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Saturday, March 8th, 2008 10:50 pm
Title: I’ll Take You Where The Water’s Deep
Author: [personal profile] 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 [profile] rashaka’s reminding me of how awesome and apropos this song is.  Written for [profile] 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.
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Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 03:39 am (UTC)
I actually see Katara to be perfectly in line with Zuko's vanilla-y love. She is a hopeless romantic. One only needs to look at the Fortuneteller to see that. She also admired her Gran Gran for choosing to follow her heart over the arranged marriage to Pakku. I think that isn't shown so much in fanon. It seems that Katara is often portrayed as lustful but I think that's more Mai's style. She would want to have a romance with Zuko because she'd find in him once she stops hating his guts that he is the prince she's been dreaming about. Unfortunately as this short story shows it would come in conflict with her ties with her family and with Aang. She'd want to be the good girl to do the right thing but she'd also want the happy ending of those legends and stories she's so fond of hearing.
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 05:41 am (UTC)
Oh, I totally agree that Katara is a romantic, and I have to say, I giggled every time she goes, "oh, I hope he's tall!" when she'd at the fortune teller. I just think that she would be the once spicing up their love live a little ways down the road. Plus, I have personal fanon that her grandmother had a few romance scroll, and she read some more while she was in Ba Sing Se, and then at the spa those two ladies were chatting... plus, she grew up with only women in her village - women who were most likely going through withdrawals from their husbands. So I think Katara has better grasp of the possibilities of sex than Zuko does, even if they're both working on theory at this point.