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Before his uncle left this world, Zuko learned many things from him. How to make tea, how to play pai sho, and how to journal and ‘express one’s feelings in a healthy way’. Although, Zuko thought bitterly as he sipped his equally bitter leaf water, just because he learned did not mean he was proficient. Case in point: he was staring at a blank page, pen in hand, as he wrestled with his thoughts and feelings about his long-time friend Katara.
That was a good place to start. He took his pen to the page and wrote:
Katara
They had met as children and become fast friends. But lately being around her did not feel the same as it used to. Her sea breeze scent as she passed by (when did he start noticing how she smelled?), the feeling of her warm, soft touch on his skin, and even the sound of her bright laugh caused all kinds of disturbances in Zuko’s mind and body. (Being a pubescent teenage boy did not help).
At eighteen years old, Zuko knew Katara’s friendship was incomparable to that of any other relationship in his life. He rushed to jot this revelation down— scribbling two words after her name.
Katara is special
He furrowed his eyebrows and added two more words. Then a punctuation mark.
Katara is special to me.
Zuko sighed, relieved. One sentence complete. Not bad. But his mind was still brimming with questions.
Zuko understood what this burning in his chest was when he thought of her. He understood the nature of his evolving feelings towards Katara, but what did he want to do about them? Would she tolerate him doing something? Could he bear not to? He scratched his head and sighed. Waves of aggravation rolled off him like heat from summer pavement.
From their dance lessons as children to their current adolescence, Zuko had held onto Katara. She was his childhood and his future. She was a torch in a dark cave, the bright and open blue summer sky, and the curtain rise at the beginning of a performance. If he was a candleflame, she was the wax that sustained him. Everything she did only kept him burning for her.
He knew that he always found himself reaching for her in a way that he didn’t for Azula, Sokka, Aang or Toph. Every time he entered a room, nothing much mattered except whether or not she was in it. When he woke in the morning, she was one of the first things to cross his mind and often his last thought before he went to sleep.
The point of Zuko’s pen tap, tap, tapped on the open page of his journal. The simple yet expensive, plain red leather-bound journal had Zuko’s name monogrammed on the front in gold. This gift from his uncle had gone untouched until now; without his uncle by his side, Zuko could only try to recreate a similar dialogue between himself and one of the last physical points of contact between them.
Zuko scowled down at the blank, lined paper. He felt ridiculous. This was not going to work. In the back of his mind though, he could hear his grandfather gently egging him on.
“You’ve only written one sentence, Zuko! It’s too early to give up!” or perhaps, “The patient and hardworking turtleduck beats the rabaroo!” Zuko dropped his chin in his hand and sighed. Was he the turtleduck? What about the rabaroo? Would his grandfather even say that?
Frustrated, Zuko scribbled out his single line of writing, dragging his pen to draw harsh, criss-crossing lines across the page. He sighed and mentally sketched a journal entry:
Katara is special to me.
Does she look at me in the same way?
I am always thinking about her.
Does she think about me?
I want her to.
I want her to do everything with me.
But when he put his pen to the page, he could not bring himself to write these thoughts in permanent ink for Sokka— or— Agni forbid— Azula to find.
He dropped his head in his hands and released yet another deep sigh. A moment later, someone put a hand on his shoulder.
“Zuko, are you ready to go? I tried texting and calling you, but you didn’t pick up. I can bus home if you’re busy.”
Zuko’s head whipped up to stare at Katara’s concerned eyes. He launched his torso forward to cover his journal. “No it’s fine I— I’ll pack up.” He slid the journal off the table and stuffed it violently into his backpack. He offered a silent apology to his grandfather for his rough treatment of the gift. He had been trying to journal in the school cafeteria while waiting for Katara to finish dance practice.
“Sorry I missed your messages.” He checked his phone and winced at the 3 missed calls and slew of unread messages.
Katara smiled at him. “It’s no problem. If you’re busy, I can bus home.”
Zuko shook his head. “No, I wasn’t doing anything… important.”
They began walking out of the cafeteria to the parking lot. Katara tilted her head at him with a curious glint in her eyes. “Yeah, what were you up to? I saw a journal.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Didn’t seem like nothing…” she teased. “What were you writing?”
Zuko could feel a flush rising on his cheeks. “Nothing.”
Katara elbowed him teasingly. “You had a bright red journal open in the middle of the school cafeteria! If you had to write in it right there, it doesn’t seem like it was nothing.”
Journal. In the school cafeteria. Zuko silently cursed his own stupidity.
“Are you and my brother trading some kind of burn book? Or—”
Zuko stopped mid-step and turned his body abruptly towards Katara. “It’s nothing! I told you it’s nothing, so just drop it!”
Katara blinked at him. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly agape. Then her eyes began slowly narrowing and turning cold as she recovered herself.
“Sorry.” Zuko added in a belated attempt to back-track. The familiar cold, slimy feelings of self-hatred, anxiety and dread filled his stomach.
“Sorry for pushing you,” Katara finally replied. There was a beat of silence and then Katara continued walking. After a moment, Zuko followed.
The school’s empty hallway felt cold and endless with the weight of their awkward silence and the sound of their footsteps echoing off the metal lockers. Zuko started and stopped his words several times, but failed to complete anything resembling a sentence. The furthest he got was some throat-clearing.
When they finally reached the door, Katara stopped and turned to Zuko.
“Look, I’ll just bus, okay? You go home and rest up.” Her right hand twitched as if to pull him in for a hug like usual, but then it swung to loosely grip her left elbow instead. Zuko wished she had just stabbed him in the gut. She turned and began walking away.
“Katara wait. Please.”
She turned around, cocked her hip and crossed her arms.
“I—” In the corner of his eye, Zuko saw a few of their classmates walking towards them. He didn’t want to leave off with Katara like this, but he hated the idea of his classmates being audience to their conversation even more.
“I’ll… see you tomorrow,” he finished.
Katara’s eyes dimmed and she gave him a short nod, before turning on her heel and walking away.
Zuko sighed. Again.
—
At home, Zuko took another try and journalling.
Dear Katara,
Your mocha skin is so beautiful I want to drink you up like coffee and forget that I have lactose intolerance. Your hair is so soft I wonder if sheep look at you and cry. You’re so kind I think Tui and La would
Zuko stopped and tore up the page, then started again.
The next morning, Zuko arrived to school bleary-eyed and empty handed. His emotional confusion had not miraculously rectified during the hours of the night and he was starting to wonder if maybe he just wasn’t cut out for writing anything at all ever. Dimly, he recalled Azula winning their elementary school’s poetry competition as a first grader.
She had hated the assignment so much that she had angrily cut words out of a bunch of magazines, smeared glue on a paper and then taken the cut words in her small, fisted hands and thrown them onto the paper. The loosely stuck words had then been shoved around until they had some semblance of horizontal linear structure. That collage of anger had been praised for its abstractness and she had taken home first place. The whole affair had only re-affirmed Azula’s distaste and disregard for poetry.
That night Zuko tried to follow a young Azula’s example and make a poetry collage. It turned out that forming your thoughts with cutout words was just as difficult as writing it out, only messier.
On the third day, Zuko reached out for help.
“Sokka, how did you know that you didn’t want to be friends with Suki anymore? How did you know you wanted something more?”
The two of them were sitting on the outdoor bleachers, semi-watching Suki’s rugby team practiced on the field below.
“Ah,” Sokka wrapped an arm around Zuko’s shoulders. “You have come to the right man, my friend. You know they call me Captain Love?”
“Uh huh.”
Sokka grinned and leaned in closer. “Who’s this about anyway? ‘Cause if it’s about Mai, I gotta tell you something—”
“No!” Zuko’s mouth contorted in a grimace. “Just… it’s not about Mai, okay?”
Sokka stared at Zuko. They were practically nose-to-nose. From below, they heard Suki call from the field, “Hey! You better not be doing anything funny with my boyfriend!”
Sokka shoved Zuko aside, nearly knocking him off the bleachers entirely, and began loudly blowing kisses at Suki. “Never! You’re the only one for me, Suki!”
Down below, Suki waved and returned to practice. Zuko grabbed his backpack to leave, but Sokka pulled him back down.
“Hey, hey, hey! Hold on man. Look, I knew Suki was the one for me the moment I saw her. I felt that ‘Zap’ connection! And we were friends at first, yeah. Of course that was something that was important to me but I knew I wanted to date her and that I wanted her to be my girlfriend because honestly, I just couldn’t stand the idea of any other people being around her! Guys or girls— I liked being the closest one to her. Kind of like a best best friend, except we also get to make out.” Sokka wiggled his eyebrows.
“...I see. Thanks.”
The conversation with Sokka had a boomerang’s spin of credibility. At first, Sokka’s ideas seemed to soar forward in a direction Zuko could understand and agree with. Wanting to be the closest person to Katara, and such.
Only for the conversation’s direction to spin back and smack Zuko in the face.
Doing things like making out with Katara seemed almost sacrilegious. She was an important person in his life and base feelings such as lust were, admittedly strong and existent in Zuko’s body, but not what he had wanted front of mind when he thought of where he wanted his relationship with Katara to go.
—
On the fourth day, Zuko asked Katara if he could drive her home again and to his surprise and pleasure, she said yes. He waited for her by her locker and they chatted about classes and homework until they reached Zuko’s car. When they reached it, he opened the trunk and gifted Katara a plain black notebook and a ballpoint pen.
“The other day, I snapped at you because I’ve been feeling kind of emotionally confused lately and I was journaling to try and figure out my feelings. It was something my uncle told me to do and now that he’s gone…”
“Oh Zuko,” Katara reached out and hugged him.
Zuko pulled back slightly so their arms were still around each other, but there was room to breathe as he looked down at Katara and continued speaking. “I was wondering if you would trade this journal back and forth with me. I feel like I can always talk to you Katara—”
“You can.”
“—so I’m hoping by writing these things to you directly, and having you write back it can help me get better at this whole journaling thing. Would you… Would you want to do that with me?”
Katara smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay. You can start if you want.”
Katara took the journal and smiled down at it. She seemed the most pleased Zuko had seen in awhile and for now, this was good enough for Zuko.