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Borealis: A Zutara Story	By : jaded_priceless Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality Views: 34026 -:- 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 List
- 220
- 221
- 222
Chapter 218
Katara gave into the need to close her eyes and fell asleep during his ministrations. She wasn’t sure how long she slept but she was awakened by the feel of a towel and warm water on her calf. Zuko was washing her. She drifted again off as the warm towel made circles with the perfect amount of pressure on her skin. Her eyelids opened as he lifted her and laid her on her back.
“Go back to sleep Katara,” Zuko whispered as he picked up a clean towel and washed her face with the same relaxing motion.
Katara yawned, “You’re better than the day spa Toph and I went to in Ba Sing Se. They massaged our faces like this and then covered it in makeup. You aren’t going to do that are you?”
“No, your face is perfect. I would never try to cover it up,” Zuko replied as he circled her cheek.
His words triggered her awareness. She thought back to her first days in captivity and her beauty treatments, and the more recent ones before they left the boat. “Is that why the Ursa’s spa maids stopped forcing me to wear make up?”
Zuko nodded, “I want to see you as you are, not some painted up doll thing posing as Katara.”
She smiled, “You sound like Aang and Sokka. When they saw us after we left the spa they asked what we did to our faces. It was painful then but I can laugh about it now.”
“I’m sorry they hurt your feelings Katara,” Zuko leaned down and kissed her cheek after offering his apology. He picked up her hand and began massaging it with the towel.
“It wasn’t mine I was worried about. Toph is at that age where all girls start to worry about their looks. I can see myself and how others look at me but Toph can feel it. She said she could tell I was pretty by the vibrations from boys when I walk by. It broke my heart to hear how she said she doesn’t get those same vibrations. She can’t see herself and compare herself to others so she thinks she’s unattractive,” Katara confessed.
Zuko’s nose crinkled and he stopped moving his hand, “Why? She’s a little tomboyish but perfectly cute for a girl her age. She has nothing to worry about.”
His eyes glanced towards the letter from his father, “It’s not like she has this ugly scar and half her face was burned off.”
Katara noticed the action and how close he kept the letter to him. His eyes were still red; even when he forced her earlier she could tell he was crying. She knew from her own experiences it would take weeks for the raw heartache of losing his mother to return to the standard uncomfortable state of numb but his father’s letter had also affected him.
He lowered his head and muttered, “She’ll grow up to be a beautiful woman but I-”
Katara placed her hand over his mouth to stop him, “Zuko answer your own question. Tell me why someone so very attractive would think they are ugly?”
His eyes glanced towards the letter again. Katara felt his lips moving and shifted her hand sideways to caress his scar as she forcibly turned his gaze back towards her, “Why do you think you so little of yourself, Zuko?”
He closed his eyes thinking of that particular letter, all the others his father had written him, all the things his father had said to him, done to him, and the way he never spoke up for him even as child using the justification it was for his own good. The harsh treatment would make him strong. Now that he finally had someone who believed in him he could easily lose it all again at his father’s whim. He couldn’t lose Katara. He couldn’t be alone again. Now that he had someone who finally understood, he couldn’t be alone again.
Katara pulled him down to her when she saw the tears falling from his closed eyelids. Katara patted his back as he sobbed on her shoulder. She felt each broken syllable, wail, and gasp against her skin and in her heart as he tried to verbalize so many years of abuse and neglect compounded by the double loss of Lu Ten and his mother.
Katara turned to face him and caught a glimpse of one word written on the paper – failure. She wriggled against him, repositioning herself to get a better view and saw “fortunate not to be alive”, “disgrace”, “utter disappointment,” “lucky she didn’t see” and another “failure”.
Katara held him tighter, using both her arms and legs to do so. The letter enabled her to comprehend what Zuko was muttering against her shoulders. “Aah looh nee soh ahh lohhh neee nooh ohhh woon wuuz thay yaaa airuh dooost ooop faaf duuurr” was not some obscure Fire Nation phrase.
He was alone, so alone, and no one was there to stop his father.
He’d been so hurt this morning as the two of them lay in the meadow sharing the loss of their mothers. She couldn’t imagine how devastating it would be to get a letter like that saying it was fortunate her mother was dead to avoid seeing what a failure and disappointment she had become from her father along with a gift to commemorate the day of her mother’s birth. She couldn’t breathe when Sokka told her their mother’s death was her fault and it was just a normal day not one of significance. If he had told her that on the anniversary of her mother’s death it was very unlikely that she would be in the land of the living; her heart would have stopped. It felt as if her life were hanging from a thread when Zuko hit Sokka in the mouth to stopping his cruel words from tightening the noose about her neck. She did not feel the air actually flowing into her lungs until he was holding her safely in his arms – each gasping breath smelt and tasted of smoke and salt; Zuko’s unique scent mixed with that of the ocean.
She began stroking the back of his head and neck to soothe him, but his broken syllables only became harsher. Gran-Gran had taught her that men handled emotional pain differently than women – a man’s way of dealing with hurt, anger and sadness was as much physical as emotional. Gran-Gran had told her that women had been given soft bodies, strong cores and tears that flowed easily to comfort those around them; unlike men, women were built to withstand pain. That was how she and Katara were able to keep moving and do what was necessary after her mother died while her father and Sokka floundered.
It was a conversation meant to be had when she was much older and understood what it truly meant to be a woman but it became just another way the loss of her mother had made her mature before her time. She overheard Gran-Gran and two others discussing the possibility of marriage for Hakoda while they thought she was sleeping. She ran outside in her pajamas after screaming her father would never love another woman. It was then Gran-Gran explained the joining of a man’s body to a woman’s was not just about beautiful act of sharing love her parent’s had shown her.
Just like hurricanes, tsumani’s, storms and blizzards, sometimes the union of Tui and La was painful and ugly. It could be about sacrifice as in Qannik and Nukkilik’s marriage. The two of them hated each other but married to provide support for their young children after the raid killed their true spouses. Sometimes it was about physical comfort which was why her father and the elders were turning a blind eye to so many couples instead of enforcing the standard punishment of marriages for those engaging in pre-marital sex. Sometimes it was about simply about the pain; both giving and receiving it, physical and emotional. That was why Hakoda needed a wife – not out of love, but to help him bear the pain of losing Kya.
Some pain was so great it took over the body and slowly destroyed it until it escaped through a physical outlet. Sex was the most efficient physical outlet.
What hangs between a man’s legs defines maleness while his character, his heart and his mind are what truly defines him as a man. A large part of that definition came from the ability to protect his woman, his children, and his home. Her father didn’t see that he protected countless lives the day of the invasion he only saw and felt his inability to protect his family and his home. He was elsewhere while his wife was murdered in his home in front of his child. His grief is allowing an act of the spirits will to strip away the way he defines himself as a man.
We don’t see him as any less but when he looks in the mirror all he sees is the person who failed to protect you and Kya. That feeling if failure gets worse each night he goes to bed and wakes alone and when he sees you cooking and doing laundry instead of playing with the other children. You are here with us physically in this world Katara, but a part of you died along with your mother.
Your father sees that as his failure too.
His heart and mind have been overtaken by pain so all he sees left to define him as a man lies between his legs. When a man forgets himself it is a wife’s duty to accept that basic definition and remind him of the others. His wife was lost; he needs another woman to take hold of what lies between his legs and help him to remember what lies in his head and in his heart. That is not something that we, as his mother and daughter, can do for him, Katara.
There is a special place in a woman’s soft body to provide such an outlet; to accept and ease a man’s pain. Sometimes a man’s pain is so great a woman alone could not endure it. Children are not only conceived in love Katara. Our bodies are capable of recognizing when the hurt is too much to bear and we give up a part of our spirits to create something larger, a pureness of soul and goodness, out of the pain so there is reason to move forward. Your father needs something to remind him that he is a strong protector, an able provider, a caring individual capable of so much good and love. He needs someone who does not remind him of the loss he believes is his failure.
Katara had not understood at that time what her grandmother meant about needing someone to take away her father’s pain and remind him of whom he truly was. Now she understood all too well. Yes, Zuko had raped her and hurt in the worst way possible but he still had a pitiful side that deserved to be cared for.
He had practically crushed her in his grip earlier but Zuko had been there for her when no one else was. He was there for her when her own brother cast her aside. She knew the risk she was taking when she spoke softly to him, “You’re not alone Zuko. I’m here. You are not alone anymore.”

Kain: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Zuko and Katara’s relationship is seriously twisted. Both of them are confused and mentally distressed at this point.
Yes, Ozai is a psychopath but since he’s also been raised a Prince of the Fire Nation with the entitlement of lesser god, he is truly unaware that anything he does can be wrong. The letter posted in the previous chapter was the nice letter he’d hidden. The snippets from this chapter are from the one berating Zuko that he didn’t try to hide.
Iroh will make an appearane in the upcoming chapters...
- 220
- 221
- 222
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Borealis: A Zutara Story