AtlA crackfic: What Really Happened 4/6
Title: What Really Happened
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Some back filler on the first part of what spontaneously decided to become a longer crackfic.
Rating: G
Notes: A follow-up to The Chase.
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Suki had given up on catching Katara alone. The waterbender was joined at the hip to her betrothed, neither of them wanting to let the other out of their sight for even a moment. On top of that, Aang and Sokka seemed to have come to the decision that the pair, if left alone to themselves for even a moment, would descend to acting like sex-crazed weasel-bunnies. In the end, Suki’s curiosity overrode her patience, and while they were enjoying a picnic lunch on the palace grounds, she finally asked, “Am I ever going to hear about the rest of the things the Dai Li made you forget, or do I have to perish of curiosity?”
“Yes!” shouted Toph. “More fighting!”
“What?” Katara said, turning to look at the violently-inclined blind girl.
Toph grinned. “Every time you tell us another story about what happened with you and Sparky, someone starts a fight. It’s great!”
“I don’t care,” Suki said. “I just want to know what else we all missed.”
“No kidding,” grumbled Sokka. “How did I miss that my sister was having secret assignations with the enemy.”
Aang pouted. “How did I miss that Katara just thinks of me like a little brother?”
They all turned to stare at him.
“What?”
Impatiently, Suki asked, “So? What else?”
Katara sighed.
Mai, Ty Lee and Azula had been chasing them for so long, none of them had slept for days. Appa wasn’t going to move any time soon, and Katara was pretty sure that the only thing that would wake the others would be imminent Fire Nation attack. After the showdown with Azula, they had staggered to a sheltered place nearby and pretty much collapsed, no one even bothering with tents, just crawling into sleeping bags and passing out.
She was exhausted, but she couldn’t get the look on Zuko’s face out of her head. His uncle was lying there, hurt, and he’d looked as though his world had just ended. The old man had taken a lightning bolt and it didn’t look good. It also meant that it was likely Zuko wouldn’t have gone that far either.
He hadn’t. He was kneeling beside his uncle, still among those deserted buildings, sponging the man’s brow and keening-
“Keening?”
“High-pitched mourning noise, Zuko. You were keening.”
“I was not keening.”
“Were so.”
He looked up as she approached, wary both in spite of and because of, their history.
“Huh?”
“The kissing and the trying to capture the Avatar thing,” Suki said impatiently.
“And the fact that I kicked his butt twice at the North Pole.”
“The second time doesn’t count.”
“Does so.”
“Get on with it,” said the Kyoshi warrior.
She said, “I can help him, if you’ll let me.”
“Why would I trust you?” he asked.
“Because he needs help and you know that I wouldn’t hurt a helpless man,” Katara replied.
After a moment, he back away, and she knelt next to him. “There’s a lot of internal damage that I’m not sure I can do a lot with,” she said. “But give me a minute.”
She pulled out her waterskin, bringing water to cover her hand. When she placed it on his chest, it erupted into a blue-white glow. He was a little nervous-
“You freaked out and tried to kill me.”
“I didn’t!”
“Then what was all the yanking away and throwing fire at me about?”
Having only one experience with blue glows, and that being when Azula was using lightning, Zuko reacted instinctively to grab Katara by the wrist, spinning her away from his uncle and taking a defensive position in front of him, hands limned in fire.
“Look, I’m trying to heal him, but I can’t do it if you don’t let me,” Katara snapped.
His eyes narrowed. “Then show me,” he said. He held out a hand, and she could see a scrape on the palm. “On me, first.”
She rolled her eyes, and healed the scrape, the sensation causing his eyes to bulge in a very strange manner.
“My eyes weren’t bulging.”
“Yes they were.”
“It . . . oh, forget it.”
The feeling was amazingly sensual as she gently ran a glowing hand over the scrape and Zuko felt a distict surge of attraction-
“You were turned on?”
“You look really sexy when you’re healing. Do you know that?”
“One less night in the bear-dog house,” Katara told him with a sappy smile.
Sokka made a mock-vomiting motion. Zuko, when Katara turned away quickly fist-pumped in the air, mouthing, “Yes!”
Having proved she was only going to heal Iroh, Katara was finally able to kneel next to the old man and fix as much of the internal damage as she could reach. When she’d finished, she turned to Zuko. “I’ve had to leave the chest wound open because the parts I can’t reach will have to drain. You’ll need to change the bandages every few hours. Wash them and use your fire to scorch them before you put them onto him.” She pulled out a bundle of herbs which she showed him how to use. Some for teas and some for a healing poultice.
When she’d finished, she was about to leave when he grabbed her in a hug. “Thank you,” he murmured into her shoulder. They stood in each others’ embrace for a while. They stood for so long, in fact, that Katara fell asleep standing.
“You were so cute, drooling on my shoulder,” Zuko told her.
“I do not drool!”
“Only when you’re exhausted.”
A few hours later she woke, cradled against his strong, warm body-
“You have to stop reading romance scrolls.”
“What part of that is a lie?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Why did you come back to help my uncle?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“We weren’t that far off, and you needed help,” she replied.
Zuko frowned. “I would have thought you’d try to get as far away from me as possible,” he said. “I still plan to capture the Avatar.”
She snorted. “You’re not as ruthless as you like to pretend you are.”
He bristled at that. “What do you mean?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re constantly trying to make out with me, you’re clearly more concerned about your uncle than chasing us. Otherwise you would have done something already.”
“I am ruthless!” he snapped. “I am just as strong as my sister.”
“Being strong doesn’t have to mean being ruthless,” she told him. From there the conversation just continued. They talked about everything.
“What sort of everything?” Aang asked curiously.
Katara shrugged. “His mother, my mother, why he was trying to capture you, what it was like growing up at the South Pole, what it was like growing up in the Fire Nation palace, who had more annoying relatives-“
“Hey!” shouted Sokka.
Katara shot him a look. “I won because Iroh never made Zuko wash his socks.”
“I thought I won because you never had to see your grandmother naked in a hot spring and I had to see Uncle in that . . . urgh.” He broke off, shuddering. “And then he was captured by earthbenders. I had to fight off earthbenders with him while he was in nothing but a loincloth.” Zuko shuddered again.
Katara shrugged. “I thought quantity trumped quality in that case.” She added, “Besides, have you seen Sokka kissing his boomerang? Creepy.”
“That reminds me,” Sokka groused. “I can’t find my boomerang after that last time I threw it at Zuko.”
Suki elbowed him. “Did anything else happen?”
Katara fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, her exhaustion catching up to her and Zuko didn’t have the heart to wake her. He checked his uncle one more time, noting that the man’s colour was much better and he seemed to be resting comfortably. Then he picked Katara up and carried her the surprisingly short distance to where the Avatar and his friends had made camp.
“Which very loosely describes the bunch of you just lying on the ground there. If Sokka and Toph hadn’t been in a snoring competition, I might have thought you were all dead.”
Sokka looked offended. “I do not snore!”
Everyone turned to him, saying at once, “Yes, you do.”
Then Zuko carefully tucked Katara into her sleeping bag and crept back to his uncle. He’d try to capture the Avatar some other time. It wouldn’t be honourable to do it now.
“Wow,” Sokka told him. “You really take that honour thing seriously. That was kinda dumb.”
“Are you seriously insulting me for not capturing Aang?”
Sokka would have responded, but the missing boomerang fell out of a tree where it had lodged and landed point first in Zuko’s topknot, creating a jaunty sort of decorative effect. The tribesman grinned widely and shouted, “Boomerang! You really do always come back!” He ran forward, practically tackled Zuko, yanking the weapon out of his hair (and coincidentally the hair out of the topknot).
“Did you just . . .” Zuko stared at the other man as he started to hug and kiss his favoured weapon with a passion that should only be reserved for someone’s significant other.
Then Sokka came up for air and started laughing at Zuko. “You should see your face!”
The two indignities in a row were too much, and Zuko decided to try his hand at beating Sokka within an inch of his life.
Suki and Katara, watching the two roll around on the ground, looked at each other, sighed, and said, “Boys.”
“I don’t see why I have to get insulted,” muttered Aang. “I wasn’t being immature.”
“Rip his ponytail off, Zuko!” shouted Toph. “Stick that boomerang where the sun don’t shine, Sokka!”
Katara and Suki both rolled their eyes and headed off inside. Maybe the kitchen had some more of those lovely nut cakes and some tea to go with them.
Go to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
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