to the gardens on the other side of the palace. Unlike the small garden with the pond and turtleducks this one had a few people milling about and she could tell her captor was ill at ease here.
“Zuko, why did you bring me here?” she asked when she heard one of the men say he’d petitioned that Zuko not be allowed to keep her. She overheard him saying “the Avatar’s Waterbender should be available for every man at court to enjoy”.
He turned on her and quickly grabbed her chin, “Do not address me so informally unless you are in the throes of passion.”
She had already deduced that Zuko’s banishment and subsequent status a fugitive meant that he was on thin ice with his father. She didn’t want to take the chance that the Fire Lord would agree with them and separate her from him when he went on the tour with Aang and her brother. She them needed to believe that Zuko had cowed her. She needed to be with them so they could all escape. “Yes, my prince. I apologize for my error,” she replied where they could hear her instead of arguing. A different man was agreeing with the first. He went further by saying "she wouldn’t be so mouthy if Zuko had knocked out her teeth and shoved his cock in it". Katara also noticed their proximity to some of the bolder men they’d encountered when Zuko had taken her before the Fire Lord. They were more deferential towards Azula and their disrespect towards him was thinly guised as joking when they suggested “he was a mere boy that didn’t know what to do with her” and “they’d be happy to show him how a real man handles a woman.”Zuko was grateful Katara obeyed him in front of the nobles. Several of them had questioned the wisdom of letting him cut his teeth on a barbarian when his taste in women was forming. They’d come right out and said it would be better for him to teethe on Fire Nation women. Unlike an older more experienced man he was in danger of developing a penchant for exotic flavors; some melon was good but a whole melon would give anyone problems.
He wasn’t so unintelligent as to not catch their meaning. They wanted his father to supersede his designation that Katara was a royal concubine belonging to him alone and designate her as a general companion so they could all take a turn with her. At his age a man was expected to either regularly have sex with his fiancée or sow his wild oats with various women. The only time a man designated a mistress or concubine so early was if she truly was the woman he wanted to be with but he was stuck in an existing marriage arrangement.
Zuko was still musing over his predicament when one of the kitchen helpers brought out the meal he’d ordered.
“I apologize, Prince Zuko. I thought you would be in the other garden,” the boy said stepping away from the cart to bow. “Which table would you like to be served at?”
Zuko realized that if he remained in that garden he was giving the older nobles a perfect opportunity to approach him and further upset Katara. Several of them were saying very unflattering things about her virtue, her people, and what they would do to her the moment the Fire Lord voided her status as concubine. Katara tensed every time she heard one.
If they stayed it wouldn’t take much for someone to notice her anger. The beverages on the cart had already begun shaking. The last thing he wanted was for his father to think he couldn’t control her. He wouldn’t put it past two of the older and more influential councilors to do something to prove that very point. He decided it was best not to give them the opportunity to further upset her, he rose and extended his hand to her while nodding curtly at the servant, “Follow me to my rooms. We’ll eat there.”
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