Zuko watched in agony from a hidden corridor of the temple. It was daylight, but he remained concealed by the shadows; save one sliver of light that shined across his scarred face.
His heart beat as wildly as a caged bird against his ribs as he admired Kai from afar. She sat leaned back against a pillar with her knees drawn to her chest, a book resting atop them. Her nails scraped along the gritty pages as she followed whatever it was she was reading with her finger.
She looked peaceful, he thought. She looked content with life, the way she had when they met and before he'd muddied everything up. Her head turned sharply from a sound that she could likely feel, but Zuko couldn't hear. His eyes followed the motion of her head.
A boy approached her. He leaned against the pillar where she sat and said something that was out of Zuko's earshot.
What he did hear was the sound of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears as the unknown boy offered her his hand.
She won't take it.. He thought to himself.
Kai wrapped her long fingers around his and he hoisted her up. She let go of him once she was steady on her feet, but Zuko noticed the way the boy's fingers remained splayed out midair for an extra second, hoping that she'd find her way back to him.
She tucked the book under her arm and they walked together, hands to themselves, out of frame.
Zuko held his forehead to the white washed stone walls in frustration.
Kai followed Haru to the top of the cliff, through the rolling hills of the meadow that hid the Western Air Temple from the rest of the world. The dandelions were starting to wilt. It wasn't their season anymore and soon, it would be as if they'd never existed at all.
Haru had asked her to read to him like she used to when they were barely teenagers. He'd always adored the subtle inflections of her smooth voice and Kai had always appreciated the way he listened silently, saving his questions until she was finished with each verse or chapter.
And all that time, you thought golden-armoured braggarts could storm my heart into surrender.
Oh, mama.
What did I care to be a bride,
when I could be a queen?
I wasn't afraid, mama; I wasn't taken.
I left.
If only you knew how his hair is softest
when he's on his knees,
coaxing spring from inside of me.
The words dripped off of her lips like sweet lemonade on a hot summer's day. They made Haru blush with slight embarrassment as the two of them laid opposite each other in the weeds — his head resting by her feet and vice versa.
"Heavy. Who knew air nomads could be so romantic?" He responds after considering the poem's meaning.
Kai scoffed. "More like horny." She rustled through the pages of the hand written poetry book she'd found in the library. "Here's a shorter one — 'I hope to arrive to my death late, in love, and a little drunk'."
"Now that sounds like it was written by you." He pinched the back of her calf, forcing both a whimper and a giggle out of her and she nudged him in the side of the head with her knee.
Kai supposed in those moments of simplicity that she loved Haru, too. More so than she did Aang or Katara, but not as suffocatingly as Sokka or Zuko.
Not at all like Zuko.
Rustling grass alerted them in the distance. Haru sat up while Kai kept her nose buried in the pages, breathing in that musty old smell of a book that hasn't been touched in a hundred years.
It was Katara trotting full speed ahead while Sokka stumbled clumsily behind her.
"What's up with her?" Haru asked.
Kai sat up and recognized the look on Katara's face. It was that of blind rage, ignorant assumption that always seemed to throw her into a fit.
"You!" Katara spat as she laid eyes on the girl. Her water bag smacked loosely against her thigh with the cap unscrewed. "You led him here, didn't you!" She shouted.
Kai only had enough time to toss the book away from her, saving the delicate pages from being ruined forever by the cold splash of water that was delivered to her. She knew that if Katara had the ability to heat it up, it would've been boiling.
Thank god she wasn't a fire bender, she surely didn't have the emotional stability for it.
Kai sputtered and wiped her face, leaving only confusion to drench her features. "It would be nice to know exactly why I'm being attacked sometimes." She muttered.
Sokka finally caught up with his much quicker baby sister. With his hands on his knees and lungs burning, he choked out, "Zuko —" another wheeze, "— at the temple —"
The feeling of weightlessness overcame Kai as she stood to her feet. Her heart thumped just as wildly as Sokka's and her head felt swimmy. The tips of her fingers began to tingle.
"Huh?" Kai asked, and it seemed as if the air was too thin to deliver oxygen to her brain. She couldn't comprehend the words that Sokka had spoken.
It was only when Katara began readying a water whip that Kai came back to her senses. Chutes of solidified dirt shot out of the ground and encased both of the water bender's fists, stirrups surrounded her feet.
"Zuko?" She asked again breathlessly, "He's... what?"
Katara grunted, struggling to free her hands. "He was at the temple, putting on some show about how he's changed and wants to teach Aang fire bending."
Kai had long forgotten about the fact that her hair was dripping wet. Now she couldn't shake the itchiness in the souls of her feet. It was restlessness sensationalized, and it could only be driven off by running full speed.
"Did you know that he sent Combustion Man after us?!" Katara demanded to know.
"I told you, his name's — Ugh, nevermind!" Kai'd already begun back away from the three others. "Where is he now?? Still at the temple?"
She was behind Katara's fixed stance now, and the girl wasn't willing to strain her neck to help Kai. Sokka rubbed the back of his neck nervously, uncomfortable with telling his old flame how their encounter had ended.
"We, uh.. we couldn't let him join us, Kai." He said softly. "It's his track record. We can't trust him. Not after we just failed to bring down his own father."
The weightlessness lifted and now it felt like cement had hardened around her ribs.
"So, what? You just turned him away?!" Kai spat, and Sokka nodded solemnly. Her hand ran over her face, holding back angry tears that were bubbling to the surface. "I can't believe this..."
Katara shouted over her shoulder, "He hunted us down for months. He turned on us once and it almost cost Aang his life!"
"He saved my life, you imbecile! If it weren't for him, I would've rotted away from infection! If it weren't for him, we still wouldn't have Appa!"
Haru's brow knitted together as he looked on from the grass. The air surrounding Kai grew bubbly and distorted, like it was melting around her. Her fists were clenched tight, and if he looked hard enough, he swore he could see steam emitting from her fingertips.
A tremor shook the meadow and Kai took a deep breath. She had to remind herself that the Western Air Temple was old, it was delicate. She closed her eyes and counted to ten silently as she stepped away from the others, grasping for composure like it was the frayed end of a rope and she was at the bottom of a ten foot pit.
Then she sprinted. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, and then pushed them even harder. Her hands and feet dug into the side of the cliff and she climbed down on all fours, having learned a lesson or two from Nero.
Kai had told herself not to get her hopes up. She'd lied and said that she wasn't sprinting for any particular reason, that she just needed to stretch her legs, on the way back to the temple. Yet she was filled to the brim with the sharp blade of disappointment when the only person who greeted her was Aang, sitting on the ledge of a balcony, when she returned.
"He's not here, Kai. I'm sorry." Aang said, and his apology was genuine.
Kai pressed her forehead against the cool stone wall, just where Zuko had been not long before, and closed her eyes. "Yeah, Aang.. I figured as much."
For a moment, a nagging voice whispered in the back of her mind. It was childlike and squeaky, innocent.
It let her in on a secret — and that secret was the density of the wall where she was resting her head. It was harder than her skull by a long shot. The voice reminded her that bashing her own brain in was always an option, and that if she wanted to do it, nobody would be able to stop her.
Kai backed slowly away from the wall and retreated to her bedroom.
She slept for the rest of the day and throughout the night.
*****
Morning came all at once and it felt like no time had passed at all since her major let down the day before.
Kai was staring at the ceiling when she woke up, lying on her back with the foggy morning light wafting in through the window. She'd slept well — peacefully, even. Save the confusing phrase that woke her up sporadically throughout the night.
You forgot to lock the door.
She stood and stretched, bending to touch her toes before checking the door handle to her bedroom. It was unlocked, just as she'd left it. Kai and Toph were sharing a room. Of course she'd leave the door open for the girl.
Kai rubbed her eyes clear and realized that she was alone. She buttoned her dress and braided her hair quickly. It was later than she'd anticipated.
When she reached the commons area of the temple, Katara was already serving everyone breakfast. Scrambled eggs and some sort of pan fried meat. There was no trace of any anger from the day before lingering on her face.
Katara did that often; misjudged a situation completely and then regretted her reaction to whatever incident she'd fabricated. It didn't matter, she was already forgiven in Kai's mind.
"Has anyone seen Toph?" Kai asked. "She's not in our room and I don't remember her coming in last night."
"I haven't seen her since she stormed off yesterday." Sokka said from across the way.
"Stormed off? When was this?"
Katara grumbled to herself about it happening after "you-know-who" showed his mutilated face, and Kai shot her a look that told her it was best to keep her mouth shut unless she had something helpful to add to the conversation.
They discussed whether or not they should look for her, and the three newest boys to join their gang decided to check in the wind tunnel for her (Kai suspected they were still enjoying their surroundings, she let them go without protest).
They ate in silence after the boys departed. Kai chewed slowly, as she still felt like she could fall back asleep at any moment, until a rumbling in the structure alerted her.
Rocks came tumbling down from the walls in a homemade chute, they carried Toph with them on their backs. She was lying down with her legs suspended, her feet raw and glowing red on the bottoms.
"Shit! Toph! What happened?!" Kai yelled, startled, as the four of them rushed to her side.
"My feet got burned!" Toph replied.
Katara parroted Kai's question of, "What happened??", to which Toph, sarcastically responded, "I just told you that my feet got burned."
Kai picked the girl up, carrying her to the nearby fountain to sit her down beside, "She meant how, you sassy little shit."
Toph's silence concerned Kai more than the scorches on her soles did. After a brief dip in the water, she finally opened up. "I kinda went to see Zuko last night.." She said, low enough so that the others couldn't hear. "I thought that he could be helpful to us, I thought that maybe we could work something out if I talked to him."
It was Kai's turn to be silent now. She cast her eyes down at Toph's swollen and blistered feet. It was easy to forget how deadly a frightened fire bender can be when you're used to being the most terrifying thing in the world.
"He didn't mean to." Toph whispered after a while. She feared that if Aang didn't find a fire bending teacher, all the blame could now be cast on her.
Kai looked up, meaning to tell the girl that everything would be okay, when a metallic glimmer caught her eye.
She yanked Toph away from the fountain by her torso, swiping her hand haphazardly toward the other three, sending their momentarily paralyzed bodies flying out of the way of a fire blast.
But it wasn't her quick wit that saved the five of them. Aang looked up from his resting place and, as the dust from the explosion settled, he saw Zuko hanging onto Combustion Man's arm atop a nearby cliff.
"Stop!" Zuko shouted, "I don't want you hunting the avatar anymore!"
The assassin attempted another blast from his third eye, only to be kicked in the jaw by Zuko's swinging leg. Shiva threw the boy against the wall of the stone ledge, knocking the wind out of his chest. Jagged rocks pierced his skin and warm blood flowed down his tunic.
"Can't you do something!" Sokka yelled frantically, "Can't you—you, bend him!"
Kai ushered the lot of them behind the cover of a wall, peeking around the corner. "I can't bone bend someone that has the mental clarity of a freaking God, Sokka!"
They watched as Zuko fended off attack after attack, mostly by dodging blows. With no spare time to make a move of his own, he remained on the defense until a small opening presented itself. Zuko raised a wall of fire between Shiva and himself.
His only move backfired immensely. Combustion Man pushed the wall back, taking control of the flames and forcing Zuko closer to the edge of the cliff. The flames grew hotter, wilder. They reached out for Zuko's skin, threatening to grasp his clothes and engulf him. His heels dug into the ground as he was pushed further and further back.
With the casual twitch of his hand, Zuko was blown off the mountain. The flames erupted around him and soon, the ground below his feet was no more. He reached for something, anything, to catch his fall.
"No!" Kai screamed. Her voice cracked from a mixture of horror and shattering hope. She gave away their hiding place, alerting the hit man to their position as she slid across the stone toward the abyss. Toph ran behind her just as she had after the catacombs, but she was tripped up by Katara's water whip wrapping around her ankle, dragging her back behind the wall just in time to not be blown to bits by another explosion.
Debris rained down on Kai as she flung herself over the edge. She kept her eyes wide open and they were filled with falling dust and wind as she searched the air for Zuko's falling body.
Her fingers brushed something solid and wrapped themselves around it, a hanging vine noosed around her ankle.
Kai's shoulder dislocated as she and Zuko came to a halting stop. She looked down through the thick fog to see such real fear in his amber irises. His other hand grasped for her desperately, and she took it without hesitation.
"I got you, I got you!" She chanted over and over, trying to not let him know that she was just as scared as he was.
Blast after blast exploded far above them. More debris coated their skin, blinding them, though they kept their eyes only on each other. Zuko, content with the fact that the bottom of this pit may be his final resting place, thought that this would be a lovely way to die — staring deeply into such captivating eyes while the world blew to pieces around him.
Another explosion.
No, an eruption. Boulders, ashes and balls of fire rained down, the earth roared, and then all was silent.
Kai heard Toph wail her name and finally tore her gaze away from Zuko's. She twisted her neck, as painful as it was, to look back up toward the ledge.
The gang was there, searching through the smoke for her.
"We're here!" She yelled. "I need help!"
She circled her ankle around the noose again, pulling them up by only an inch, maybe less. It caused the vine to squeeze her joint.
"Stop moving, I'll get Appa!" Aang shouted.
Moments later, Kai was screaming at the top of her lungs as Toph set her dislocated shoulder back into place. The pain radiated down to her elbow and up the side of her neck. Katara moved quickly, forming a bubble of healing water over her joint. Blood vessels had burst beneath the skin, causing the surface to turn black and ghastly looking.
Zuko kept his distance during the procedure. He didn't want to see Kai in pain and he'd never been good at comforting people. But when it was over he approached the group with caution.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but... thanks, Zuko." Aang said.
Zuko smiled at the avatar. Smiled. It was the first time Aang had witnessed anything other than a scowl on the boy's face.
"I want to play my part in ending this war. For the longest time, I thought that I had lost my honor, and that somehow my father could return it to me. I know now that no one can give you honor, it's something you earn for yourself. I know my destiny is to help you restore balance to the world." He turned his attention to Toph, bowing at her with respect, "I'm sorry for what I did to you, it was an accident. Fire can be dangerous and wild, so as a firebender, I need to be more careful and control my bending, so I don't hurt people unintentionally."
Katara saw the momentarily shocked expression on Aang's face and knew what he was remembering. She still felt the burns on her arms that he'd caused months ago, though there was no proof of the incident lingering on her skin.
"Now that I know you understand how easy it is to hurt the people you love, I'd like for you to teach me fire bending." The two boys bowed, and then Aang continued. "But I still have to ask my friends if it's okay with them."
He turned to Toph first, and she was thrilled at the idea of having someone new to pick up on. Sokka was indifferent to their newest addition, he just wanted to finally end this damned war.
Katara was uncomfortable. She began visibly perspiring and her jaw clenched tight as she looked Zuko up and down. All she saw when she looked at him was the fire bender that killed her mother.
But she reluctantly agreed with Aang, saying that she would go along with whatever he thought was best for the world.
Kai sat on the raised ledge between two towering pillars, relaxing her pulsating arm. The group grew silent with anticipation as Aang turned to her.
"Well... Kai?" Aang asked.
She tried to look up slowly so that no one would know that her heart hadn't stopped racing. Not for a second.
"I think it's best that I don't vote." She said. Both Zuko and Sokka's brows knitted together with confusion. "If I say that I want you to join, it's because of our past. And if I say that I don't want you to join, it's also because of our past. Either way, my vote is biased."
Kai clenched her jaw and choked her real feelings down her throat so that no one would know she was screaming inside. They might think of her as weak if they knew that her skin was on fire all because of some stupid boy.
"Well, it's settled then. Welcome to the team." Aang said, and Zuko expected a warmer embrace. He approached the group, but most of them left him hanging, dispersing loosely to resume what had been of their day before it was interrupted earlier, leaving just him and Kai standing meters apart awkwardly, as if they were strangers.
"I can show you to your room." Kai finally offered.
Zuko smiled and nodded in response, then followed her through the ancient corridors. She led him into a mostly bare room, it had a single bed with not so much as a pillow on the mattress.
"Home sweet home... I guess. Unpack if you want. Lunch soon, if I can manage to wrangle up the others." She said purposefully loud enough for any listening ears to overhear.
Zuko hadn't planned out what exactly he was going to say to Kai. Truth be told, he never really expected to make it this far. But when he turned to face her after taking in his bleak and barren surroundings, he knew that he wasn't going to get the chance to say much anyways.
Their eyes caught each other and Kai waved the door shut, it slammed behind her as she marched toward him. He could see glittery tears swimming on the edges of her eyes.
It was only when her palm met his cheek that Zuko realized they were tears of white-hot anger. His face burned after that, but that was okay, because she didn't bother to take a step away from him when she was finished.
"I thought you were dead, you fucking asshole!" Kai hissed, hushed for the same reason she'd raised her voice earlier.
"From what, the drugs you gave me? You could have overdosed a komodo rhino with that amount!" Zuko stepped closer, challenging her with head held high and arms tucked behind his back.
Kai reared back to slap him again, but he caught her wrist midair. It was bruised with his fingerprints from being held on to for so long.
Zuko kissed her. He smashed his lips against hers without ever consciously deciding to do so, but he needed the breath she was holding hostage in her lungs. It belonged to him, he'd breathed it into her when she was close to killing herself with negligence back in the Fire Nation. Hot tears rolled into Kai's mouth and she didn't know whose eyes they'd come from.
That kiss lasted an eternity. It lasted longer than any of her nightmares and the voids of sleeplessness that she thought she'd never wake up from. She didn't want to wake up from this either.
But a clearing of someone's throat interrupted their reunion. Neither Kai nor Zuko had heard the door reopen behind them.
They separated when they saw Katara standing in the metal frame. She had a scowl on her face and murder in her eyes. She approached Zuko without caution.
"You might have everyone else here fooled with your... transformation, but you and I both know you've struggled with doing the right thing in the past." She eyed Kai, daring her to intervene. "So let me tell you something right now. You make one step backward, one slip up, give me one reason to think you might hurt Aang... and you won't have to worry about your destiny anymore. Because I'll make sure your destiny ends right then and there. Permanently."
She turned on her heel and walked into the corridor before she could see Zuko gulp or Kai's pupils blow out.
Kai made a single step to follow Katara before Zuko grabbed her by the wrist again. "Don't... she has every right to be angry." He pleaded.
Kai ripped her bruised, weak arm away from him and stalked Katara. The water bender never stopped moving.
"I know you can hear my footsteps, Katara." Kai said as calmly as possible. "This will go much better for you if you don't ignore me."
Katara stopped and finally turned to face her as soon as the footsteps halted. "What? Your boyfriend can't stick up for himse—" She was cut off by Kai's forearm pinning her by the chest against the wall. A clammy, silver blade made itself known against her neck.
She had such flawless skin compared to Zuko and Kai.
"I am so sick of you pretending like you're the only one this war has affected." Kai spat in her face. Her voice was cast down, but Toph must have felt the impact of Katara's body hitting the wall and alerted the others. They stood at the end of the hallway. Kai continued, "All of our lives have been ripped apart, we've all lost people we love. Yet you're the only one who uses it as an excuse to be a bully."
Kai pulled her switchblade back into its sheath to ease the straining veins in Aang's bald head.
"So maybe you and I can come to an understanding. If Zuko fucks up, go ahead. Kill him. Hell, I'll hold him down and let you torture him for days, if that's what you want." Kai continued. "But if you so much as lay a finger on him because of your habit of acting before you think... I'm coming for you. No bending, no weapons, I'm coming for you empty handed just to remind you that I am still the most dangerous thing this fucking war has ever produced."
A/N -
So sorry for the delay! I went on vacation. Regular updates will resume now!