Convergence

6 years ago

The Critiques of Modern Humanitarian Aid professor was already five minutes late when Zuko saw the girl in the doorway at the bottom of the lecture hall. Brown hair in tangles around her face, wide eyes he could see catching the light even from his seat, a backpack slung off one shoulder and the opposite arm cradling a plethora of books, folders, notepads. He watched her follow the ritual of every latecomer to a lecture: the hesitation in the doorway as eyes scanned the unfamiliar faces, praying for an empty seat at the end of a row. Zuko knew he was in the dead centre of the middle row – his preferred location in every lecture hall – but he also knew that the spare seat beside him may have been one of the few left at six minutes past the hour. And he knew that when he raised his hand and caught the attention of the girl in the doorway, she would likely be equal parts confused and grateful.

He chanced a wave as her eyes swept his row, and at first he thought she may ignore him, assuming this boy she had never met before was obviously beckoning someone behind her. But his growing insistence gently coaxed her from the front of the room, up the stairs, clumsily over the feet and bags and legs filling the row, into the seat to his right.

"Um, hi." She flashed him a half-smile as she deposited her belongings into her lap. He waited for her eyes to flicker across the left side of his face, to widen and dart anywhere else as she processed the horror he wore every day. But no. Katara did not do that. She took him in like he was any other stranger who had offered her a seat, rather than an ugly, maimed monstrosity.

"I just thought you looked like you needed someone to sit with." His mind blurred through the need to reciprocate her greeting. "I'm Zuko, by the way." He almost offered his hand for her to shake.

Her smile settled into something a little more comfortable. "Katara." She met his eyes. "And thanks."

She turned to attend to the pile of educational materials in her lap but there was still no professor and suddenly he was speaking again. Initiating a conversation.

"Are you doing Development Studies, then?" He thought she looked like the kind of person who would want to save the world. Like him.

She pulled a laptop from her bag, decorated with a case depicting some kind of oceanscape. "No, nursing actually." He didn't even try to look away as she opened the lid. Stole a glimpse of her face sandwiched between two others on her background – two girls, one older, one younger, and a boy who shared her olive complexion and saltwater eyes. It was the kind of selfie in which everyone attempts to make the most hideous face possible, and yet her features were still moulded into something exquisite. "This is just one of my electives." She looked over. Caught him staring. Said nothing. "And what about you? Off to erase the world's injustices when you get out of here?" There was nothing in her unwavering gaze or slightly tilted mouth that made him think she was mocking him, but he still felt the back of his neck heating, still proceeded with caution.

"Uh, yeah, actually." He glanced down at the backpack at her feet. Back up to her face. The eyes that were following him, the smile that was encouraging him. "Well, that's the idea anyway."

"That's really cool." She simultaneously opened a new document on her laptop and softened her face into the warm medium between a grin and stoic stillness. "We need more people like you in the world, Zuko."

He liked this girl he had just met. Katara.

"You'd be the first to think so."

"I'm certain I won't be the last."

The ceaseless rumble of hundreds of voices atop one another dipped suddenly into silence, and Zuko turned to see the professor arriving. Twelve minutes late. But when he glanced at Katara as she busied herself rummaging through her backpack, he couldn't find a single part of himself that was irritated. And when he felt the delicate press of her elbow in his bicep and looked over to see her offering him a packet of Red Vines, he couldn't find a single part of himself that wasn't completely enamoured. Charmed. Dazzled.

His smile came more freely around Katara, often in answer to the mild but ever-present lift of her own mouth. And when the lights dimmed and Katara settled into her seat and he watched her fiddle with a strand of hair and take copious notes even though the professor announced he would be emailing the lecture slides later that afternoon and his pulse reacted to the sight of her illuminated only by her laptop screen, he couldn't find a single part of himself that wasn't terrified at the mess he had just fallen into.

* * *

His drink had gone warm in his hand and he gulped it back so he could put it down. He felt as though he had physically folded in upon himself, pulled into as tight a space as he could possibly occupy to avoid the constant jostling of anonymous bodies vaguely moving to the pounding bassline. Flashes of green, blue, purple, red light popped across his vision. When he blinked, he saw a blurred mass of something that could be fireworks. He didn't know why he came here, why he took the bus and then walked three blocks to arrive at the house of a person he thought he had likely never previously encountered, why he scooped up another beverage he didn't check the label of and planted himself on a retaining wall in the garden rather than beginning his slow trudge back to the bus station.

But he did know, really. Because when he tipped his head back to down a third of his drink at once he saw her, he saw Katara, and his insides settled and all thoughts of leaving – however lightly entertained – vanished. He came to these events based on facts like Katara would be there, and tonight he had not been disappointed.

For more than a little while he just watched her. She consumed her drinks like she needed them to breathe, gasping down gulps between every sentence she uttered to the shorter girl beside her whose back was to him. Katara was a vision. Something mystical even under ever-shifting lights that stained her skin gaudy, unnatural colours. Her gestures were more enthusiastic than he was used to seeing them – likely bolstered by what he could confidently assume was more than a small collection of alcoholic beverages – and he loved watching the way the muscles in her face moved to match. The way she opened her mouth to smile. The way she used her entire body to laugh, aiming a hand at her friend's shoulder to support her bowing frame.

He decided he liked what she had done with her hair, too, half of it collected in a bun at the top of her head while the remainder of it curled around her shoulders. He remembered what her shampoo smelled like. Allowed a brief moment of anticipation at the thought of smelling it again tonight. Coughed around a sip of his own drink rendered too large by his inattention.

He tried to look at his shoes, focus on the new bassline of a song he thought had just started, feel the retaining wall beneath him and the gentle caress of a summer's evening on his arms. But the next time he looked up – a whole seven seconds later – Katara had spotted him and reacted with an uninhibited joy that made it difficult for him to swallow. He could only watch as she made her excuses to her friend and marched across the yard toward him. She sat on his left, her thigh settled snugly against his, and tapped the neck of her bottle to his before taking a swig.

"Hey," she said through a smile. "I didn't think I'd see you here."

He shrugged. Decided to be honest. "I was just trying to think of a valid reason to explain my presence, actually." Well, half-honest.

"I don't think 'having a good time' would make that list." She poked his side. "I'd be able to see that pout from space." He immediately pretended to be offended.

"I'm actually the Life of the Party, Katara," he responded, unable to stop his smile at the sight of her face so close to his own, "but I promised I'd come incognito tonight. Y'know, to let everyone else enjoy themselves for once."

She accepted his jesting with a dramatic hand over her heart and a single nod. "Well, we thank you for your service, kind and valiant Zuko." Emphasised her statement with another quick gulp of her drink. "What're you drinking?" She used her bottle to gesture to the one he balanced loosely between his interlocked fingers.

He made a half-heartened attempt to read the label under a blinding kaleidoscope of flickering lights. "Beer?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Wow, you really committed to the whole incognito thing tonight, Mr. Life of the Party." Jabbed his side again. Giggled. "Let me know when you're allowed to scrap the disguise and then we'll talk drinks."

"You'll be the first to know." She'd be his only reason for making another appearance at one of these things. "So, are you having fun?"

"I'd rate tonight a solid 4 out of 10 so far, based on the general lukewarm state of most provided beverages and the piss-poor song selection." She glanced at him. "But the situation recently improved dramatically, so the jury's still out."

He wondered if she could hear his heartbeat responding to her words.

"And I just ran into a friend from school I haven't seen in ages," she continued, speaking right across his thundering pulse.

"That girl you were talking to before?" He asked before he remembered that watching a girl from a garden wall was decidedly creepy.

But Katara, ever generous, ever observant, ever empathetic, ever surprising, flashed him one of her most dazzling smiles yet as the song he stopped paying attention to faded into something slower, more deliberate. "You saw that?"

He dropped his gaze. "Uh, yeah." Felt the heat and the blush smudging across his cheeks.

"I'm only teasing, Zuko." She leaned her shoulder into his for one glorious second. "I noticed you over here all on your lonesome and wondered how long it was going to take you to come say hi."

"Really?"

"Really." She finished her drink and dropped the bottle into the grass at her feet. "You're one of the only people I actually know here. Hence my current inebriated state." She gestured to herself with a sweep of her hand and his eyes followed without any thought on his part.

"No way do you need to get drunk to talk to strangers." He said it because he had thought it and it was easy to do such things around her.

She rebuked him with a lifted eyebrow.

"What?" He held his hands up in surrender. "You're one of the most confident people I know, Katara. You don't need alcohol to be... dazzling." He dropped his hands and his certainty into his lap.

"I'm only confident around the right people. Of which present company is an excellent example." And she looped her arm through his and settled her head on his shoulder. All with the ease of someone who had no understanding of the impact her actions were having on a certain nearby circulatory and cardiovascular system.

"I'm one of the right people?" His words settled in her hair.

She sighed into his side. "Why must you always repeat me with such disbelief?"

"I just want to make sure you know what you're saying."

She sat up to face him, leaving her arm curled around his. "Are you suggesting I am anything but stone-cold sober, Zuko?" Her face was a challenge. A challenge hastily pasted onto pure joviality.

"Well, when you start spouting nonsense, it does make one wonder..." He wondered if he was fishing for compliments. If Katara would indulge him. If he would survive if she did.

She settled back onto his shoulder, but he didn't think he imagined the new stiffness with which she held herself, a level of discomfort she didn't possess before. "You're just high quality, okay? Is that believable enough for you?"

From you? Never. "Sure. I'll take it."

She made no response. He tried to let the moment breathe but he didn't know how to be quiet with her yet. Waited as long as he could before breaking the silence. "So, whose party is this, anyway? I got invited by my project partner, who I haven't even seen tonight, and I'm pretty sure this isn't his house." He was babbling now. Nervous. Unsure of how to relax when she was draped against him, when he could feel her breathing and her hair and her skin and was entirely bereft of ways to respond.

"No clue." Her voice was softer, almost sleepy. He smiled at the top of her head. "I was invited by one of the girls in my Fundamentals of Nursing class." She didn't elaborate. Didn't speak or move for so long he worried she really had fallen asleep.

"You still alive over there?"

She hummed a heavy response.

"You know you can't fall asleep on me here."

She snuggled deeper into his side. "Then where can I fall asleep on you?"

"That's not what I meant," he retorted through a grin. Through a pulse so rapid he was sure he was about to pass out. "I thought you said you were having fun."

"I am. Loads of fun."

"But you're sleeping."

"Exactly."

He smiled, shook his head, as though he was observing a particularly unruly child rather than this particularly unruly young woman beside him. On his next breath he shifted, trying to loosen the arm she was leaning against, had her arm wrapped around, and she lifted her head slightly to enquire as to his movements.

"Going somewhere?" Her eyelids were half-closed when she looked up at him. Before he could tell himself not to, he tucked a wisp of a curl around her ear. Let his fingers linger at her jaw before pulling away.

"Not yet." Zuko held his breath as he rested his left arm across her shoulders, his hand falling against her bicep. He felt her responding hum in his chest. "Do you make a habit of napping at parties?"

Katara turned her face into his chest. "I've never had an adequate human pillow before." He felt her words more than he heard them.

"So that's all I am to you? A comfy pillow for your delicate head?" He was joking. He was earnest.

"Something like that." A response punctuated by the gentle weight of her arms circling his waist. He thought this might be the most comfortable he had ever been, the safest, the warmest. The most at peace. "Tell me something, Zuko." Her chest rose and fell with his.

"Anything." Anything.

"How'd you get your scar?"

He gasped and he knew she felt it, because she immediately sat up, withdrawing from him entirely until he could feel the night air surging in at him on all sides. His skin was cold where she had touched it.

Her eyes were wide when they met his. They caught the green, blue, purple, red lights changing in time with a song Zuko had never heard, and he stared because she was staring, too, looking and breathing and saying nothing at all. He watched her raise a tentative hand, hold it against his cheek, gently trace the ridges of his puckered skin with her thumb. He closed his eyes. Just for a second. Just for a heartbeat. Just to feel her there so he could remember her later, when he was alone and cold and without her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It's none of my business."

I want it to be your business. "You're allowed to ask." He dared to cover her hand with his own. Her skin was so smooth under his palm, the kind he wanted to run his fingertips over again and again and again.

"Will you give me an answer?"

Just a breath, just a moment to let the truth settle into his skin. "Not tonight."

"Okay."

"But I will."

"You don't have to."

"I want to."

She withdrew her hand. Smiled, just a soft turning up of the corner of her mouth he otherwise might not have noticed. But her leg was still pressed into his and he could feel the warmth of her even if she was no longer wrapped around him. His hands suddenly burned to be holding her. He grasped them in his lap, turning his knuckles white with the effort.

"I'm glad you came, Zuko." She tucked her hand around his elbow.

"Me, too." Words he never thought he'd be able to simultaneously utter and mean.

And then she was standing, scooping up the empty bottle still lying in the grass, stretching and rearranging her hair and turning to stun him with the full impact of her grin. "I should be heading home. I've got an essay due tomorrow."

He was standing, too, rising a bare two inches above her. He liked to be able to stand so close to her and still absorb every detail of her face, especially the way her eyelashes dripped shadows along the tops of her cheeks in the slanting light coming from the house. "Can I walk you home?"

She almost laughed the suggestion away. "You are very kind, but I have no need of your services tonight, valiant Zuko." She turned to gesture somewhat vaguely into the amorphous amalgamation of people surrounding them. "My friend's giving me a ride. Thanks though."

"Okay. Well. I'll see you in class, then." His hand found its way to the back of his neck before he even knew he was being awkward.

"Have a good night."

Then she disappeared. No hug. No smile. No wave of parting. She just stepped away from him, becoming another face barely distinguishable from all the others he could not put a name to. All at once the music was too loud and the lights were too bright and the night was too cold for him to be standing here a moment longer. So he disposed of his beer and began his trudge home, missing Katara.

* * *

Now

Katara stands in front of the Jasmine Dragon and regrets all the decisions that led her here. It is raining, just a meagre drizzle that lands in her hair and on her shoulders like a whisper of breath, but she has dodged at least four umbrellas in the last two minutes and wishes she had at least thought to grab her hooded raincoat when she left her apartment. Yet here she is, hands in pockets, lashes blinking away the rain, eyes fixed on the mural behind the front counter visible through the café's front windows.

So, I saw Zuko yesterday, Sokka had informed her over breakfast at Suki's this morning. And he asked me for your number, so I guess you can be expecting a text from him later?

Her jaw clenches now just as it did then.

I know you said not to apologise for being an asshole, but I'm sorry anyway.

And just seeing those words on her phone's lockscreen had been enough to send her into cardiac arrest, so she had replied with shaking hands and agreed to meet because she couldn't decide whether the urge to kill or embrace Zuko was stronger. Maybe she'll stab him anyway, just to see the pain flood his face for a few moments.

She sees Zuko appear by the kitchen sans-apron and knows her time for wallowing has expired. Zuko made this cake, but she bought it, and she'll be damned if she doesn't eat the whole putrid thing.

His entire demeanour changes the minute he notices her stepping through the door, but she ignores him with a casual hand pulled through the dripping mess of her hair and a perfunctory glance at the specials board. She sees him stiffen, straighten, swallow, run a hand across the back of his neck and shove the other into the pocket of his jeans. She wishes she could say otherwise, but it is an objectively attractive manoeuvre she can't help but observe with lessening malice. She wishes she could say otherwise, but her body reacts to him, too, immediately flushing with the kind of uncomfortable heat that has her simultaneously sweating and shivering. As though she is ill. As though she has swallowed poison and her body is rejecting it wholeheartedly.

She wishes she could say otherwise, but every nerve she possesses has missed him.

He comes to stand beside her with the hesitation of a man who is performing only half the actions he wishes to. She can barely turn to acknowledge him with a nod.

"Hey." He is too close.

"Hey." She doesn't move.

"Thanks for coming." She feels him turn to her.

"Sure." She fiddles with the ring on her right hand.

He is quiet for a moment. She makes no effort to ease the tension.

"Do you want to sit?" He gestures without looking into the restaurant at large.

"Sure."

She lets him lead her to a small, round table at the window, the kind at which she is forced to sit across from him, to stare at her hands lest she look up and lose every thought she's ever had in the wake of his eyes on her. She leans into her chair. Away from the table, away from him. Her eyes find the T-shirt logo above where his heart should reside and the edges of her vision smudge into watercolour. If she can stare at those stitches, maybe she won't have to say anything. If she can survive this encounter, maybe she can leave with her dignity in tow. If she can just keep it together, maybe he won't find a reason to call her again.

But then he opens his mouth, and this is Zuko, and she is Katara, and like the ocean finds the shore her eyes find his just as forcefully.

"Can I make you a tea? I know you love chai lattes, but I thought you might like to try something?" He rests his hands on the table and leans toward her. The grooves of her chair grate against her spine.

"I'm fine. Thanks."

Oh. She sees the weight of the word in his face. In the fall of his mouth, the lowering of his eyebrows, the blink as he drops his gaze to the table. Dejection douses him like water. She waits for him to fiddle with the sugar packets between them, then takes one for herself when he does not. For too long the soft crunch of the packaging in her fidgeting grip is the only sound either of them emits.

"So, uh, you're probably wondering why I asked you to meet me."

She forces her mouth into a line before looking at him again. "Because you realised how much of an asshole you are and how much I deserved an apology." As though it is the most obvious thing in the world. And, really, it is.

"Well, yeah." She feels a flash of triumph at the blush dotting his neck like ink in water. "And I am sorry, Katara." He says her name and meets her gaze in a cruelly earnest exercise. She takes a breath, the kind that is quick and reflexive and fills her lungs immediately. "I had no right to ask you to stay away."

"No. You didn't."

"It's just... hard. For me to see you." As if he had read her own mind.

"I gathered." She snaps her mouth shut with such haste it hurts. He looks at her and blinks.

"And I should have reached out. I shouldn't have stayed away for so long."

"Four years." As though either of them had forgotten.

"Yeah. Like I said. Sorry."

This may be the most pathetic apology she has ever received.

"Okay, well, if that's all you had to say, then–"

"Katara." He stands as she does, and when his hand grabs her wrist, she closes her eyes without ever meaning to. "Just... stay. Please."

Her voice plays in monotone. "Why?" She stares at the hand he dared to touch her with. He doesn't retreat.

"Because it's been four years since I've seen you, and I missed you like hell."

Shit.

"I missed you, too." Through gritted teeth. A clenched jaw.

"Then let me make you some tea?"

He is Zuko and she is Katara. She really only has one option.

"Fine."

He smiles like he has won and she clenches her jaw. Follows him when he beckons her to the stool at the end of the counter. On the other side, he begins what she can only assume is a highly exaggerated version of the usual tea preparation ritual, opening, sniffing, then closing various tins, rummaging through a cupboard of identical mugs, spending twenty seconds pondering which teaspoon to select from the top drawer beneath the counter. But she has to admit that the fragrance that subtly seeps from the teapot he finally places in front of her is far more appealing than she dared to hope it might be. Woody and nutty and just a little floral. She leans forward to breathe deeper. Sits back when she feels his gaze on her.

"It smells good," she admits.

"There's some cocoa, hazelnut, almonds, chicory root." He rests his palms on the counter but doesn't lean forward. "Blackberry leaves, too."

She reaches for the teapot. Freezes when he rests his hand on her own.

"Let it steep."

She nods, tries not to let her embarrassment colour her cheeks. Tries to ignore the residual sting of his skin on hers.

"So." He drums the fingers of his right hand against the countertop and shifts his weight. She tries to be pleased that she makes him uncomfortable. "How have you spent the last four years?"

For a second, she is back at university, venting to him about a lazy lab partner over their usual table at their favourite café down the street from their dorms. She allows herself one look, a real look, at his face, and though it is older and presently pinched in anxiety, he is still Zuko. His eyes still catch her like a dragonfly in amber. She still wants to tell him everything. It's just that now, she doesn't know how to.

"I got my degree. Got a job at the hospital." Ba Sing Se Public Hospital. The only facility in the city that can be relied upon to provide adequate and timely emergency care. "I got a promotion, actually. That's why I was in here. Before. Sokka wanted to celebrate."

"Congratulations." He meets her gaze when she looks up. There is something genuine in the curve of his mouth.

She takes a breath that lifts her shoulders. "And what about you? Saved the world yet?"

He acknowledges her old jest with half a smile. "Still working on it. My old organisation actually got involved in some... unorthodox dealings, so my most recent position fell through. That's why I'm here."

She nods. "Can I pour my tea now?"

"No." He takes up the teapot himself and makes quite the show of the perfect pour into her designated teacup. She feels the familiar irritation at being coddled, knows he knows that he's raised her hackles. And if she looks closely enough, she thinks he may be smirking at the countertop. She digs her nails into her palms.

"Okay, tell me what you think."

Her cup is almost too hot to hold properly, and her first sip burns right through any tastes she may have experienced. But Zuko is still watching her so she blinks furiously and takes a second, slower slip, one that is just like the tea smells. It is more than a little comforting to feel it settle in her stomach. She closes her eyes. Holds the teacup a little closer.

"Is it alright?"

She nods without opening her eyes. Allows the smallest of smiles to grace her lips.

"I meant what I said, Katara. About how sorry I am. About missing you."

Now she looks at him. "I know."

"And I didn't come here seeking you out, but when I saw you..." He rests his forearms on the counter and leans into them. Into her. "I want to fix it. I have to."

She sets her cup into its saucer with a clink. "What do you want from me, Zuko?" She loves saying his name to his face, even now. And she wonders how she ever thought, even back then, that he would ever say that he wanted her. Yet the thought is there. It stirs as though awakened by Zuko's proximity and she doesn't try to swat it away. She sits and looks and lets him look back.

"I want you to stop bristling whenever you're near me."

"Ah." Just an exhalation, an abashed sagging of her shoulders as she reaches for her cup once more.

"I want us to be friends. Like before."

When I was in love with you and you left me?

"We can't be how we were before, Zuko. Not now." Not now that I've spent four years pining and aching and resigning myself to a life of isolated misery.

"Fair enough." He extends a hand. "Just friends, then? Katara and Zuko, version 2.0?"

Her pulse skips to hear their names like that, side by side, in his voice. She has missed him. Oh, how she has missed him. And now he is here offering her a truce. Offering her his hand. She tries not to react when she takes it. "Fine. Friends."

But the way he smiles at her is just like he did the first time around, and the last word she would have used to describe them then is 'friendly'.