Fic: "I’ll Take You Where The Water’s Deep"

[redbrunja]

Title: I’ll Take You Where The Water’s Deep
Author: redbrunja
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: R for sexual themes.
Author’s Note: Sequel to “Or Else This Heat Might Turn To Frost”
Prompted by rashaka’s reminding me of how awesome and apropos this song is.  Written for zutara100, prompt 002. Ends
Summery: “When she was a child, she used to play with the lamp flames.” Katara tries to do the right thing.

“This was a mistake, and it’s over.”

And it was, and it is, and Katara knows she made the right decision.

When she was a child, she used to play with the lamp flames, before she realized that it caused the oil to vanish faster, and they didn’t have oil enough to spare, not just so she could get her fingers sooty while she waited on the endless Southern Winters. But she remembered how to do it; the trick was quickness. Katara would drag her fingers through the flame, fast, and there would be only a flicker of warmth over her unburned fingers.

Zuko was the same; the longer she circled around him, let herself be tempted and worse, let herself succumb, the more likely it would be that instead of walking away with sooty lips and hair snarled into knots from his hands, it would end badly, Sokka furious, her father disappointed, Aang betrayed.

She was a Master Bender of the Southern Water Tribe, and there was a difference between making a former enemy a begrudging ally (“Well, fine, if you really want to, you can heat up the dish water and I suppose it couldn’t hurt if you heated up the bathwater too–”) and willingly taking him (his lips on her neck, his exhale hot enough to raise blisters, hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise) to her bed.

No, it was better to end it now, while no one knew, while there would be no awkward looks, no questions, no recriminations.

She lasted a week and a half.

Then Katara was slipping into his room as the sun first creep over the horizon, falling into his arms while light the color of honey filled his chamber.

He kissed her like she’d been years away, gone to fight in some horrific war, instead of having seen her ten hours ago at dinner.

This was a betrayal, she knew it was, but when Zuko was moving over her, as slow and steadfast as the sea on a summer day, she couldn’t care.

She choked on her sobs when she came and Zuko kissed the tears away from her cheeks and murmured promises she knew he’d die to keep.

Somehow, that just made it worse.

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Yeah, Katara's issues with always having to be responsible - or not her issues WITH it, because I think she gets a lot of her identity out of it - but that it's one of her issues is pretty much canon. (And one reason I'll never think Aang is good for her - after raising Sokka, Aang, and Toph, she needs someone who will take care of HER.)

I think that, like most people, she learned the lesson that theft is unwise, which is quite a different lesson than theft is wrong. I think most people don't steal because it's not worth it to steal little crap, and it's immoral to steal the big crap, where both safety and morality become too significant to rationalize away.

Well, I will argue that there is a large component of 'this is wrong' in why lots of people don't steal (for instance, I always knew I'd feel so guilty it was never worth it) but I think that a lot of the extenuating circumstances in that situation make it much, much easier. (Like, for instance, Katara had no problem stealing the scroll or stealing clothes, but I think if SHE had been faced with Song's ostrich-horse, the thought of taking it never would have occurred to her.)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I think theft is one of those things where people's morals are often mixed with issues of opportunity and convenience... and either factor of morality or convenience has different weight depending on the context of any situation. Katara would see the immorality of stealing the only livestock animal of a small war-torn family, but she had no moral compunctions about stealing from people she judged as guilty. I think a lot of people don't steal for morality reasons and a lot don't steal because of fear of getting caught, but the line is different for every person. I lot of people will steal CDs but not cars, because morally they justify little theft as harmless (particularly stealing from a company not an individual) but would see a big theft as having a victim and thus more significant moral consequences. A second person might make the same decision for convenience reasons... a CD is easy, a car is too risky. Same decision, different reasoning. And people jump back and forth between the two.

A philosophical argument, and thus neverending. :)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Well said.