WELCOME TO ZUTARA WEEK! Wow, this is my second Zutara Week, and I cannot wait! I already see the Fanfiction loading up, and I have no doubt that this will be a hectic week again! I'm almost tempted to play sick and read all of these wondenful stories! But, alas, duty calls.

This chapter was awful to write. I tried a Crossover fic, a masquerade, a Blue Sprit remake...until I came up with this at the last minute, inspired by Green Day's "Wake Me up When September Ends." (Obviously, the deadline is changed for this) Enjoy!

ZUTARA WEEK 2011

DAY ONE: MASK

"Summer is going to be over fast." Zuko finally said to the Water Tribe Ambassador. "You need to make your decision in two days."

Katara sighed. They were standing on Zuko's balcony, looking at the sun setting below the ocean over the Capital City. She had changed out of her official blue robes and was wearing her summer red dress, one that Zuko had bought her for a present. Zuko himself was still in Fire Lord regalia, and she felt as small like a child comparing himself to his tall, looming father. Despite this, he gently laid a hand on hers, which was clutching the balcony in thought, and whispered, "This will be your last summer with me, I fear, if you go back."

"Why?" she asked. "I am still the Southern Water Tribe's Ambassador, right? Are you threatening my job if I leave?" Katara's tone was now as icy as the frozen walls and icicles she creates.

"What? No," he assured her. "But I hear Aang is going to ask for your hand when you go home. He already asked your father, and Hakoda has approved. And if you marry him, you might be too busy—"

"Aang?" Katara interrupted him. She looked paler than ever. In the Water Tribes, it was a woman's duty by age eighteen to settle down and marry. Katara was nineteen, an almost taboo in her culture, and men and women alike were trying to cohere her into accepting a betrothal necklace. Nothing was wrong with marrying, necessarily. But she was thinking of only one necklace she hadn't accepted, a rectangle of imperial red jade carved with a koi fish that Zuko had given her the day she arrived this year. It was lying in her desk drawer, where she took it out at night and smoothed her fingers over the painstakingly hard work carved into the precious stone.

"Yes, Aang. The one you spend the rest of spring, fall, and winter with? The one we've been lying to since the war ended? Yes, that Aang."

Zuko's attempt at humor, or perhaps it was pent up anger, fall flat. Katara's face concealed a reeling distress imagining Aang proposing, then having to decline and tell the truth about the "monkey business," as Toph called it, behind his back. She could imagine several different scenarios: him running away, him unleashing the Avatar State and destroying the village, or him forgiving her but her home ostracizing her. Adultery and cheating were a huge no-no in the Water Tribes, and she remembered her father banishing a man two months out on the ice for cheating on his wife and impregnating his mistresses back in the Earth Kingdom. She shuddered at one of her nightmare memories of the village together turning their backs to her, and Gran Gran banishing her from her home.

"Katara, please don't cry," Zuko stroked her cheek. "Please, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's mine. I wish we hadn't lied at all, Zuko. But your Council doesn't even want to hear about cross-cultural marriages, and the world is still healing."

"Is that a no, then? Are you saying goodbye?" His face retreated back into what Katara called his "turtleduck shell," where his face was wiped clean of all emotions and tucked under a mask of indifference. She hated it when he made this face, which was frequent at Court so he wouldn't lose his temper, especially when it involved her. She could never tell what he was thinking when this mask was lifted, but now she could guess. Zuko was hiding anguish that she might not return to the Fire Nation. The Avatar's wife, especially with nomadic Aang, had to stay beside him or her at all times. If she became Aang's wife, Zuko would have to find a new Water Tribe Ambassador. She and Aang could always part separate ways for summer, but this was not an option, and the Fire Nation loved rumors. Now, they were suspecting and whispering about a story greater than "The Tale of Oma and Shu," which was not appreciated.

"No, not..." her voice trailed off before she said "yet," but Zuko saw it in her lips and face. He turned away from her.

"Shall we do our patrols tonight, Painted Lady?" he asked cooly, and she held back a sigh as he walked away from her to dig through his trunk for his mask.

The nightly patrols were their secret and their escape. They were masked and disguised, together bringing justice and help to those who needed them. They were a popular legend in the Fire Nation, The Painted Lady and The Blue Spirit working together to fulfill Fire Lord Zuko's dream. They were never seen apart, and the lucky souls who did see them in action always said that they fitted together exactly like two pieces of the same puzzle and spinning around each other in an endless dance. The Painted Lady was always graceful and quick when dealing with opponents, unleashing the fury of the tides and the fog. However, she was said to be as gentle as a newborn lamb-kitten when healing with the Blue Spirit at her back protecting her. The Blue Spirit was elusive and deadly, dealing out vengeance with his two trademark broadswords that flashed in the moonlight. It was said, too, that he guarded the Painted Lady with his life and never allowed himself or her to be touched in a fight.

As if the world knew that they needed a distraction, they sped off to rescue a lady from being robbed by a gang of thieves, heal some sick houses, take down vigilantes, help children from being run over by a drunk driver of a carriage, aid a man who fell down from a window and broke his leg, stop an enemy rebel ship that was passing through the harbor...

The Blue Spirit admired his Painted Lady, the way she twisted and turned in a fast but alluring dance for him, and how she fluidly spun the ocean water into a crested wave to meet the rebel ship. The ice spread quickly under her power aligned with the full moon, and soon, the Fire Nation patrol ships caught it with harpoons and a yell of "Thank you, Painted Lady!" A smile graced the woman's lips at this, and the Blue Spirit paused to crush those lips against his.

"Look down at this city, love." he told her after they parted and as the sun rose. "This can all be yours if you stay here."

"I cannot be bribed" was her reply.

"I can offer you anything. Ask for jewels, and I will mine them personally for you. Ask for silks, and I'll feed he silkworms and weave the thread for you. Ask for ships, and I will built them one by one for you. Ask for the city, and I will crown you as my queen. Ask for the sun, and I'll fight Agni himself to make him give you it. Ask..." His voice softened at the tears gleaming in his goddess's eyes. "for my love, and I will give you my heart."

"Oh, Zuko," she breathed and kissed him with all her heart.

"You are cruel, Painted Lady." he hissed.

"I must leave. My ship will be departing in an hour."

"I thought you chose me, Katara."

"I want to, with all I am, but—"

"You are too self sacrificing for your own good, Katara." Zuko thrust her carry on at her arms and turned away, all of his pain being swiped away in an instant. It was replaced by anger, another mask that was donned when in doubt and in loss. "Just leave. Go marry the Avatar and make the world happy. Leave." He did not add "See that I care," but when she kissed him on the cheek as a goodbye and placed his necklace in his palm, he wished he had.

Katara wanted to sir down and have a good cry, but she was sitting down at the waiting area and being watched by curious bystanders, she didn't dare until she was shut up in her room on the ship. When the ship finally pulled in, she opened her bag to get her ticket, but brushed against something hard and wooden and carved and smooth. She didn't even have to look down. She knew what it was, what it stood for. Katara traced the familiar features, as familiar as the man who wore this, when the ticket master asked her for her ticket.

"I lost it." she said simply, and she walked away, tossing her blue lined ticket for the South Pole into a cooking fire for the fishermen.