ZW 2012: Day 6-Faded

It hit him—how much he loved Katara—just before the lightning hit him in the chest.

And just like he couldn't redirect his feelings for her, as much as he had tried to push them down, he couldn't redirect all of the lightning that Azula had sent at Katara. It was too strong, too sudden, and fueled with some awful wayward passion.

After defeating Azula, Katara collapsed onto the ground, exhausted and battered. The smell of blood mixed with the smell of singed hair and flesh, overwhelming her to the point of almost making her vomit.

She lifted a shaking hand to heal herself of her battle wounds, but it fell back down just as quickly. She had nothing left in her.  

"Zuko," she said desperately, nearly choking on his name.

She crawled.

In what felt like the longest moments of her life, she weakly dragged herself along the ground to Zuko, one measly inch at a time. It was all the effort she had, but somehow it wasn't enough.

When she was just a few feet away from his terrifyingly still body, her body gave out again, forcing her against the unyielding ground. She tried to say his name again, but only a breathy, strangled noise came out.

She reached her right hand toward him, and her fingertips could just barely brush against his hand.

This was enough to make her give that extra push, and with an unworldly yell of pain, she heaved herself over to him. She knelt at his side and took his hand in a weak grip, trying with all her might to not pass out and fall onto him.

"Wake up!" she yelled with icy fury, not taking the time to toy around with begging. "Now!"

Zuko's eyes eased open, taking more than a moment to find Katara.

As his gaze settled lazily on her, he struggled to put the pieces in his mind together.

He knew that he knew her, he was sure of that. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but it only made his explosive headache worse trying to recall it.

After much effort, he finally said uncertainly, "Katara?"

She barely managed a nod as she wrapped both of her hands around his one.

He watched her do this, but it felt as if he was far away, watching her take hold of someone else's hand. He couldn't feel her touch. He could barely hear the sobs that were escaping her throat despite her attempts to suppress them.

He felt something for the blur of a girl beside him, but he didn't know what. He wanted to know what it was about her that was making his head swim, but it was hard to get a handle on those feelings when he was in so much physical pain. He was almost thankful that he couldn't feel his legs or his hands, but then he wasn't, because he wanted to know the feeling of her touch.

She moved her mouth and said something, but he didn't hear it. He just stared at her, wondering if he had imagined that she had tried to speak to him.

She moved her mouth again, though, and he could just barely make out the sound of her voice.

"Louder," he said quietly, aching to understand her.

"I can't heal you!" she cried, and then he wished that he hadn't been able to hear her.

He didn't care that he couldn't be healed. He was more concerned with the heartache in her voice. He felt guilty for causing it.

And then it suddenly came back to him.

Lightning.

Azula.

"Azula?" he said in a questioning voice.

"Dead," Katara answered loudly, fighting down the urge to throw up once again. "I'm sorry, Zuko. I had no choice."

"Don't be sorry," he said, closing his eyes.   

"No!" Katara shouted. "Don't you dare close your eyes!"

Zuko's eyes snapped back open, but his vision seemed even cloudier. The burning pain from the raw wound that ran down his chest and abdomen was somehow managing to grow in intensity, but he felt that something was missing…

"Katara, I can't feel my heart beating," Zuko said in a moment of panic, sounding like a child.

"Just be quiet, okay?" Katara said, trying to appear calm for him.

She didn't mention to him how cold his hand was or how she hadn't been able to find a pulse in his wrist.

No longer able to hold herself up, she lay down next to him, pressing her forehead into his shoulder. She placed her right hand on his chest. Her own pulse was pounding in her fingers.

The sensation comforted Zuko, who could almost believe that her rapid pulse was his own.

"Katara? Can you just talk, about anything? I want to listen to your voice," Zuko requested.

"Okay," Katara said, not knowing where she would get the strength to do so from.

Her words consisted mostly of apologies interrupted by tears at first. Eventually, she began to talk about her fight against Azula, and then she started talking solely about herself and Zuko—the crazy path that led them to where they were, how she didn't want that path to stop…

The more she spoke, the more he noticed that her voice was gradually fading in his ears. It was like listening to a song that gently fades away at the end, except it was more drawn out and more devastating.

"I can't hear you anymore," he eventually had to tell her. "I can't feel you anymore either. I can't feel anything."

He couldn't feel the pain anymore. There was no feeling of relief, either.

He whispered a few last words to her, but he couldn't hear himself say them.

She shook her head violently, and the last thing he saw before he blacked out was her thrusting both of her hands onto his torn flesh and then passing out on top of him.

---

When he told her that he couldn't feel anything anymore, her heart stopped.

When he used his last words to make sure she knew that he loved her, her heart started again, beating painfully in her chest.

She threw herself into a sitting position while shaking her head wildly.

She wouldn't let those be his last words.

She wouldn't allow him to never hear her say that she loved him back.

Either that or she wouldn't let herself be around to ever say another word.

In a final, adrenaline-fueled effort, she placed her hands roughly into his deep wound, not even coherent enough to get sick over the feel of his blood and broken flesh on her hands.

She put all of her focus on her own heartbeat, and then she pulled all of the strength from it that she could, trying to heal him in one final blast.

She barely heard her own screams.

She couldn't feel her heartbeat anymore, or her hands on him.

She didn't get to see if it worked.

She crumpled forward over him and his wound, and then her eyes fell closed.

---

Katara failed.

She had vowed to herself to make sure that he would hear her say she loved him.

He never did hear her say those words, though.

After that, he didn't hear anything at all.

There was nothing she could do about that.

Her final effort had healed his external damage, nearly killing her in the process, but his internal damage was beyond her reach.

They both agree, however, that they much prefer him being deaf over dead.

He can clearly see that she loves him, anyway.

And that's all that counts.