Suki and Kai lay in the confines of the small, stone teepee together. The group had found themselves camping, just like old times, after Azula obliterated the Western Air Temple in an attempt to become an only child. And all was going well until Katara ended up in one of her moods again, sulky and angry and as closed off as Boiling Rock had been.
That was how Suki and Kai had ended up together — because Zuko wandered after Katara and when that didn't work (like Kai told him it wouldn't), he barged into Sokka's tent, running Suki off in the process.
The girls rested side by side, staring up through the stone slats that Kai bended up from the earth. There were cracks in the two slates where they didn't quite meet up and the shimmering, plentiful stars could be seen if they focused their eyes.
Kai hadn't expected to feel so close to Suki so quickly, she'd only met the girl once, but it felt as if they were two peas in a pod — sisters. And that bond came with the lingering feeling of guilt that sat in the back of her throat like acid reflux.
"I hope Zuko didn't interrupt anything too embarrassing." Kai said. She'd picked up two interestingly shaped rocks while clearing out the campsites and now had them floating in the air above her head. She didn't care to look at the stars these days, they only reminded her of what was to come.
"What? No!" Suki said, "We were just, uh.. y'know, catching up."
She caught Kai's side eye through the fire light that shined in. "Right, catching up." Kai said, "Well, I purposefully made you guys' tent at the back of camp so you can 'catch up' without the rest of us hearing."
Suki smiled as a silent thank you to her new friend.
The Kyoshi Warrior had a lot on her mind... life wasn't exactly slow, she would say, but it was calmer now than it'd been since her village was destroyed. Suki finally had a moment to think and, like the others, had sporadic chances to feel like a teenager for once. Chances that she'd never experienced before, having grown up mostly surrounded by females.
"You and Zuko have been together for a while now... right?" She asked.
Kai shrugged, "We've been on and off, I guess." She caught the stones in her hand and turned on her side, lifting herself up on her elbow, "Why do you ask?"
"It's just... Sokka and I haven't spent that much time together, and what if he wants to... you know." She kept her eyes pointed straight above and her cheeks blushed red. Redder than the eyeshadow of her traditional garb.
This girl, this warrior, was embarrassed to even be bringing up the subject. But the opportunity was right there in front of her and if Kai wasn't the right person to ask, who would be? Katara, his sister? Hakoda, his father?
Kai was the only viable option, which was rather unfortunate for the earth bender.
"Oh god, please tell me you aren't coming to me for 'the talk', Suki. Shouldn't you be having this conversation with, like, an adult??"
"Did you have it with an adult?!" Suki proclaimed in response. She couldn't imagine having asked her sweet mother about something as promiscuous as premarital sex!
But she was right, Kai hadn't been given the chance to go to any real adults with all of her hormone driven inquiries. She'd only had three women to ask those questions to, ones that'd taken her under their wing, ones that were more than happy to fill her head with the radical idea of a healthy sex life.
"Ugh, fine." Kai said. The idea of Suki and Sokka having sex twenty feet away didn't bother her, but the idea of giving Suki advice on the matter... "What do you want to know?"
Suki repeated her question, "What if he wants to have sex?" She whispered the final word as if it were dirty.
"You have sex. If that's what you want, I mean."
The girl turned on her side identically to how Kai lay, facing her. "It can't just be that simple, can it? Isn't it supposed to hurt?"
Kai sat up and grabbed her bag from the corner, rifling through it. Her entire life was in that bag, including bits and pieces of other people's lives that she'd picked up along the way. "No, dude. And if it does, tell him. You have to communicate or else it won't be fun for either of you." She found what she was looking for stuffed at the bottom and shoved into the corner, an extra lambskin that Sokka had once shoved in her bag for safe keeping. Kai tossed it to Suki. "Use that, now would be the absolute worst time to end up pregnant. I'm pretty sure Sokka carries his own, but you can't rely on guys for that kind of stuff."
She'd never tell Suki where that condom originated from.
"Can't rely on guys for what kind of stuff?" Zuko asked from the doorway, suddenly the teepee felt far too claustrophobic for Suki. She shoved the protection into her pocket, prayed to the spirits that he hadn't seen it, and looked to Kai for a quick response.
"Condoms." Kai said, and Suki's cheeks flushed bright red in the dim light. "And don't trust their pull out skills either."
Zuko smiled, a far cry from what he wanted to do, which was fall back with laughter. "Definitely don't trust them to pull out." He said, plopping down onto the pallet beside Kai that Suki had just taken up space in.
Suki said goodnight and hurried away in embarrassment while Kai turned over on her stomach, resting on her elbows. She could tell things hadn't turned out well by the way Zuko lay back with her forearm draped over his eyes with frustration. He let himself get put down so easily, she'd realized.
"How'd it go?" Kai asked solely so that he could vent.
"As well as you predicted, she yelled and I stood there." He huffed, "But I think I know how to help her."
Truthfully, Kai wasn't interested in helping Katara get over her mother's death. Not in that moment, anyways. She slid her fingers across Zuko's torso, inching the fabric of his tunic up so she could feel the warmth of his skin.
"Yeah? How?" She asked.
Zuko wouldn't dare stop her from drawing abstract shapes on his stomach. Her nails stroked him from hip to hip, dipped against his waistband and then wandered idly up his sides.
"I think I know who invaded her village. Maybe I could take her to them, maybe she could find the man that hurt her and, you know... make things even."
Her hot breath against his skin as she leaned over to kiss his ribs made Zuko tingle everywhere. The back of his neck grew warm with rapidly pumping blood draining out of his brain.
"So you're going to offer her murder in exchange for friendship?"
He glanced down to see her staring back up at him, jade eyes fluorescent in the darkness. Kai was lying comfortably against his leg, her cheek resting on the jut of his hip. "Don't give me that. You've murdered, like, two dozen people and stabbed my sister."
She smiled at him and he could see the glistening pinkness of her tongue as she licked her lips. "Got me there." Kai kissed the v the cut down from his hip bones, her fingers slipping under the lip of his trousers.
And then she felt his hand on her cheek, cupping her face lovingly as a defeated sigh escaped his lungs.
"I think I should go wait for her." He said reluctantly, "Outside of her tent, until morning. That way she knows I'm serious."
He'd never seen anyone's eyes roll harder than hers did when he was turning down a blowjob. Kai sat up on her knees, "Fiiiine." She said like a spoiled child that was finally accepting being told 'no'.
Zuko kissed her goodnight one million times as he tucked her into their bed roll. He waved out the oil lantern in the corner before ducking under the small gap entrance.
"Do me a favor, tell Toph I'll be the big spoon if she comes sleep with me for the night."
Zuko cut his eyes at his girlfriend, pouted, and grumbled under his breath, "You never offer to be the big spoon for me..."
*****
The next morning, Kai witnessed the coming together of two sides firsthand. She stoked the fire that was long burned out, sleepy and wrapped in a blanket and craving nothing more than a shitty cup of coffee when Katara and Zuko approached Appa. She rolled her eyes as Aang preached about forgiveness.
It had to be easy, forgiving the evils of the world when forgiveness was all you'd been taught.
"What do you think this will accomplish, Katara? Closure? Justice?" Aang asked after being told about their plan to find the man that killed Kya.
Kai knew that closure and justice had been long forgotten in Katara's scorned, tired soul. The two girls were alike in that way, they were angry. So angry that it burned in them like the smoldering campfire Kai stood in front of now; charred, blackened coal on the surface but embers that were hot enough to kill and easy to reignite at their center.
The flames sparked alive and Kai sat the kettle over them. "Closure is a lie and forgiving irredeemable humans is the same as doing absolutely nothing." Kai said, "Katara doesn't need justice, she needs revenge."
Spite and tiredness clouded her features as the four others looked down at her, all wrapped in her blanket. She sure didn't look like a girl that was speaking so casually about murder. But in the end, it didn't matter what Kai's take was, regardless of the fact that she was most experienced in the art. Aang denied Katara use of his bison and she stomped away in a huff, not to be seen for the rest of the day.
Zuko stared through the cover of night at his girlfriend that evening, long after she'd gone to bed and he'd pretended to fall asleep. He watched with a heavy heart as she tucked her arms beneath a pillow after he peeled his body away from hers.
It hurt. He wanted her glued to his hip every night for the remainder of his days.
But there was work to be done, promises to be fulfilled. Zuko touched the tail of Kai's braid and genuinely considered singeing a few hairs off to stuff into his pocket. He kissed her lips, pouted and unresponsive, and then slipped away.
Just for a few nights, he told himself as he changed into clothes that would conceal him better.
Katara was waiting for him just outside of camp. They'd planned this together immediately following Aang's disapproval. She'd made it clear to Zuko — either he travel with her or she goes alone, there were no other options.
They crouched through the bushes and snuck to Appa's resting place, Zuko threw his belongings onto the saddle in a hurry and mounted the steed. The two didn't speak, he was more or less only there as an escort.
"Surely you aren't going dressed like that." Kai whispered through the tall grass that Appa had been feasting on. She stepped into the small clearing that he'd eaten around himself.
Katara stood at Appa's side, already gripping his fur with one hand.
"You might as well carry a torch, maybe send off a messenger hawk to let them know you're coming." She had Azula's dress wrapped tightly around her body, and Zuko knew she'd pulled it on in a hurry. He hadn't left her like that — clothed.
"If you're here to talk me out of this —" Katara started, and was cut off.
"I'm not. I thought I'd made that clear this morning." Kai pulled a neatly folded garment out from inside of her dress. It was the all black one that Sokka had gifted her on the day of the invasion, the one that represented where she was from. "Put this on, you'll be invisible until it's too late for them to run."
Katara looked at the dress in all of its elegance. She knew how much her brother had spent on it, they'd gotten into an argument about the damn thing. It hadn't been hand stitched for the purpose that it was now serving, but it served this duty so well. The girl saw now that what she was being offered was a peace treaty, a truce of sorts.
She silently agreed to the ceasefire by taking it in her hands. "I appreciate this, Kai." Katara said.
Kai smiled at her with true excitement — selfish happiness over the fact that Katara was finally filling the role of "chaotic good" she so often chastised Kai for loving.
"Does it change you?" Katara asked. She refused to look up from the dress and Kai knew that she wasn't doubting her decision, she was merely letting her thoughts wander aloud. Kai wanted to lie. She wanted to shelter Katara like she so often did Toph, but Katara would see through the facade. She'd already lived such a tumultuous life, there was no use in muddying her judgement now.
"No." Kai said. "But what he did changed you."
Kai waved the pair off, watching as Appa flew over the dim horizon.
Aang joined her some time later, he'd expected to find the clearing free of any sky bisons. He stood next to Kai with his feet sinking into the cold, soft ground. Morning dew would coat the tall grass soon enough, and in the next few weeks with it would come the first frost.
"Why didn't you go with them?" He asked. Disappointment sat heavy in his tone.
Kai tucked her arms tighter around her torso. "I have a feeling she's going to make decisions that I wouldn't."
*****
She sat there. For two full days, she sat there, waiting. Praying to gods and spirits that she hated, even ones she didn't believe existed. Toph visited her often, they played The Perfect Murder — a game that's title explains itself. Toph never won, she opted to kill her victims mercilessly by beating or stabbing, messy methods that left evidence pointing straight toward her. Kai chose the icicle, the weapon melted away. No weapon, no crime.
But those were non-bender methods. She knew the real perfect ways to kill people because she'd done it before, and the methods that she hadn't tested out first hand, she'd dreamed about. That was her 'homework' sometimes, back when she still lived at the military base and her existence was top secret — to come up with creative yet effective ways to end someone. There was the obvious, her first kill, suicide. Make the victim kill themselves.
There was her most recent, by forcing the earth apart. The ground formed a hungry mouth that ate up victims by the dozens, hundreds, if she really wanted it to. Their bodies would never be found. They'd sink to the core of the earth and become fuel for the rest of humanity to live off of.
And then there was one that had scared Kai when she first daydreamed about it. Bone bending, but not suicide. She, the killer would put so much pressure on the victims bones that they'd combust into shrapnel, piercing through organs and nerves and arteries. The victim turn into jello, and it would be immensely painful. But all hope would be lost and by the time they realized it and panic began to set in, everything would fade to black.
Kai felt guilty for harboring the capacity to imagine such scenarios. Normal people didn't think like that, good people didn't think like that.
So she'd send Toph away when that anxiety became too much to bear. Sokka and Suki would visit her too, they'd sit hand in hand and bring her food when she forgot to eat. They'd lie on their backs and watch the stars with her at night before tuckering out and heading back toward their tent, likely to make love before falling asleep in each other's arms.
And then Kai would be left alone again in the pitch black like she had been for so long before meeting these friends. It didn't bother her now, not like it had for those few weeks before the ritual with Enya. She again found herself adoring the way fireflies lit up the sky and how moths fluttered against her cheeks.
It was sunset when they came back, Kai saw Appa soaring over the sky and Aang joined her just in time to witness their arrival. Their faces were long and Katara's spirit in particular seemed broken.
"How'd it go?" Kai asked her, though she already knew.
Katara requested to speak with her by the bank. "Alone", she emphasized, trying not to make eye contact with Aang. Kai followed her far away from the two boys, down to the ocean's edge where the soil turned muddy and roots of small tries freed themselves from the ground. They looked like creepy, crawly, rotten fingernails, Kai thought.
The two girls sat side by side in silence for a while, pulling up handfuls of wet grass and making little piles of it in front of them.
"I couldn't do it." Katara finally said. She'd been dreading admitting this to Kai.
"I know." Kai responded.
"You said that it doesn't change you, but... but I could feel myself changing before I even met the man. I was so angry and I still am." Her voice fluctuated and Kai could hear the anger that she spoke of, but then it cracked along with Katara's self esteem. "I don't know if I'm just weak or what... but I wanted to kill him and I couldn't bring myself to..."
Kai hadn't expected Katara to carry out the deed, she knew that it wasn't in the water bender's heart. But she'd hoped for the opposite. Kai had hoped that Katara would come back with the man's head on a stick and a smile on her face just to prove that Kai had been right, that taking the life of another doesn't change everyone.
But she was wrong. Therefore, she was the outlier. Killing does change people, it just didn't change her.
"It makes you a good person, Katara. That's all." Kai said as she settled comfortably into her own grief. She felt Katara's chilly fingers against her own as the girl searched for someone to comfort her, and Kai wrapped those fingers up between her hands, becoming the maternal figure that Katara needed in that moment.
"I don't know what to do next..." Katara begged her for guidance.
"I think most people work on forgiveness."
Katara scoffed, "I couldn't. I could never forgive him."
Kai looked over at the girl, she was telling the truth. Though Katara may not have wanted to watch the man die, she could never find the inner peace to let his memory fade from her mind. That would mean letting her mother fade away as well.
"I meant forgiving yourself." Kai said, "For not being able to stop her death. I know that it seems impossible now, but you have to move on. You have to live your life for her because that's what your mother would've wanted."
Katara squeezed her hand a little tighter then, she leaned over onto Kai's shoulder and her small frame felt like a rock solid mass of emotions.
"I'm sorry for being so hard on you... and on Zuko." She said, and Kai smiled.
"Consider it forgotten." Kai slipped away from the girl and nudged the heel of her hand against the dirt, shifting her up onto her feet, "Go apologize to Aang though, give him a big, fat kiss and then send Zuko my way."
Katara scurried away with haste as she was sick of the silence, she and Zuko had been quiet for almost all of their time together. She wanted to be in Aang's bubbly presence, she wanted him to talk her ear off and ask her questions and she wanted to know that he was proud of her.
Kai felt Zuko's footsteps long before he sat down behind her, but she still didn't greet him until his lanky arms snaked around the front of her waist. He rested his cheek against her shoulder blade, listening to her steady heartbeat that he'd missed dearly.
"She didn't do it." Zuko said.
"So I heard." She sighed heavily, "Is it terrible that I was really, really hoping she would? At least then I wouldn't be the only killer around here."
Kisses landed in her hair as he pushed his nose against her neck. Zuko had missed her earthy smell; not so much dirt, but more of cedarwood with a hint of evergreen. "You killed people that were going to kill you if you gave them the chance. That doesn't make you a bad person, Kai."
Kai liked listening to the scratchiness in Zuko's voice that surfaced in his tone late in the evening. It had always signified that he was almost ready for bed, which meant she got to be close to him again.
"I could've made those men at the prison march away, if I wanted to. All of them at once, I could've turned them into puppets and spared their lives. And that other man—" she couldn't bring herself to speak his name, "he wasn't going to kill me. He put me through hell, but he was never going to kill me."
She felt Zuko unlock his fingers from her torso and he moved in front of her, blocking the view of such a lovely sunset. That was okay, because Kai liked the sight of his softened face better; his scar mimicking the same colors as the sky.
Zuko took her hand in his own, "Tell me what you need from me, Kai." He said, pleading, "I'm not good at this stuff — comforting people. But I want to be whatever you need because you don't deserve to feel guilty for protecting yourself."
Kai reached up and stroked the edge of his scar with her thumb, noticing the stark contrast in texture. The skin around his eye was smooth and hairless compared to his lower cheek, which was rough with the promise of sprouting coarse facial hair.
"That's just it... I don't feel guilty. If anything, I enjoyed killing those people." She said, working past the lump that'd taken up residence in her throat. "It made me feel strong, powerful. If I were Katara, I would've killed that man just to watch him die."
Kai pulled Zuko's face forward and kissed his scar, something she'd never done, and her chewed raw lips felt nice against his skin.
"I don't want you to make excuses for me, Zuko." She said as she pulled away. Her face was long with disappointment. "I know that there's darkness inside of me... I just wish that what little light I have was bright enough to wash it out."
He folded his hand over hers and brought her fingers to his lips, kissing her palm to taste her scar like she had his.
"You're the only light I've ever known." Zuko spilled those words into her hand and she held onto them. Kai clung to them in a last ditch effort for normalcy.
She hoped that they were true.
"Come on, you look like you haven't eaten in days. Let's go make some dinner."
Zuko pulled Kai to her feet and then starting fishing around inside his tunic pocket, "That reminds me, I brought you something!" After a moment, he found what he was looking for and held out a small bag filled with bright red nuggets, "They're fire flakes! It's a delicacy in the Fire Nation. I stole them from the first command post we went to."
Kai was happy to share the snack with him. She tucked herself under his arm, gluing herself to his side as they made their way to camp.
In that short walk, she began reconsidering "the darkness's" offer to keep her alive.
Author's Notes
Enjoy some character art by @FrankiAbe ! They're a super talented artist and are currently writing their own ZukoxOC story as well, if anyone is looking for some more good stuff to read!
Sorry for the semi filler chapter, guys. Just gotta tie up some loose ends before it all comes crashing down.