Written for zutara month 2020.

Disclaimer: I don't think this would have happened in canon at all, but I wanted to explore this idea anyway, especially dealing with the aftermath in a relationship. I also may write a second part to this expanding on it and focusing on how Zuko and Katara work through the difficulties that come up, but I probably won't write that for a while as I have other writing things I want to focus on.

TW for a father's sexual abuse of his son.

Zuko didn't talk about some things. It had become a fact, four months into dating and almost two years into being close friends; the sky was blue, the sun rose in the east, and sometimes, if you pried too far under Zuko's skin, he froze up, grew stony, silent.

She learnt not to take it personally, a lesson perhaps made easier by the fact that if he wanted to talk, she was the first one he went to. Yet, some things didn't need answers; and some things only needed the answer of "my father" to be made clear. His scar was an example of this; it had been early in the evening and his head was resting in her lap, her fingers in his hair and her thumb pressed delicately on the red around his eye, tracing its creases and angles and divets. It could have felt like peace, had she not looked at him so sadly, that question he'd seen in everyone's eyes at some point reappearing in hers, but this time with far more care than he'd seen from most. So he swallowed, felt his throat close up, forced two words from it - "my father" - and her thumb stilled; her eyes grew so much sadder. She had asked if he wanted to talk about it and he'd shaken his head, and despite the questions swimming in her mind, she whispered a soft okay and moved her hand down to cup his cheek - and that had been that. Though that was the only answer she was given, she found that those two words explained so much - because if his father was involved, cruelty and violence were likely to follow, and she was certain that if it was Ozai who gave Zuko his scar, it was no accident.

Sometimes, if you were messing with Zuko and got suddenly close to his face, he would flinch and his eyes would squeeze shut for a moment, as if he was protecting himself from something blinding. It was only after those two words that she really understood why.

It shouldn't have been a time to be thinking about this; not with his lips on hers and her hands under his shirt, his breaths slightly heavier than usual. Yet, it was always the step after this that ended badly - if she tried to touch the skin beneath his waistband, his hands would go flying to stop her; if a kiss against his neck hinted at a love bite, he would jerk away; if she pressed her palm against his crotch as she did earlier on, before she knew how he would react, he would push her away with enough force for her to know it was a reflex. Afterwards, he would shower her in apologies, unable to meet her eyes, and tell her the same tale of how he didn't want to push her into anything too quickly, and how he wanted her to be completely sure she wanted to before they went further.

She had been sure months ago; that didn't seem to change anything. He would always mumble something about how she was a virgin; the implication being, of course, that he was not. When they had talked about it, earlier in their relationship, he had mentioned Mai - that she had been his first, and his only. When he'd told her, she felt both relieved at the fact that he would at least partially know what he was going, and fearful at the fact that she did not. Now, the fact offered her no kind of relief - because if he'd done this before, it could only mean that there was something wrong with her; that she lacked something that Mai had, that he specifically didn't want to touch her, didn't want to be touched by her, didn't want her body against his own. She had never been particularly self-conscious, but she knew that Mai had a certain elegance to her, her body slender and graceful, her hair glossy and so unlike the unruliness of Katara's. Perhaps that elegance was what Zuko liked, and anything else repulsed him; perhaps he could only bear to kiss her if he imagined it was Mai's lips on his own.

She moved her hands to his waistband, her fingers carefully delicate, and opened her eyes slightly as she ran her thumb along the skin underneath the fabric. He flinched as soon as she made contact with it, and she watched his gently closed eyes suddenly squeeze shut for a moment. Before he even reached out to move her hand away, she felt sick to her stomach; for the possibility she had forced herself not to consider flashed in her mind - a possibility that included those two, dreaded words.

Her hand still loosely clasped in his, she pulled away; he apologised before she could even open her mouth.

She watched with an unfamiliar sort of distance as he regurgitated the words she'd heard so many times, his eyes brightly gold and frantic; she removed her hand from his. "Zuko, don't. It's fine."

Her voice was firmer than it usually was after his apologies, and his words died in his throat - because he knew that this would happen eventually, knew that she would get tired of him flinching and pushing her away and repeating the same excuses. He wondered how long it took her to work out that there was something wrong with him - and how much longer for her to realise he wasn't getting any better, that she was wasting her time waiting for him to.

"Is it me?" She asked, her voice a half whisper and her eyes averted from his own. When he replied with silence, unsure of what she was asking, the firmness in her voice returned. "Is there something wrong with me, Zuko?"

His brows shot up, dumbfounded at what she was asking. "What? No - no, there's nothing wrong with you."

"Then why- why could you do this with her, but not me? Is it that I'm not as thin as her, or that I have more body hair, or- I don't know, am I not a good kisser? I just… what is it? What's so disgusting to you?" She demanded, her stare now fixed on him.

"Katara, you don't disgust me-"

"Then why her, and not me?"

He swallowed, her blue eyes half angry, half hurting, cutting into his own. A heavy silence rose between them as his throat grew dry, rough, harder to force words out of, the feeling only remedied by pulling his gaze away from hers.

"Mai and I never had sex."

She raised her eyebrows, the feeling of relief that surged through her short-lived, replaced by a churning in her stomach - because as much as he may have simply not felt ready to have sex, the other, dreaded possibility now inched nearer to probability, and she found herself reluctant to ask anything else in fear of it moving closer.

Yet, she needed to know - for her own sake, and for his. She reached over to grasp his hand, his skin warm against hers. "So is this... because you're worried about losing your virginity?"

A wave of nausea ran through him as he realized that she wasn't just looking for honesty, but for the entire truth - the kind of truth that he had given to no one, not about this matter; a truth that had stayed safely lodged in his throat for as long as he could remember.

He wanted nothing more than to say yes and for the conversation to be over, but he found himself unable to; for the reality of it had begun to expand in his throat, ghosts of the memories he had tried to forget for so long threatening to reappear, pushing against the surface of his mind.

"Are you a virgin?" She asked, her voice soft and strangely careful, her thumb running gently long his knuckles.

The truth was, he didn't know if he was; didn't know if the things his father did to him in the dark of night could be defined in that way. All he knew was that his hands had been cruel and burning, his eyes darkly pungent, his body so much larger than his own. Bile gathered in his throat as those memories finally pierced his mind - his father's touch writhing under his skin, his voice curling around his throat, low yet viciously sharp. Zuko's hand trembled softly in hers as his eyes filled with tears; if he had had an answer for her, it would not have left his throat.

Somehow, watching the pale gold of his eyes crumble, she knew why he flinched when she touched the skin beneath his waistband.

She searched for something to say; something adequate, something delicate. Yet, there was no time to refine her words - not when he was on the verge of tears in front of her. "Zuko, if you ever want to talk, I'm here to listen. And… and it's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but if you do…." Her voice faded out, watching helplessly as a tear streaked his cheek, and then another, and then another. Panic filled his eyes, as if he wanted to run but couldn't move his limbs, and though he cried soundlessly, she felt as if nothing more she said would be heard. "I just- I love you. And I'm here for you. And I will be here for you, whenever, okay?"

They had exchanged I love you's before; never had the words felt so true, yet so worthless. She had always taken pride in being a confidante, an empath, a healer, and only now she discovered how powerless she felt when she had no idea how to help.

Perhaps her words had acted as comfort, or perhaps they had made things worse; she couldn't tell, as the stagnancy of his expression shattered and he collapsed into her arms, his body wracked with sobs and suddenly feeling so thin, so frail against hers. She could do nothing but hold him, the rawness of his voice muffled against her shoulder and his arms hanging limply by his sides. For him, the world had seemed to crumble with her words - the world that he had built for himself, where what had happened on those nights when his father knocked on his door would never be thought or heard or spoken of; where it would be known of by so few people that it was no longer real, instead merely a fragment of the imagination.

Ozai always knocked, but walked in before Zuko could say come in. He knocked, but laughed with a certain cruelty at the sound of Zuko's cries, his whimpered pleas. Perhaps it had been a way of mocking the prince, of pretending to be courteous when Zuko knew exactly what he was going to do once the door closed behind him; or perhaps it was so that Zuko's body tensed in fear whenever he heard a knock on his door, cold fear running through him like a blade against his spine - so that Ozai's presence, his power, never truly disappeared.

He wrapped his arms around her and she held him tighter, quietly fearful that her body was too small to hold his, that his skin would split and his searing pain would spill from his sides and she would be able to do nothing but let it crash through her, her arms not wide enough to hold whatever was coiled within him. Yet, at that moment, all too sudden and all too horrific, two words escaped from his lips - my father.

First it was a whisper, then a choke, then a sob; and then again and again, chanted into her shoulder until his voice went raw. The sound seemed to send a tremor through her own body, a feeling of nausea cutting through her at the horror of it all, the incomprehensibility of his pain, the whimpering edge of his voice. As he shook softly in her arms, growing numbly quiet, he suddenly seemed so much frailer; so much younger. And as much as she had always been wary of his past and the way it lurked quietly in the corners of his mind, she had never before been so terrified that one sudden movement, one slip of the hand, could break him irreparably.

His wordlessness settled until all that was left were his quiet sobs, softened against the crook of her neck. And out of this quiet, slowly, like a wounded animal coming out of hiding, his voice emerged once more, now wavering and gently raw.

"I wanted to make him love me… I wanted- I wanted to be worth something to him. I thought-"

He broke off, his voice caught on a choked sob, and she found tears welling in her own eyes at his words. She blinked them away as quickly as possible; this wasn't the time for him to be comforting her. Still, the horror that forced tears into her eyes still pulsed beneath her skin, and it began to push words from her throat before she could stop them.

"I'm so sorry, Zuko. I'm so, so sorry," she said, her voice whispered into his hair. "I'm sorry that Ozai…that he did that to you, and I'm sorry that I pushed you for an answer, and I…" she sighed, loosening her grip on him slightly. "Oh, La, I just…"

"It's fine," He whispered back; yet, fresh tears were still soaking into her shoulder and she felt something harden within her, some sort of adamance that always arose from her sympathy.

"No, it's not fine, Zuko." She pulled away to look him in the eye, her hands moving to grasp his shoulders. "It's not fine and I wish I knew how to help you and just- just take away all your pain, but I don't. But… we'll work through this, okay? We can find someone who knows how to help you and we'll- we'll figure this out-"

He shook his head before she could say any more, pulling his gaze away from her own. "Why are you even bothering? There's so many guys who'd give anything to be with you and I… I can't even be intimate with you - and I don't know if I'll ever be able to, Katara. And I know you want to, and you have the right to want to, and I just… you shouldn't feel like you need to waste your time waiting for me to change when you don't even know if I can."

She stared at him for a moment with her eyes filled with that familiar sadness, and took his hands in hers. "That's the point - we don't know. And we don't need to think about any of that stuff until we do, okay?" She said, her voice both firm and gentle in a way that seemed to make perfect sense when it was her speaking. "I'm not saying we should get someone who can help you because I want to have sex with you as soon as humanly possible - I'm saying it because I don't want you to have all this pain inside of you without anywhere to go. And if there's someone that can help to alleviate that even the tiniest bit, then you deserve the chance to have that."

He was silent for a moment as he met her stare, his eyes still full of uncertainty and dulled of any vibracy that usually made them look alight. And then, slowly, he gave her a nod.

"Okay," He said, his voice soft and slightly quavering. "Okay, yeah."

She squeezed his hands and pressed her lips delicately to the corner of his mouth, slightly hesitant, and felt relief enter her when he turned his head to connect their lips. The kiss was light and almost chaste - the type of kiss they had shared hundreds of times - but she felt him soften against her and it suddenly meant so much more than she thought it could. Because she may not have known how to help him or heal him or make everything okay, but when he kissed her, all the strain in his muscles as he had sobbed in her arms seemed to dissipate, and she knew that counted for something.

When they seperated, she wrapped her arms around him and he returned the hug, his breath soft against the crook of her neck. They stayed in gentle quiet for a while, held in each other's arms, before he whispered a soft "thank you".

"For what?" She asked, her voice gentle.

"For being here for me."

She held him a little tighter, felt him relax further into her arms.

"Always."