No True Pair

Title: "The Price of a Miracle"
Author/Artist: Becca Stareyes
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Pairing/characters: Katara & Zuko
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, main character death
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Katara and Zuko, the price you pay for miracles
Summary: Zuko's failed everything he's ever set out to do. Except possibly making tea. Why should he be surprised that he's made a mess of things again?

He can't look Katara in the eyes, so Zuko curls his fists around handfuls of Appa's fur, focusing on a texture he never expected to feel.

He doesn't want this. The Avatar is dead, and it may as well be his doing, since he could have refused Katara when she made her offer of healing. She knows it, too, which is why, between her tears, she is glaring daggers at him. Her brother is trying to comfort her, because they grew up in a family where you could actually count on your sibling to be a comfort. Azula never needed comfort. Azula thought giving and receiving comfort was a weakness, because that was what their father thought.

He looked up. The earthbender, Toph, was engaged in not falling off the sky bison, and helping the Earth King ride. For a moment, Zuko wonders why the bison is still obeying them, since its master is dead, but it has been around the Water Tribe people for months, now. Surely they must have tamed it, and the lemur who stares mournfully at the Avatar's broken body, taken with them as they fled.

For symmetry's sake, they should have Uncle here. Uncle would have something comforting to say. Not just to Zuko, helping him make sense of this, but to everyone. There was another stabbing irony here, that Zuko had seen why his uncle had been general. Not just his firebending, or tactics that only got use on a Pai Sho board now, but actually knowing what made people tick. Uncle knew how to soothe emotions, take a group hit by grief with an enemy in their midst and somehow make it work.

Instead, Zuko is alone. Zuko the failure who cannot bring the Avatar down except by joining his side. Zuko the traitor who bartered his honor for the restoration of his eye. Zuko, who left the only person who might still give a damn about him under the thumb of… well, of Azula.

He blinked back tears from an eye that can suddnely cry them. It's tempting, so tempting to give up and let go of the bison, let the wind carry him off, and dash him to the ground below. If he couldn't do anything right, maybe he should just stop burdening people with his presence. Instead, he waits until they land, follows directions mindlessly as they set up camp, hears the silences where a fourth person should be. They have no food with them on this impromptu escape, but Zuko finds the kettle in their supplies and fetches water for tea. He has some bundled in his apron pockets of all things. At least he can say he can make a good cup of tea: he's a failure and a traitor and let down everyone who ever cared about him, and could never firebend as well as his sister, but Uncle would drink his tea without even the grimace of 'I am only doing this because I love you'.

The sound of the firewood igniting brings all of them -- Katara, Sokka, Toph, the Earth King, and the lemur and sky bison -- to attention. The bison jerked back, bellowing, and Sokka had drawn his boomerang. Zuko held up the kettle. "It'll be a cold night. If we're stopping, we might as well have something warm to drink." It sounded lame, put like that. Uncle would have some kind of cute aphorism about enjoying life.

"We're not stopping!" Sokka objected. "We're just… considering."

"That fire could bring down any Fire Nation troops in the area," Katara said, staring at the meager flames. "What were you thinking?"

"There aren't any," Zuko answered. "I mean, there aren't and soldiers, not that I wasn't thinking." And they might assume that a fire was as likely to be friendly as threatening. But he doused the fire, using the heat to warm the kettle, then poured the tea. Toph and the Earth King took theirs willingly, the Earth King giving him a sort of half-smile: 'what are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere drinking tea in the dark?'. Sokka looked up from his conversation with his sister, buried in hushed tones, to wave him off. He left the two cups near them, to sip tea at the edge of their circle.

The lemur had come over to him. It was the first time he'd seen it move since it landed on the Avatar's corpse. Maybe it had finally figured out its master wasn't waking up. Before he could react, it clambered up to stand in his lap and stare in his cup. Zuko sighed. "If you wanted tea too, you could have done something before I sat down." But he stood up and found another cup, and got the lemur some tea. If he had to be mostly useless, he at least was going to be able to make sure everyone had their damn tea. He thought about serving the bison as well, but that was just getting silly. And he didn't have a cup big enough, for that matter. Maybe if Azula had never decided to take on the Impenetrable Ba Sing Sei, he could have discovered a secret talent as the Jasmine Dragon's assistant manager.

Katara and Sokka's conversation broke up, and Sokka took his tea over, nearly spilling it. Katara left hers to come over to loom over him. "You better be worth what we've lost for you," she said, in a tone that make it clear that he wasn't, and could never be, even if he was as powerful as generations of Firelords. He didn't blame her for that. If she hadn't healed his eye, she may have been able to save the Avatar.

"I'm not," he answered. "You and I both know that. But… my uncle will probably be executed. And I can't go back. Not to the city, or home." He could go on the run again: take off into the Earth Kingdom's backcountry, living by what he could steal. But, with the cities fallen, it was only a matter of time before the Fire Nation conquered it all. Then his life would be forfeit, even if he refused to help.

And, Uncle was the only thing he had left worht fighting for. His honor was gone, he had no talents, and eventually Azula would find him and kill him. She might take it as a personal slight that he had escaped.

Katara looked him over. There were legends about waterbenders who could see the chi of their enemies, see into their hearts. The military discouraged soldiers telling such tales: both from no actual proof that waterbenders could do more than heal, and because no firebender would admit that any other element held such power. Zuko was prepared to believe that Katara would certainly try. She sighed. "This is a terrible idea. If you stab us in the back, I will find you and kill you."

Zuko nodded, suddenly serious. "If you help me rescue Uncle," he said, "I don't care what happens to me."

Katara rasied her eyebrows. "You're not exactly in a position to dictate terms to us. We could just leave you here."

"Uncle'll be able to help you more than I can," Zuko said. "And I probably know more about the Fire Nation than you do. Azula might keep him in the Earth Kingdom for a while, but she'll want the chance to go back to gloat." There. He could call that the moment when he'd sold out. The price wasn't a fixed eye, a missing scar, but the life of a relative.

Katara nodded. "We'll be heading for a camp of Southern Water Tribe warriors as soon as everyone finishes their tea. We'll tell you the rest later, and I want Toph vouching for your every sentence when you tell is about the Fire Nation."

Zuko had to wonder what plan they had, with their hopes and dreams dashed on the rocks. But it was a direction, and he could move towards it.