This is playing off of the first ask I sent. I noticed that you received an EIP fic prompt already, but I still wanted to ask, can you do a version of the EIP scene where Katara is confused about her feelings but instead of the Aang noncon moment, Zuko is the one who joins her on the balcony and he understands how she’s feeling, because he’s kind of feeling that way too? They can kiss also (they don’t have to, I’m fine either way).
"Hey," Katara says when she notices that Zuko has joined her on the balcony. "You haven't seen Aang, have you?"
Her eyes are wide and worried as she looks at him, and slightly red-rimmed.
"No," Zuko rests his elbows on the rail. "But I think you should leave him to sort things out on his own, you know?"
He hadn't missed the angry grumbles from Aang in the play house, the glances he'd been trying to shoot at Katara from across their seats, while Katara seemed to be avoiding Aang's gaze. If Zuko hadn't known better, he'd almost think there was something going on between them. He almost wanted to ask Katara about it, but something prevented him from doing so, and when he thought about it too much, he ended up thinking about her hand on his face, warm against his burned flesh.
Then the him on stage had said something about Katara being "the Avatar's girl," and Aang had nodded like it was true, and Katara wasn't looking at him, and Zuko was trying not to look at her because he didn't want her to think that the him on stage was anything like the real him, because he wouldn't have said that, even if it was true, and he wouldn't have treated Katara like that and she definitely wouldn't act like that towards him, even if she did kiss Jet, and he was thinking about her hand on his face and how it hadn't been like that, how nobody had ever talked to him the way she had then, and how nobody really knew the truth about what happened in that cave, nobody except Katara, and she wasn't looking at him and Aang was angry. Then Aang stood up and left his seat and nobody knew where he'd gone.
"We need him, Zuko," she says, pleadingly, looking up at the stars as if it was to them that she gave her plea. "He can't leave us, he's the Avatar. We need him to defeat the firelord. And if he's upset..."
"How is it your fault that he's upset?" Zuko asks.
She turns towards him. "I didn't say it was my fault."
"But you think it." He says bluntly. "You think it's your responsibility. You think you've made mistakes." He laughs, then, so harshly that it hurts a little. "At least you haven't alienated the one person in your life who actually loves you."
The look she gives him is so devastatingly helpless that it actually makes him angry, and he wants to shake her. His hands coil into fists, and he clings to the balcony rail, takes a deep breath.
"You don't owe him anything." He says after a long moment, both of them standing against the rail, silent and still, staring up at the bright stars.
"But it's true, isn't it?" Katara says quietly, resignedly. "Aang loves me."
Now it's Zuko's turn to face her. "Katara. I don't know anyone who's met you that isn't in love with you. I mean, Sokka is your brother, and okay, yeah, he's not in love with you, but he's crazy about you. Toph looks at you like a big sister. Suki loves you almost as much as she loves Sokka. I think she would date you if she wasn't with him."
Katara's smiling now, and suppresses a giggle, her face becoming suddenly serious. "What about you?"
"I..." He reaches up, his fingers brushing her cheek.
It was the easiest thing in the world to lean down, tilting her chin up as his lips find hers.
