@zutaraweek, Day 1: Dreams
Summary: Soulmate AU, dreams show you glimpses of your soulmate. Katara has been dreaming of fire since she was a little girl, and Zuko has been dreaming of ice. But even once they finally meet, it's not so simple. Not when they're still on opposite sides of a war.
Gran-gran always said dreams pointed you to your soulmate. Katara wasn’t sure if she wanted to believe her. It might have been a nice thought, if her dreams showed her ice and snow, fishing hooks and war paint, a different corner of the South Pole or a glimpse of the far-off north. But if dreams really did show glimpses of your soulmate, Katara knew hers wasn’t from the Water Tribes or even the Earth Kingdom.
Her dreams set her mind ablaze each night with raging fire and golden eyes.
The Fire Lord didn’t believe in soulmates. He scoffed at the idea that dreams could mean anything. So did Azula. But Zuko’s mother whispered the legend to him by the turtle duck pond, stroking his hair and smiling as she spoke.
Zuko shook his head. It might sound like a lovely story to her, but he knew better. He knew he had to scoff at the idea just as much as Father and Azula. Maybe even more so.
Zuko’s dreams were frozen over with ice.
The men came with their iron ships, raining ash down on the village. Katara’s mother knelt before a man in Fire Nation red, begging him to spare her daughter. Katara’s dreams were still on fire, but she told herself it didn’t mean what the elders said.
Her soulmate couldn’t be like the men who killed her mother.
The flames flickered and died. Zuko fell to the ground, his cheeks burning with shame, barely daring to look up at his father’s disapproving scowl or Azula’s smirk.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep up with his little sister.
The water wobbled in midair, then splashed down, landing right on Sokka’s head. He grumbled and rolled his eyes, muttering something about magic water.
Katara ought to be a waterbender, but there was no one to teach her.
Zuko’s eye throbbed with pain. He looked out at the Western Air Temple and felt himself sink into despair. How could he have disgraced himself so thoroughly?
He ought to regret his words. But he had been right, damn it. His nation’s soldiers deserved better than to be sacrificed so senselessly.
And yet, here he was, cast into exile. Surely that meant he had done the wrong thing, didn’t it?
On the other side of the world, Katara woke up screaming, clutching at her face as the pain of burning flesh faded into a memory. Tears sprung to her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she felt her heart soften toward the golden-eyed boy who haunted her dreams.
Katara knew her soulmate had left the Fire Nation, and the thought hung over her like a dark cloud. If he was anywhere near her age, he was too young to be sent off to war. Or, at least, in the Water Tribe, he would be, and she doubted even the Fire Nation drafted preteen kids.
Yet what other explanation could there be? Her dreams were still full of fire, but there was no more red-gold throne room, no more turtle duck pond, no more heavy, humid heat. Instead, she saw rolling waves and harbors full of steel ships.
Her soulmate was in the Fire Navy. Which meant he was the enemy, even more than he already had been. What if, next time there was a raid, she found herself looking into his golden eyes and had to watch his fire burn down her home?
“Perhaps the Southern Air Temple…”
“No.” Zuko shook his head.
It would be a logical choice. Checking the Air Temples made sense, and it was far safer to sail south than to risk being caught in the Earth Kingdom or at the North Pole. But he’d seen too many fragmented dreams of a little village in the snow, and he had a horrible suspicion that when he did sail south, he would no longer be able to avoid confronting those dreams.
His soulmate was from the Southern Water Tribe, and he knew perfectly well what his people had done to them. They wouldn’t welcome the arrival of a Fire Nation ship. And while he might not believe that soulmates meant anything, he found that he didn’t want to hurt her.
Better to keep his distance.
The fleet departed, taking with it all the able-bodied men of the tribe. Katara watched them from the shore until they disappeared over the horizon, a pang of loneliness striking her unexpectedly hard.
Her father was gone. Perhaps not as irreversibly as her mother – that would remain to be seen – but he was gone nonetheless. Just another thing the Fire Nation had taken from her.
In a far-off port city, Zuko woke up from a dream of ships with blue sails and gazed out at the harbor, wondering if he ought to write home to alert his father that the Southern Water Tribe was sending a fleet.
(He didn’t. It was only a dream, after all, and Ozai didn’t believe in those.)
Katara didn’t know if it was a real waterbending move or not. But it was something.
She wondered if her soulmate was a firebender. If so, he no doubt had a proper teacher to guide him, and that felt so unfair that it made her want to scream.
Zuko drilled firebending forms until his muscles ached. He tried not to think about his dream from the previous night, in which the Water Tribe girl – his soulmate – had been pushing and pulling ocean water as if she controlled the tide.
If you had any loyalty or honor, you would tell your father, said a voice in his head.
Katara knew when her soulmate had left the Fire Nation, and she knew when he had entered the icy southern waters.
“A Fire Navy ship is coming,” she said, raising her chin to meet the eyes of her tribe’s elders. “When it does, I want you to let me talk to whoever is on board. See if we can resolve things peacefully.”
They didn’t have the means to handle it any other way. Not anymore. Not without their waterbenders or their warriors. But she had to make sure.
“You, child?” asked one of the old women. “Why?”
“Because my soulmate is on that ship.”
Zuko spotted the beam of light cutting through the polar sky, and he knew his quest was over.
He stepped off his ship into the little Water Tribe village, and he found himself looking into a pair of blue eyes he had seen a thousand times in his dreams.
“I have to. It’s the only way to restore my honor.”
He took the Avatar onto his ship and tried not to look back. But how could he not, when he knew exactly who he was leaving behind?
“Katara, we’re not kidnapping a Fire Nation soldier.” Sokka crossed his arms and frowned. “That’s ridiculous. What would we even do with him?”
“I’m not saying we should kidnap him. But he’s -”
“Your soulmate. Yeah. Because things just couldn’t get any weirder.”
“I just want to sit him down for a few minutes and try to talk him out of this,” she says. “They’ve hurt him, too. I know they have. I’ve seen it in my dreams. Maybe, if I can get through to him…”
Her brother shook his head, clearly unconvinced, but she wasn’t going to give up. She was going to save the kid from the iceberg, and she was going to have a nice long talk with her soulmate about what exactly he was doing here.
“So you’re the banished Crown Prince of the Fire Nation?” the Water Tribe girl asked, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, I can work with that.”
Zuko stared at her, baffled. He ought to have paid no attention. He had an Avatar to recapture. But, somehow, he couldn’t look away.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s the Avatar,” she said, gesturing to the kid currently running circles around Zuko’s crew. “Once he masters all four elements, he can end the war. Put everything right. Maybe you can help us, and we can help you get your throne back.”
She said it like it was a reasonable thing to suggest.
“I could never. That would be treason.”
Katara dreamed of fire and golden eyes and a burning desire to return to a home that remained just out of reach.
Zuko dreamed of deep blue water and warm furs and a longing to put right a world gone horribly wrong.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Just tell me where the Avatar is, and -”
There was an iguana parrot and an explosion, and Zuko found himself stranded at the North Pole, in enemy territory twice over. His uncle would hide him, protect him as best he could, but both the Water Tribe and Zhao’s army would certainly want him dead. There was only one person he could think of, aside from his uncle, who might not.
But he had already burned that bridge, hadn’t he? So what could he do besides try yet again to capture the Avatar? It was his only way to return home with honor.
Katara woke up from a dream of an exploding ship with tears in her eyes.
It wasn’t supposed to end that way. She might not have ever wanted to dream of Prince Zuko, but she had never wanted that dream, either.
Ice clashed with fire beside the spirit oasis.
“You rise with the moon, but I rise with the sun.”
He grabbed the Avatar and fled before he could second-guess himself.
Later, after rescuing Aang and dragging Zuko, unconscious, out of the snow bank, after the ocean spirit’s wrath, after the Fire Navy fleet lay broken on the ocean floor, Katara looked out at the sea and wondered.
The raft drifted towards some unknown destiny, and Zuko lay there, unable to do more than simply keep breathing. The Avatar could wait for another day. Right now, he was tired.
He closed his eyes, and in his dreams, he saw a now-familiar girl looking out at the sea, a bittersweet smile on her face.
They set off for the Earth Kingdom. It was time to find an earthbending teacher, the deadline of the comet approaching all too fast.
Katara dreamed of a girl in red with lightning at her fingertips and the blade of a knife cutting through sleek black hair.
If the Fire Lord no longer wanted him home except as a prisoner, there was nowhere left for Zuko to turn. Nothing to do except wander through the Earth Kingdom with his uncle, giving a false name and pretending to be no more than one of countless refugees fleeing toward Ba Sing Se.
In his dreams, he saw an endless desert, a hidden library, and a pass guarded by a deadly serpent. But the ferry was a far safer way of crossing, especially if you weren’t a waterbender.
Behind the walls of Ba Sing Se, Katara’s dreams led her down a street in the Outer Ring, through the doorway of a tea shop.
“I need to see if it’s true,” she told her friends. “I have to know.”
So, when Joo Dee wasn’t looking, she slipped away.
There she stood, in the doorway of the tea shop where Zuko and his uncle had taken jobs. Zuko’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at her, unable to speak, barely able to breathe.
“I thought so,” she said. “I saw you in my dreams.”
He nodded. “You’ve always been in mine, too.”
She reached out a hand, and he took it, savoring the warmth of her touch.
“Come with me,” she said. “You don’t have to promise anything yet. Just come with me for today. Talk to Aang and the others. He’ll need a firebending teacher, and I get the feeling you could use some new friends.”
Zuko ought to have said something about treason. About loyalty to his nation and his father. But his father betrayed him first, and perhaps joining the Avatar wouldn’t be a betrayal of his people. He didn’t get the impression that Aang or his friends would want them to suffer.
He’d been dreaming about Katara since he was a little kid, and regardless of his father’s opinions, he knew that meant something. They were always meant to meet. To matter to one another. To change each other’s lives irreversibly.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll come and talk to them.”
Months later, in the aftermath of the comet and with just hours to go before the coronation, the two held each other in a tight embrace.
“Stay with me?” he asked softly.
She nodded. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m not going anywhere.”
Perhaps she was always meant to end up here, in his arms. At his side. Sharing the burden of running a nation and ending a war. Making a better future together.
They’ve been dreaming of each other all their lives, and now their dreams have become so intertwined that nothing in the world could unravel them.
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