Capable of more than we know

He allowed the silence to sit in anticipation of her answer, so Katara finally made herself give one: first a shake of her head and then, haltingly, some words.

“No. They’ll — they’re good people. They’ll call back.”

“Okay.” The frown re-appeared on Zuko’s face. “That’s... good.” Katara pulled the phone back and curled it to her chest, wrapping her other arm around herself and looking at him imploringly, the stinging in her eyes growing worse. “Do you...” He was lost, and some part of her wanted to throw him a lifeline, but the part in control of her right then was just growing frustrated that he didn’t instantly understand what that missed call meant. “They said you’d only hear from them if your application was successful, right?”

Katara had to swallow a few times as she nodded, her throat tight and sore, her chest being carved out by every heartbeat, and the support she’d come to find not there for her to grasp onto.

Zuko gave her a little smile. “So you did it, Kat. That’s wonderful.”

The last layer of her rationality that sleep deprivation and pent-up emotion about her finals, her future, her self-worth, shattered completely under his words. Even as the tears finally welled enough to blur her vision, the cold in her turned to hot rage.

“So you’re happy I’m going?”

Zuko turned instantly weary. “Yeeeees?”

“How?” she snapped.

“What do you mean —? Because this is a great opportunity for you? Because you worked hard for months applying for this internship? Because you want to go?” He shook his head. “Kat, love, what is going —?”

“But how don’t you feel any sadness over this? I’m going for two years. I’m... I’m...” She roughly dragged the heel of her hand across both cheeks to try and shove away the tears. “We won’t be able to see each other for weeks at a time... And... and our schedules will barely line up and...”

“All things we’ve already — ” He cut off the frustrated sentence, took a deep breath and tried again, more level-toned. “Are you... afraid I’m going to break up with you because we’re on long distance?”

“No. I mean, okay, a little bit but if we do I won’t blame you because I’m — I’m leaving you. I’m just up and going to some other place for some internship opportunity like that’s more important than being there for you and I know you’ll be the one to stay up late to try and talk to me, and I can’t even promise I’ll make it out there or do something great or — or — or...”

“Oh, wow, okay.”

Zuko finally moved, crossing the expanse of kitchen between them. His arms came up as he walked but, when he reached her, he hesitated to put his arms around her, and Katara could all but read the inner workings of his mind wondering if she’d be comforted by a hug or whether she was genuinely mad at him and therefore did not want to be touched right then. It was so infuriating and so thoughtful that she let out a little hiccuping laugh and stepped into him to bury her head into the crook of his neck. At once, Zuko’s arms enveloped her.

“I’m a selfish person,” she whispered, and the confession broke the dam on her tears.

Zuko let her cry for a few moments, stroking her hair, before he shifted his head so that his right cheek pressed against her left one.

“You are very, very, very much not a selfish person. The opposite. And that’s a little bit of the problem. The other part of the problem is that you’re stressed and very sleep-deprived.”

“That’s two parts,” Katara mumbled, voice grossly thick.

“I guess the problem is larger than I thought,” he said in his Bad Uncle Iroh Impression voice. Katara couldn’t bring herself to laugh, but she did cling tighter to him. “Kat...” Zuko sighed. “It’s going to suck not having you close. Not getting to do things like this. But it’s worth it. I know this is falling on deaf ears right now, but we still have one working one between us so...” That did startle a laugh out of her, and she felt Zuko relax. She hadn’t realised how tense he’d been until that moment, and another wave of guilt washed over her and made her start to trace patterns against his back. “Kyoshi Island isn’t that far away. And if it is...” He hesitated. “If it is, I’ll move with you.”

Katara pulled back in shock, searching his face for any indication he was still trying to joke to make her feel better. His gaze was resolute.

“But — Uncle — your job — how could you even —?”

He shrugged and gave her a rueful smile. “No idea. Haven’t thought that far. Yet,” he added, hastily. “We’ll — we can talk about this. All of this. But... maybe after your last exam? When you’ve also slept for nine hours straight?”

“Yeah,” she said, distracted, still trying to process through what he’d just said. “I... yeah.” With the panic temporarily washed out of her, though, a different sort of shame to the insidious black lump inside her chest started to bloom hot across her chest and then up her neck and to her cheeks in a rapid inferno. “Tui and La. I’m —” She put her head in her hands, slapping herself with the phone she’d forgotten she still carried. “I’m so sorry. I — it just... I don’t even...”

He pried her fingers away gently, and cupped her face in his hands instead. Rough and warm and smelling of the kitchen cleaner he’d been using to scrub down the counters. He said nothing, but the way he looked at her hacked back at the miserable mortification until it was once again just roots below the surface. A memory of him quietly, almost shyly telling her that he appreciated it more when she shared what she was really feeling briefly flickered across her mind.

“I’m really proud of you for getting this job, Katara.”

She closed her eyes and pressed her face into his right hand. “Thank you.”

“Okay. Dinner.” Her stomach growled, as if on cue, and he sniggered softly at her. Ignoring her glare, he let go in favour of walking to check the food. “Give it... ten minutes. Do you want me to quiz you, or do you want to watch something?”

“New episodes of Is it Cake?” she asked, hopefully.

“I can suffer through a few,” came the droll reply.

“The one to get the most guesses wrong does the dishes tonight,” she said with a smirk that belied the fact that she knew she’d lose to him.

“The singular slow cooker?”

“And the bowls,” she countered, and laughed as he rolled his eyes at her. “Take the wins where you can, Zu.”

As he grumbled, Katara moved across the kitchen and picked up the broom to finish sweeping, waving him off when he protested. If there was one thing she’d learned throughout life, it was that the little moments were the ones that stuck with you and made the ache of missing worse... and also able to bear. She hoped this would be one of the nights she’d remember, exhausted and probably at least a little lonely despite Suki’s excited reassurances about Kyoshi Island’s residents.

It was far enough into winter that Katara teasingly called the weather “almost cold”, and she slipped across a garden in which only the most stalwart of plants remained standing, the rest of the ground a rich brown of promise for the spring to come. Feeling a little foolish, she glanced around to make sure nobody was watching before she slid open the door and eased herself in, already sure in her heart that Mimi was correct in her assumption that Zuko was inside.

Sure enough, the smell of tea and flame hit her a second before the sight of her husband did. Zuko startled toward her, accidentally splashing ink across his hand, forearm, thigh and cheek at the motion. The granite-fierce focus melted into a welcome smile as he recognised her.

“Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” She eyed the scrolls open around him like flower petals, and shook her head with a small smile that was not altogether happy. She’d been hoping he’d hidden away to catch a moment of respite, not only so that he could work uninterrupted. “Is there any tea left for me?”

Zuko reached over to the pot with his free hand and gave it a little shake. “A little bit. I can make more?”

“Let me finish what’s in there, first, then we’ll see.”

As he poured, she padded across the room and settled behind him, both because the floor there was free and because it meant that she could curl around him and soak up his warmth; bury her face into his neck to inhale his scent; lean herself against him, finally boneless and content. Zuko put the brush down so that he could pick up her hand and, after kissing her palm and wrist, wrap her fingers around the mug of tea he’d poured her. She lazily nuzzled into his shoulder until her tea felt cool enough to drink, content to be rocked by the rhythm of his body shifting as he read, wrote, moved, breathed.

Once her tea was finished, she dropped the mug and snaked her arms around his chest, squeezing him tightly. Her intention had either been to get him to give up working to cuddle-nap with her or, if that was too ambitious a goal, to take a little snooze herself while properly koala ottering around her human-shaped heat source, sticking her totally-not-cold hands into his collar.

She certainly did not intend to make him flinch the way he did; a sharp thing that temporarily curled him inwards and knocked her chin against his shoulder blade. Katara let go of him and pulled back at the same time that he managed to swallow his noise of discomfort.

“What’s wrong?” Knowing that he would likely not answer her if he could avoid eye contact, Katara scooched around to his right side, moving scrolls haphazardly as she went. He gave her an exasperated look at her treatment of royal documents, but she had bigger concerns and refused to be deterred. “What’s wrong?”

He knew better than to say nothing. They’d had enough arguments about it that his love for her covered the instinct, though she briefly saw it twist his mouth in temptation. Instead, he looked away, using silence where there had once been deflection and anger. Katara reached out to cup his cheek so she could coax his gaze to hers, and she got her answer in a rush when her fingers brushing against his scar caused another minute flinch.

“Is the cold causing scar tissue spasms?”

It was almost a rhetorical question, and she was already looking to see if there was water around that she could use for healing, her hand slipping lower to cup gently at his neck instead.

“But it’s barely close to being cold,” he said, dryly.

“For me. Who grew up on ice. Where’s the water you made tea with?”

“You don’t — Katara —” She firmly slipped from his hold. “It’s not that bad. Not spasming. Just... sensitive. You don’t have to...”

Katara cleared a space directly in front of him before sitting with the pitcher of water in hand, and absorbed his scowl and his half-raised eyebrow with a steady look. “You don’t have to wait until it’s that bad to tell me, ” she said, quietly.

He didn’t look away, this time, and she was allowed to see the corner of his good eye and his jaw tighten at the impact of her words. It still awed her, thrilled her, humbled her how her eyes locked on his managed to unspool him in a myriad of ways.

“I love you.” She stroked his jaw in an effort to get him to relax it, and he bent his face to kiss her wrist. “May I heal you?”

As much as it chafed against the thrum of her heartbeat that urged her to fix it fix it fix it fix it now, she waited until he mumbled a yeah... thanks before she gloved her hands in water and reached for him. The landscape of spider-webbed energy knots made from thin but deadly wire opened up in her mind’s eye, and she walked pathways as familiar as those through the palace in search of the usual places the energy tangled and snarled. Hoping that he would somehow feel the love in her chest, as sorrowful as it was, Katara set about straightening the energies in the tissue on his face, coaxing each one to the best outcome it would reach that day. She was half-aware of Zuko’s fingers trailing up and down her side in a motion that soothed and anchored them both.

When she had done what she could, she sealed the work with a kiss that turned to two when Zuko exhaled deeply and a little unsteadily and pressed both hands against her back. A little reluctantly, she resisted his coaxing to just fall into his chest and stay there, not wanting to get distracted from her second objective. After only a moment of displeased near-pouting, Zuko helped her to slip off his outer robe and open the inner tunic so that she could place a water-gloved hand against the scar on his chest.

The shattered riverbed of this scar was more cause for frustration to her, if only because she’d spent so long trying to make it heal better than it had. What made it even worse was how innately she understood this scar: it was a study in Waterbending gone wrong; in currents of liquid fire that got abruptly, agonisingly aborted in a hundred different places until they forced themselves out his chest and through his arm and out his fingers. Where the scar on his face was undoing knots, the scar on his chest was easing flow, or redirecting it from its hopeful attempt to reopen pathways that had been permanently seared shut despite her best efforts.

Katara lost herself to the task, starting at the core and then running her healing through his shoulder and down to his hand despite him breaking the quiet to tell her that his hand and arm were fine. She hated how he became slightly cruel with himself when his hand cramped and his fingers ached, especially because of how much he needed to use his hands for late-night paperwork. And so she spent time hopefully delaying the next spasms, if only for a day or so.

Lastly, she turned her attention to the muscles between his ribs, which had caught more damage from the lightning than she’d known to check for when she’d been fourteen. As an apology for letting them heal in a way that now left them prone to seizing and clenching, she spent longer on them than she maybe needed to, coaxing away hours of training, sitting in meetings, haunching over desks and maps.

“I’m not done,” she protested when Zuko gently but firmly captured her wrists and jolted her back into reality like a blow.

“Yeah, you are. For now.”

She scowled at him. “Who is the healer, here? I —”

He kissed her silent, pulling her into his lap, and Katara tested his insistence by crushing him close and cradling his face. This time, neither action made him so much as twitch, though he did break their kiss so that he could nuzzle across her jaw.

“Thank you.” He kissed her cheek, adorably chaste. “Thank you.”

And Katara, sensing victory was in her grasp, pressed her advantage. “Thank me by coming to take a nap with me.”

“If I finish these now, I’ll be able to get to bed at a decent hour,” he countered.

“Hmph. Fine.” She rolled off him, laughing at his little whine of protest, and went back to cuddling him from behind. “I’m still going to take a nap,” she said around a yawn, snaking her hands into his collar even though they were no longer cold.

“All my papers are now all over the place,” he complained.