Two Realizations: Extended Fanfic Notes
A few months ago, I had not finished Book 2 yet when I searched for relatively spoiler-safe Avatar posts and noticed a strange word, "Zutara." I put two and two together and realized that there were people who shipped Katara and Zuko. Evidently a lot of them. I called the boyfriend and reported this amazing fact, and he burst out laughing.
"Oooohhh..." I redoubled my Avatar-watching efforts. I liked Aang and Katara together (as I would later like Mai and Zuko), but I was curious about what happened between Katara and Zuko for the pairing to attract such a devoted following.
Some interesting things did happen, in fact. There was the scene in "The Crossroads of Destiny" when the two shared a moment of empathy, only for it to be torn away by Zuko's choice to side with his sister - a decision that led to Aang's death. After that, understandably, Katara thought Zuko was Zudas until he helped her track down her mother's killer while they pulled off the sexy-ninja look together ("The Southern Raiders"). In "The Ember Island Players" episode Katara actually seemed uncertain about the prospect of her and Aang as a couple.
I waited with bated breath to see how the relationships would resolve. I was aware there weren't that many episode left until the end, so I wondered if the romance aspect would get a proper resolution. I was still rooting for Aang and Katara and Mai and Zuko for reasons stated in the Reasons I Love Avatar essays and further reasons that deserve an essay of their own (if anyone is interested), but I wanted a satisfying resolution no matter what the outcome.
And then. The badguy was not-killed but still neutralized, the psychotic princess got her ass kicked by Katara while Zuko sort of lay there, and without warning, Mai showed up at Zuko's coronation for kissytimes while Katara seemed no longer confused about the relationship now that her bald suitor was a big damn hero. The end.
"What the expletive?" I shouted over the phone to the boyfriend, who was probably regretting the day he ever told me about Avatar. "That's it? No resolution, no explanation, just sucking face and the credits roll?"
I stewed. I schemed. I wrote my first Avatar fanfic, The Alternative (with extended notes) to dip my toe in the water, got some positive responses, and decided my next fanfic would be about the frustration I felt at what I thought was a rushed ending, romantically speaking.
There were three main issues with the ending I wanted to deal with. First, I wanted to explore what precipitated Katara's change of heart from confusion mode to making out with the monk mode. Second, I wanted to know why Zuko hadn't seemed to know where Mai was until his coronation, despite probably being in control of the country for a few days by then. Third, I wanted to give the "dark and intriguing" (as the creators put it) possible tension between Katara and Zuko a proper resolution.
Three questions, three chapters. Simple enough, except not really. I had a devil of a time pinpointing Zuko's exact feelings for Mai, especially. I decided not to post the story until I had some idea of what to put in all three chapters, because I didn't want the story to change too much in the middle of the telling.
"Oh, crap. Move, feet, move!"
The first chapter from Katara's point of view during the siblings' Agni Kai came easily enough. It was a stylistic challenge for me, because it was perhaps the most extreme first-person present point of view I had written. I had given some thought to the importance of perspective in general when I bought and read a used book of short stories grouped by point of view. First person present was the way to go for Katara's section, I decided, because I needed to capture very subjective, very immediate impressions. I expected it to be like pulling teeth.
Surprisingly enough, the story just flowed. I had not thought very much about Katara as a character up to that point, but I realized I understood her better than I thought. I had lost my mother, too, and I know how terrifying it is to think that so great a love can be temporary. Katara suffered her loss when she was so much younger than I was, and Kya's death had been violent as opposed to peaceful. Just a few years later Katara also suffered a painful and terrifying separation from her father that gave rise to feelings of resentment that she knew was irrational but couldn't help. (As Amanda, whose father was a
Thinking in this way, I came to see Katara's hesitation during "The Ember Island Players" as fear of getting close to Aang, not OMGITotallyWantToShagZuko. What happens if she lets herself fall for Aang and he goes away, like the two most important people in her life did? She already watched Aang die once - will she be able to bear the possibility of it happening a second time? The way I understood it, committing to a relationship at this point would just result in her falling apart from fear, and she wanted to wait until the returns were in and it was safe to love him. Or as safe as life can ever be, anyway. (The Kataang in the Second Half of S3 essay has a similar viewpoint, though we have different ideas about the ending being rushed.)
This fear angle had the further advantage of explaining why Katara froze at the sight of Azula's lightning coming at her. Katara was a battle-tested waterbending master at this point, and she had proved to be more than a match for Azula before. It's arguable that she could have prevailed in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se if Zuko had not intervened in his sister's favor. *shakes fist at him* So why stand there helpless, necessitating Zuko's rescue of her? Azula had been treacherous before when she pretended to surrender and then attacked Iroh to get away in "The Chase," so her total lack of honor couldn't have been that shocking. And only a moment later when Zuko fell after taking the bullet for her, Katara proved perfectly capable of getting the heck out of the way of lightning.
"My million-voltage hero."
So the first chapter was done, and I moved onto the second. This would be later in time, during those hours when Katara and Zuko were away from the rest of the Gaang, dealing with the aftermath of the Agni Kai in the Fire Nation palace. I wanted to assert their chemistry and the tension so that it was clear what they were walking away from when they made their final choice.
Self-pity was familiar enough a trap that he struggled out of it by throwing himself into work. He dispatched message hawks and messengers announcing the new state of affairs to the provinces, sent out signals of fire and smoke, and ordered the news to be brought to him the instant any arrived from the Earth Kingdom.
Then there was nothing more for him to do and he was getting in everyone's way with his paranoid pacing while his wound pained him more and more. A polite suggestion from the court physician, backed with Katara's steely gaze, sent him up to his rooms - his own, not his father's, thank Agni - to have his mental breakdown in peace worrying about what might be happening in the Earth Kingdom.
The Earth Kingdom, where his Uncle would be reconquering Ba Sing Se for the Earth King, where the Avatar would be battling his father to the death. Hopefully his father's defeat, and so his death. He snorted derisivly. What was wrong with him, that he would want his own father dead? But it was either him or Aang. Katara, at least, had been absolutely sure of the Avatar's victory. He had seen that faith in her eyes. He closed his eyes.
She had moved like water.
They didn't, of course. In my story they almost kissed, buoyed on the exhilaration of victory, but drew apart at the last moment. That was the whole point of the story for me, that keeping a good thing entails controlling yourself and sacrificing some things. They might have attraction and chemistry going for each other (and I deliberately played up that angle much more than canon ever did), but that alone didn't make them right for each other.
Awww. Just, awww.
Zuko's feelings on the matter were a bit more complicated in my mind, and were a subject for the third and final chapter. That was the hardest chapter to write despite being fairly short, because I wanted to make it clear that Mai and Zuko fit each other but it wasn't a convenience thing, and that Zuko hadn't just given up on Katara out of cowardice. I began the chapter like this, then quickly discarded it:
Being royalty was a funny thing. Every thread of your life was bound inextricably into the fabric of your country, every hope, desire, and dream. It didn't matter if you detested the things done in its name, if you were an exile with little hope of ever seeing your homeland again, or if everyone there thought you a traitor. You were of it, and it was a part of you.
Zuko could no more have chosen a Lady who would give him a blank look if he mentioned the ongoing feud between the clans Vasra and Xi Feng, than he could stop thinking and worrying about his country in the years of his exile. His very soul rebelled at the idea of a wife who could not help him build an internal coalition for peace, who would be resented as a foreigner and interloper by his people, who could not, in other words, give herself fully and wholly to his Nation as he had all his life.
I thought there was an element of truth in this, but putting the emphasis on politics made it seem like Zuko's choice of Mai was a mere convenience and not heartfelt. That was kind of the opposite of what I was going for. In fact, I had come up with the above passage because in my mind, Zuko's feelings for Mai are so genuine precisely because she fits every part of his life, including the political. It's not like Firelord Zuko and Zuko the man are separate beings; he had been born and bred for the role. He strove with everything he had to be Firelord, and later a truly good Firelord, even in his darkest moments. That role was an integral part of who he was, his destiny, and any wife he chose would have to be part of that or it wouldn't work.