backdated to yesterday [dec 20]

[watertides.livejournal.com]

Character(s): Katara, Zuko
Location: Katara's dormitory
Rating: PG
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed
Summary: Unbeknownst to Katara, it's the night of the lunar eclipse-- and her body isn't responding well.


Katara, to put it lightly, was feeling horrible.

She wasn't sure what had happened to make her fall into such a state-- she had been perfectly fine just the day before, showing absolutely no symptoms of sickness. When she woke this morning, though, she couldn't even manage to muster enough energy to get out of bed, her body completely drained of energy. She'd grown up in the cold so the change in setting to the northern continent certainly couldn't have contributed to the change in her physical well-being. But at the moment, she was curled up in her bed with the covers drawn up to her chin, her body shivering with fever-chills and limbs aching from fatigue. But as tired as she was feeling and as much as she closed her eyes to try and rest herself to recover from her illness, sleep wouldn't claim her.

Katara shifted onto her side to try and find a more comfortable position, her hands drawing the blankets up over her head completely in a futile attempt to warm her freezing body.

Comments

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

With the vacation now on them they were free to visit each other any time of the day to take turns with the chicobo or whenever she came to his room to feed the kittens; kittens that were still kittens but had grown so much since Zuko had brought them to Garden. When Sokka had disappeared and gone back to their world, Zuko had gone to his dormitory to get Mister Stuffybritches, bringing the kitten back to his own dorm room to join the others again.

Now back in his room and fresh from the Training Center and a long shower, Zuko glanced at the clock in passing, towel drying his hair. It was just after six in the evening. The kittens had greeted him, hurrying for the door as soon as they'd heard it, making figure eights around and between his ankles, meowing.

Zuko tried to remember the last time they'd fed from their saucers, stepping over them in search of a tank top and hoodie in his dresser. He debated, as he pulled the final and thick layer over his head, whether to pack the kittens up in a box and cart them down with him to Katara's room just in case she'd forgotten.

In the end Zuko went down to her dormitory wing alone, hands in the front pocket of his sweater, and tried his best to ignore all the children running around.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

Despite the fact that Katara knew she was alone, she couldn't help the soft whimpering sounds she unconsciously made through clattering teeth. Over and over she shifted in her bed, trying with no avail to find a comfortable spot and position that would appease her body. Knowing that no matter what she did wouldn't help, Katara finally gave up and pulled her blanket down just slightly so her eyes would peer over the edge of the thick comforter.

A quick glance over to the clock by her bedside told her that it was nearly evening now. She had no appetite, so not having eaten the entire day didn't bother her much. She wasn't sure how much longer she could bear being forced to stay in her bed, though; she was growing restless, and not even a full day of her illness had passed by. Without anything for her to do, Katara resorted to simply staring up at her ceiling, willing time to quickly pass her by.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Several minutes later and Zuko found himself standing outside Katara's dorm room. He stared at the metal door and let his eyes drop to the keypad. The red light was on; her door was locked. Was she even inside?

There was only one way to find out, even if he only had to go to the cafeteria and ask for a mug of milk if he wanted to without having to rely on the waterbender for help with the kittens.

Zuko brought a hand up to knock quietly on the door, and waited, hand slipping back into his front pocket.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

It took Katara several moments to realize that someone was, in fact, knocking on her door and the sound hadn't merely been a result of her pounding head. Part of her wondered who could possibly be at her door-- maybe Aang? Perhaps he'd want to go sledding in the snow, though it was obvious that she was in no condition to do so.

Mustering up the energy to finally get out of bed to answer the door, Katara first made sure to wrap the heavy blanket around her body, tugging it over her head to mimic a hood before trudging out of her dorm room and into the common area, before finally making it to the door. She hadn't even bothered to look through the peep hole, and instead pressed the button to let the door slide open-- and her eyes immediately widened upon seeing who was on the other side.

"Z-Zuko?" Her voice was raspy from lack of use, slightly stuffy and thick with her sickly state.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Her appearance was surprising, particularly the thick blanket wrapped around her and hanging over her head. Was something wrong? Why did she sound like she was sick? Was she sick?

Zuko blinked down at her, straightening up slowly from his usual slouch. "You look terrible."

No wonder she hadn't come by his room at all today.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

Even in her sickly state, Katara managed to look indignant with Zuko's obvious words. Without so much as a word, she slammed her palm against the button on the panel of the wall which would cause the door to slide shut in his face.

Served him right.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Zuko jerked back, eyes widening. "H-hey! Great going," he then muttered to himself, rubbing at he back of his neck.

His fist met the door again, the side banging against it, a scowl twisting his features. "Open the damn door, Katara."

[watertides.livejournal.com]

"Go away!" Her voice was muffled due to a combination of the thick steel of the door separating them, the blanket she had pulled further over her head, and the raspiness of her sore throat.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

"I'll go away after I get what I came here for." He stopped knocking and waited, lips pressed together in a thin line while he glared at the door.

(continueddddd)

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Besides honor keeping him there, there was one other reason for why Zuko was taking care of her. Sokka had been his friend; he wouldn't feel right just abandoning his sister in a time of need and not watching over her in his place until he returned. It wouldn't matter how long it took for Sokka to find his way back to them, Zuko would try his best for as long as it took, out of that friendship that they had.

Zuko leaned over the bowl, hissing softly under his breath at how frigid the water was against his skin. His body reflexively increased its temperature. "Is that what we are..?" He paused in wringing out the water from the cloth, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up to his elbows. But he never glanced over, resuming the wringing. "...Yeah. I uh- I guess we are, then."

[watertides.livejournal.com]

Silence settled between them once again, where Katara busied herself with the Chicobo who was more than happy to receive her attention. Her body was beginning to shiver, though, chills running through her body from her head to her toes as the sensation caused her teeth to clatter, her body involuntarily shaking.

"C-cold--" She whispered. The Chicobo seemed to sense that something was wrong, as it immediately began to flutter its' wings while chirping with alarm, hovering in the air when her hand retrieved to pull the blankets closer to her body.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

The chicobo was what got his attention first, Katara's whisper lost on him. "Okay, okay. Calm down," he spoke to the chicobo first, carefully taking it into his wet hands from its hover in mid-air to set it off to the side. "She's fine, see?"

Zuko then leaned over the waterbender to help her with her blankets, not thinking about it as he tucked them around her as best as he could. "Don't move around so much. You need to stay under them until your fever breaks." Or that's what his uncle and mother used to tell him whenever he'd fallen ill as a child.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

Katara settled back into the mattress just in time as Zuko began to tuck the blankets securely around her, wrapping her up in the downy material. No matter how many layers she put on, though, or how many blankets she piled on, the same chill always managed to consume her body.

"It's c-cold," Katara whispered again, her expression miserable as she looked up at Zuko. "So cold..."

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Zuko's hands faltered in tucking in the one edge over her shoulder. He stared down at her, confused, curious. "The body is mostly made up of water, isn't it? Can't you just... I don't know... somehow warm whatever water is inside of you? You're a waterbender, right? Can't you do that?" His tone was disbelieving; if firebenders could control their body temperatures, couldn't waterbenders do the same?

That miserable expression of hers, however, was tugging at something in his chest. She looked so put out laying beneath the blankets like that, shivering along with the chills she was experiencing.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

"I can... I can freeze water," Katara began, her voice a bit raspy, "but I can't warm water beyond normal body temperature. We're not... we're not firebenders, we can't just warm ourselves however we want-- we wouldn't need to wear heavy tigerseal furs in our Tribes if we did."

She tried to bury herself deeper into her blankets, her skin pale and clammy as small tremors ran through her body, signs that the fever was still affecting her greatly. Katara didn't know what to do-- she wanted whatever this was to just go away, or at least to be able to fall asleep so she wouldn't have to struggle as much as she currently was. Nothing was working though; it seemed as though she was stuck riding this illness out.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

The chicobo gave a quiet 'kweh...', fluttering its wings restlessly. Zuko looked down at the little bird and then over to the bowl where the washcloth lay in the water still. "You should see the doctor-" He wrung out the cloth, folding it in half and again. "--she would know what to do."

The cloth was placed on her brow, carefully laid there.

And that was all he knew how to do, as he straightened up and looked down at her.

[watertides.livejournal.com]

The cool cloth was an odd relief despite how cold she felt; Katara closed her eyes for only a moment to savor the feel, only to open them again to look up at Zuko with a glassy gaze. She shook her head with as small of a movement as she could to his suggestion so as not to tip the washcloth off, but enough to show that she didn't agree.

"No-- the medicine she uses... they aren't natural, I don't know how my body would react. If it gets worse then I'll go see her after a couple of days... but my body should be able to fight this off, eventually."

MORNING AFTER... (a month late because we fail)

[watertides.livejournal.com]

It was always a strange feeling, that odd hazy stage that the mind slipped into when it was slowly slipping into consciousness after a deep sleep. The first thing her mind noticed was that it her body was pleasantly warm; a nice change compared to how completely freezing she'd been the previous night, where layers and layers and layers upon clothes and blankets seemed to do nothing to help her condition. There was something like a warm furnace radiating off to the side against her, the warmth spreading all the way from her head to her toes, one that caused a lazy smile to unconsciously curve her lips.

Light was slowly beginning to seep into mind despite the fact that her eyes were still closed, the sun not having risen above the horizon line yet. But nonetheless, something seemed to compel her to wake, even when her body seemed to know she wasn't quite recovered yet, seemed to understand that it wasn't the right time to get up. Heavy eyelids slowly fluttered open, and it took a long moment for her sapphire eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they finally did... the snapped open completely.

Zuko was there, laying beside her, an arm draped over her side and curled around her back.

There was the briefest moment of panic-- what was he doing there? A quick glance downward and she was glad to see that she was still wrapped up in countless layers of clothing and blankets, and that Zuko was in fact sleeping on top of all the blankets and sheets-- but the glance also allowed her to see that his arms were bare, as it seemed her had stripped his hoodie off some time during the night. Even in the darkness with just the faintest moonlight seeping through her closed blinds, she could distinguish the hard lines of his toned muscles, all the way along his biceps, up his shoulder, over...

Her mind immediately snapped out of it. This was Zuko she was talking about, after all-- why would this even matter? Why was she even noticing these things?

It seemed like all the pieces of the puzzle were slowly fitting together in her mind; how miserable she'd been feeling the previous day, how Zuko had come to get milk for the kittens, how he'd noticed her condition and insisted that someone needed to take care of her. Everything seemed to slowly become more and more hazy after that; she could only remember a brief argument, how she had nearly collapsed, then warmth and comfort after that. Had the warmth that Zuko's body naturally exuded been the factor that was now making her feel all the more better?

She didn't know what to do now. Should she wake him up? Let him sleep some more? Try to go back to sleep? Even though her body seemed to scream at her that she needed to rest for at least a couple more hours, that she hadn't fully recovered from her sickness and needed some more sleep, her mind was still panicking and wouldn't rest. How did they wind up in this sort of a position?

This was really, really awkward.

But even then, her eyes seemed to slowly droop on their own accord despite her restless thought process, and after moments she had managed to drift back into a deep sleep lulled by the warmth of the Firebender at her side.

oh my gosh. . .

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Despite being in an entirely different world than his own, a world that was completely messed up by what the natives and Garden called ‘Time Compression’, there was one thing that hadn’t seemed to change in the slightest. It was bright and warm, a scorching ball of light in the sky that if one dared to look into it for more than advised, they would eventually go blind. It rose in the east, set in the west, was at its highest peak come noon time. It was what everyone knew to be the sun.

Each day Zuko rose with it at dawn and each day he would find himself winding down for the night upon its descent behind the western horizon. That wasn’t to say he lost his energy whenever the sun set, far from it; it was mostly fatigue that would creep upon him, and the firebender would usually find himself lulled to sleep by that exhaustion. The energy of the sun to a firebender was like that of a continuous electric charge but held back. Only when a firebender allowed that energy to flow free through his or her firebending and breath was the charge then released.

As Uncle Iroh had once put it, “Power in firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles. The breath becomes energy in the body, the energy extends past your limbs and becomes fire.”

Perhaps it was one of the reasons for all the underlying frustrations Zuko had been feeling these past few weeks (clearly it had absolutely nothing to do with Katara…). After all it had been a while since he’d last taken the opportunity to go through his firebending routines out in the courtyard, even in the Training Center. He hadn’t had the chance yet to unleash the built up energy somewhere, generally sticking to a daily routine in the small lobby of his dorm room without doing any firebending.

This morning was no different in terms of rising with the sun.

Zuko’s consciousness was the first thing to come around, that same awareness seeping into his mind and cutting through the hazy blanket of sleep bit by bit. His lashes fluttered open and lowered shut again and he inhaled deeply as he grew more and more awake with every passing moment the sun continued its climb. There was a familiar scent that played on his senses, one he’d fallen asleep to hours ago, and Zuko leaned his upper body away in reflex. His arm tightened around the bundle he’d been asleep next to all that time and then he froze, staring up the ceiling, upon realizing that he wasn’t at all alone in his bed.

Wait— his bed?

Although the sun had yet to fully break the horizon, it was enough to allow some shred of light into the room, enough for him to be able to make out this or that when he glanced at the nightstand from the corner of his eye. The red potted plant sat next to a container of water, a folded washcloth hanging over the edge. The clock closer to the wall read ten after six, the dot indicating that it was the morning.

Is it that time already? he wondered groggily, rolling his body forward again to make out the solid warmth laying at his side.

fml. . .

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Dark hair and tanned skin were all that was visible from the heap of blankets, stray loose curls covering a prominent cheekbone, partially laying over a closed eye with lashes so thick. Zuko took the moment to remember what had happened and how he’d ended up sleeping alongside her, his gaze rooted to her face and taking in the peaceful, unaware expression. So it wasn’t his bed after all, it was hers. It was his turn to snap out of his sleepy daze, eyes widening as realization slapped him hard across the face.

Why were they in bed together? What in the hell had happened? They were in bed together!

Zuko’s left arm and shoulder protested from having been stuck in that position for all that time, as he tried to carefully shift without waking the slumbering waterbender, his thoughts racing. His cheeks felt warm— he’d just woken up next to Katara, in bed with her. What was going on?

A sudden sweep of his eyes revealed to him that she was snugly buried under what appeared to be the thickest duvet ever and that he himself was still practically fully clothed minus his hoodie sweater. Taking a deep breath Zuko calmed himself and focused on lowering his body temperature, as he then remembered the other evening, how Katara had succumbed to her illness and fainted on him. Zuko still didn’t want to have to think about what Sokka would have said to him had Zuko left her soon after getting her in bed and covered up.

There was a soft peep. Zuko groaned to himself; how could he have forgotten about the Chicobo, as it gradually came awake from where it had taken its bed in the blankets at the back of Katara’s head. He watched as the little bird hopped up and fluttered its wings, its big black eyes blinking at him.

“Shh—!” the firebender softly shushed it all the while still attempting to extricate himself from Katara without bothering her.

Agni, Zuko wanted nothing more than to just get free and leave unnoticed. That’s all he asked for!

Re: fml. . .

[watertides.livejournal.com]

She could her the faint sounds of something trying to fight its way through her consciousness, to try and catch her attention and lure her out of her sleepy state, but Katara wouldn't have none of it. How could she wake up, when she was curled up in bed, buried beneath blankets and perfectly warm and content? There was nothing better than the situation she was in right now; in fact, she only buried her head deeper into the pillow it rested on, her body shifting so that she could pull the covers around her even tighter.

Something wasn't quite right, though-- a something that wasn't allowing her mind to fall back into its perfectly happy state of rest that it so desperately wanted. What was it? She tried to remember whatever it was that was tugging on the corner of her mind... and sure enough, once her mind seemed to be able to grasp that the sound she was hearing was actually a soft chirping sound, everything else came in a rush, flooding her mind.

Needless to say, her eyes fluttered open, the first thing Katara noticed in her line of sight being the Firebender attempting to desperately shush the chicobo.

"You're still here?" Katara murmured sleepily, a bit of surprise managing to be present in her tone.

I need to remember; this isn't journal log, it's GAME LOG, next time 1 comment and not 2 plz self

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Zuko stiffened at the sound of her sleepy mumble. His eyes dropped down to where he could make out her face in the white tones of the blankets, swallowing audibly. Drat, he’d been caught. Warmth spread over his cheeks at the surprise in her voice, and Zuko frowned to cover it up. “Of course I’m still here,” he muttered. “Someone had to take care of you.”

The Chicobo gave a a kwehhhh and tried to walk its way over to Katara’s head, hopping around the odd lumps an hills of blankets.

“I uh… I tried not to wake you. I was going to leave before you woke up but…” Zuko gestured to where his arm remained pinned down beneath her.

Re: I need to remember; this isn't journal log, it's GAME LOG, next time 1 comment and not 2 plz sel

[watertides.livejournal.com]

The sleepy veil over her head seemed to finally lift enough for Katara to be able to evaluate the situation again. Yes, Zuko indeed was still in her bed, and laying quite close to her come to think of it. Her cheeks immediately reddened, but she tried to wave away whatever embarrassment she was feeling; she had slept this close to boys before, like Sokka and Aang while they had all been traveling the world. What made this any different?

There's definitely something different about this, her mind tried to convince her, but she immediately dismissed the thought.

"Oh, right-- sorry about that--" the apology was hasty as she rolled off his arm, her body now pressed against the wall as she waited for him to retrieve the appendage.

[pyromatics.livejournal.com]

Wincing he pulled his arm up, Zuko finally sat up. He let his arm rest in his lap, flexing his fingers to get feeling back as he reached up with his other hand to rub at his shoulder and bicep. They were somewhat numb, but it was the 'asleep' numb feeling that one got when laying on something for so long.

Another wince and quiet hiss of breath was indication of the pins and needles gradually setting in.

"... Thanks."

[watertides.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, Katara had expected Zuko to dart out of her room the moment she rolled off of his arm-- she was more than surprised to see that he was still in her bed, and seemingly okay about it. A fleeting thought crossed her mind; maybe this wasn't the first time he'd been in such a situation.

"Did you stay only because I was sleeping on your arm?" The question had come out before she had a chance to really process what she was asking, and her cheeks reddened when she realized what she had asked. But more than that, she wasn't sure if she was curious or dreading the answer he would give her.