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The day had begun as most had the past few weeks. Swelteringly humid, entirely too different than what she had expected for a place located inside a volcanic crater. She was already beginning to sweat, it was the middle of summer and the mornings were no exception to the heat.
Throwing the silk sheets off her barely clothed body she exhaled, then inhaled, then exhaled again slowly. All too slowly. She felt the bundle of nerves in her stomach grow and course through her body in a way they never had before.
Katara was not a nervous person. She had had to grow thickened skin at a very young age. There were was little that phased her. Not even the goriest of battle scenes had done more than perturb her for a few seconds. It was fight and go. She was a warrior through and through.
The marble floor was cold beneath her feet despite the sweltering heat that would soon seep in through every crevice of the palace. She closed her eyes as the sensation woke her up further. It was easy to get lulled in by heat, her body knew that for a fact.
It was indeed why she was in her current predicament. She closed her eyes again. Another inhale, another exhale. She would have to do it today, there was no other day for this.
Soon her father and brother would be sailing away back to her home. Back to the home she so achingly missed. She needed to do this today, she needed to hear what he had to say.
She stood, legs shaking and her hands desperately pushing back her hair back. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't. But she was too young and they had been so careful.
It was easy to get lulled into the arms of a man who was just so .... like him. Strong, intelligent, sweet, caring, passionate. The moment she had forgiven him she had also opened her heart to him. The rest had just fallen into place as it seemed. And it had seemed so easy.
But this, this wasn't easy.
She dresses silently. Does her hair and wills herself not to cry. She has to see him today, say her final goodbye, and then disappear to La knows where because he won't have her and neither will her own Tribe after this.
He won't have her, because despite their torrid affair he's meant to be with someone who can actually be a proper Lady by his side. She's just some Water Tribe girl who fell in love with the wrong man.
Katara tries to focus on what she has to say to him then on the fastest way to leave the palace. She's already got a place in mind, her first destination, a place where she might just end up staying at. It had seemed amiable and isolated enough. No one would know who she was and that would be perfect.
She goes to sit on the desk near the window. The low hum of the morning bustling reaches her ears. The quill scrapes across the parchment as she writes her farewell note. She addresses it to Sokka directly, knowing that he would be the one to actually respect her wishes. The rest of her friends and her father would not be so mindful she believes. And addressing it to Zuko feels too ... personal, as if she's blaming him for this and she's not. It takes two to get into the current predicament she's in and this is her choice entirely.
Her hands go and clutch at her still flat stomach. No this wasn't going to be easy, but it would be what needed to be done.
*
She finds him in his office. The curtains are pulled closed and the only light comes from one lone candle at his desk. He's had terrible headaches since the lightening incident. She isn't sure that this is something that will go away soon if not ever. He nearly died. She'd felt his heart stop for seconds that were far too long that they'd felt like hours as she screamed and held him close.
"Katara," he finally says after noticing her. He somehow seems older, as if the burden of being Fire Lord has aged him a good ten years. She isn't sure she likes it. The darkness underneath his eyes is worrisome and the gauntness of his face haunts her with every day that she spends in his palace.
He stands fully clothed in the regalia of a king and she has to swallow thickly. She doesn't belong here. She could never belong here. But she loves him, she knows this for a fact. And she thinks that somewhere he might have loved her too.
But things have changed and he's grown apart from her. His eyes have taken their leave and so has his heart.
"Zuko, uhm, hi. Your uncle said I might find you here."
He sighs, lowly, quietly running a face over his hand. He's tired.
"Yeah, got a break from my ministers." A scrape of his boot as he draws closer to her. "It's really good to see you."
She arches her brow. "You've been avoiding me." She tries not to let her voice give any indication to her heartache, but the hand that goes up to her stomach gives her away. He doesn't seem to notice. Of course he doesn't, he doesn't know. Yet.
"What? No, no I-- I haven't been avoiding you. It's just ..." he trails off, eyes skirting between her face and her body and all over again in a cycle before he says, "it's just been hard to keep everything in order .. I actually, I actually wanted to talk to you about something. I've been discussing it with my ministers ...."
She can't explain what compelled her to interrupt him. Maybe it was the burden of having had to carry the secret for weeks. The growing pains of her own in having to make plans for her future that she'd never thought she'd have too. Maybe it was the fact that he had been avoiding her and breaking her heart and the fact that he was denying it. Maybe it was because, in the near dark, it was almost too much for her not to think back on those nights on Ember Island where they'd become more than just hesitant friends. Maybe it was because she loved him but she couldn't be with him and she just needed to find a way to leave before she just couldn't.
"Zuko I'm pregnant," she blurted out, the hand on her stomach pressing against it, nails digging into the soft flesh. "I'm sorry."
His eyes had widened and his mouth had opened slightly. He sputtered, words not forming into anything coherent, but she ran before he could actually get anything out. She ran and ran until she was beyond the palace gates, until she was out of Caldera.
*
The village of Shu Jing is just as peaceful as she remembered it. The seclusion and beauty of it all nearly makes her forget why she's here.
She takes residence on the outskirts of it, works her way through the days as a healer. She avoids most questions about where she came from or why she's here. Most don't remember her, and those that do are discreet and the ones that don't care to pester her with questions.
She's seen Piando once in three months here, but the old swordmaster had sworn her his secrecy. His affairs were greater than any of her secrets, besides, he understood her need to get away from it all. Or at least, he understood up to where she had let him know.
A broken heart, she had explained. He had assumed she'd meant the Avatar and she hadn't felt the need to correct him. He kept her living here hidden and she was grateful.
The days were blessedly devoid of any action, the most peaceful days she'd ever had. Mornings were slow, afternoons languid, and the evenings she'd spend tucked away with a cup of jasmine tea. Jasmine had been his favorite, and it seemed that the little baby inside her preferred it too.
Some days, when she felt the need for adventure she'd go on a hike to whatever waterfall she could and then spend her day there practicing her waterbending. It helps, she notes, to practice her waterbending on the days where she's particularly nauseated. It takes the focus off the bad feeling and makes her feel in control of her body and in a way, makes her feel connected to the life inside her. She wonders if the baby will be a waterbender.
A waterbender with golden eyes, she muses, now that would be something.
To say she was happy here would be a stretch, but she was content and that seemed to be okay for now. Compared to a life of ostracization by her people or scrutiny or even contempt or outright hate by the Fire Nation for having the Fire Lord's illegitimate child, she'd choose the mundane days of Shu Jing.
*
Katara is four months along when she hears that familiar rasp out in the streets. She'd gotten up early to go and gather supplies, herbs and her own groceries, in the market square. The sun had barely risen and the day had promised to be peaceful. She should have known that even the most perfect days can hold disaster in them.
There he was, asking for her more than likely. He came understaffed, she noted. Just two guards and those that carried his palanquin. He was dressed simply. Black robes with a red trimming that showed his status as a man of noble birth, but not of a man of princely birth.
Her breath was caught in her throat and she felt her hands start to shake.
"Are you alright my dear?" the vendor asked her, brows furrowing, adding to her many wrinkles. "Is it the baby?"
The raspberry and nettle leaf must have been a dead giveaway, or maybe it was her now protruding bump that peeked beneath her blue dress. She nods at the vendor and smiles but her eyes soon glance up at the place where Zuko had been last. Had been. He'd since left and disappeared from view.
In sight of that, she pays and quickly heads back to her home taking all the back alleys that she can. She's dressed in blue today instead of red and that would just make her stick out even more.
By the time she is able to go back into the safety of her modest home, the sun has started to peak above the slanted roofs and she's grateful for the mugginess the morning afforded her.
Her breathing is coming quicker and her hand is automatically at her stomach. Could he be here for her? How was it possible that he'd managed to find her? Had he been looking?
She tries to remember that Piando, his old teacher is also a resident of Shu Jing and tries to convince herself that he might be the reason that Zuko is here. She settles somewhat as this thought runs through her mind and she gets on with her daily activities.
Storing the herbs, taking out dried ones to make into poultices and salves, stretching, massaging her growing belly, making breakfast and lunch, and just trying to breath.
It isn't until nightfall that there's a knock on her door and she feels like she's had all her blood drained from her body. She thinks she might just escape out the back, that's what one part of her is begging her to do. But another, slightly nagging part is telling her to just face him. He can't make her go back. This was her choice. This was the best choice for her.
She steels herself, smooths out her dress, and heads to the door. With one final deep breath, she grabs the nob and turns it. As the door swishes open, there he is, clad in black, hair falling into his eyes, longer than the last time she saw him.
Those golden irises hold her, suspend her in the air and she struggles to get any word out of her mouth. He seems to be taking her in too then his eyes settle on her belly and she feels her face flush.
"It was true then," the words are carried out into the night. "You are pregnant."
*
"Why did you leave?" Is the first question he asks as he moves past her and goes to stand in the middle of her greeting room. "Katara, how could you leave?"
She swallows and shuts her eyes closed. She will not cry, not anymore. She spent all her way over to Shu Jing, on a boat, on the back of an old ostrich horse, and through endless towns and villages, crying about the life she was leaving behind and why she was doing it.
"It was going to be easier this way."
He looks at her and sets his jaw. "Easier for whom?" She can almost taste the anger in his voice.
"For me," she declares a semblance of fight gathering in her veins. How dare he?
Then he drops to the floor and places his head in his hands. His shoulders begin to shake and she's overcome with emotion. Is he crying?
"Zuko?" She kneels next to him. "Zuko, are you--" The question dies on her lips. It would be stupid to ask she realizes, when she hears a wrangled sob escape him.
He looks up, tears streaking his face. His good eye is swollen and red. Then she notices the darkness under his eyes has only gotten worse. Has he slept well at all these past three months? She feels a knot of guilt settle in her sternum. Did she cause this? But that too is a ridiculous question, she knows she did.
"Katara how could you leave just like that? I-- we were all worried sick. You didn't even say where-- all we found was a note for Sokka. Do you know what you did to him, what you did to your father? He's besides himself. Everyone is!" His voices rises. He pinches the bridge of his nose, "We had to stop Aang from practically destroying Caldera when he heard the news! You were the closest thing to a mother for him and having you disappear like that, it broke his heart. It broke your family's heart. Katara," and he looks at her, face open and vulnerable. She longs to hold him until the tears stop falling. "it broke my heart. I loved you ... I love you. How could you do that to me?"
And then she unravels completely. All the sadness she kept pent up for months, the denying of the emptiness she felt here in Shu Jing from being away from all those she loved, but especially him, surfaces and leaves her a blubbering mess on the floor of her own home.
Zuko takes her in his arms and she wraps her own around him. They cry together, bodies shaking and melting against one another for comfort.
"I'm sorry," she chants over and over as the sobs wreck body.
He's buried his head in her shoulder, hands coming to rest on her back where he's begun to rub circles. Either to comfort her or to comfort himself she doesn't know.
When he draws back, she misses the heat of him, one that she's been deprived of for so long, and fights to not go back into his arms.
"Katara," his voice is soft, tone forgiving, "what you said in your letter, it wouldn't have been true. Your father would have never done that to you. He was broken by the fact that you thought he'd make you an outcast. And about me ...." he trails off and tries to collect his thoughts, "Katara that day when you came to see me ..... I had talked to my advisors and ministers about the fact that I wanted to marry you. They had finally agreed to take it to the Sages for a final say. But the Sages would have agreed, I know they would have."
She's clutching her stomach again and avoiding his eyes. She's replayed that last conversation in her mind thousands of times. She feels so stupid for not letting him have finished.
"When you told me you were pregnant, of course I was shocked. I knew ... I mean we both knew it could happen and we weren't always careful but ... " and here he takes her chin between two fingers and makes her look up at him, "Katara I couldn't have felt happier in that moment." Then he flinches, "Before you took off and just ..."
Broke your heart, she finishes for him in her head.
"I would have married your right then and there, approval from the Sages or not."
He glances at her belly, slightly hidden beneath the folds of her pooled skirt.
"Katara, I love you and the fact that you ran out before I could tell you the reason why I'd been distant, that I'd been fighting for us ... It wasn't easy to think that you left because you'd stopped loving me. That you left because being pregnant with my child scared you and that you thought I wouldn't have done anything to keep you both in my lives."
She shakes her head furiously, "It wasn't easy for me either Zuko! But try to understand ... Try to understand that," she takes a deep breath, but her voice is shaky, "you'd been avoiding me. We hadn't seen each other in days and you'd been distant. Then Mai was there .... Spirits Zuko, I couldn't stand the sight of her being there because I knew that she still loved you! I already knew I was pregnant, okay? I knew, but I couldn't find the right time and I thought you didn't love me and it was all so much. Zuko, you had nearly died in my arms, and even with that you couldn't look me in the eye in the hallways when we would pass each other and you had denied me when I would ask to see you. What was I supposed to think? What would you have done?"
He hangs his head, but the grasp on her hands is tighter. "I was avoiding you because I didn't know how to tell you that I was thinking of marrying you. You had once said that you wanted to be your own person, to have your freedom. I was trying to find the right time to tell you that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you." He stops. "That I want to spend the rest of my life with you, still."
One of his hands reaches for the pocket at his breast. "I was going to give you this."
The necklace in his hands is breathtaking. A red stone that shines despite the low light carved with the symbol of her tribe and the symbol of his nation, set against a golden frame and tied together with blue silk. She feels the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes again.
"But I was also going to give you the option to hold off any proper engagement until you were ready."
Her eyes have met his again. They shone with sadness, with love, and it was all too much.
"Zuko I'm ..."
"I know you're sorry, Kat. I know. I am too. I should have looked for you sooner. But I was angry, at you at myself."
She reaches out her hand to touch his scarred cheek. "You should only have been angry at me. I left, I ran like a coward. I didn't even give you the chance."
He reaches for the hand on his check. "I forgave you when I read the letter. I was heartbroken, but I understood. Please just ... Katara please just come back to me, to us, to your family. You don't have to hide, you never did."
Her stomach clenches. "Zuko I-- I don't think I can. I haven't forgiven myself for what I did. I thought I was alright with my decision but every day I have to force myself to forget that all I left was some stupid note and the fact that I never even said goodbye."
She's crying again and soon enough she's back into his warmth as he embraces her.
"Kat, my love, you don't have to be scared. We all forgave you. My coming here was not just my choice, it was all of us who want you back. How could you think that your father doesn't want you back? That Sokka doesn't want his baby sister back? That Toph doesn't miss you and that Aang is just waiting for the day he gets to see you again?"
She shakes her head. "I've hurt them."
"Yes," he concedes, "but you've also hurt yourself."
She grabs onto the front of his shirt tighter. "I have."
He kisses her temple. "I think it's time you stopped hurting yourself like this. Please, come back."
"But you, this puts you in a tight spot, it won't be easy for you because of this," she points to her stomach, "what will everyone think."
He huffs, "Katara I could care less about what anyone thinks. Besides, everyone knows that you are my choice for the next Fire Lady and that there could be no other. Your disappearance was covered up cleverly by my uncle. Made up and entire story that you were merely in the South Pole with your family. "No one knows you ran away."
"Do they know that I'm pregnant?"
"Yes." The admission is said simply. "They know. You're in the South because your nausea was being made worse by the humid conditions. You're from a colder world, it wasn't hard for my people to believe your body could not handle the weather in the Fire Nation while pregnant. That and you wanted to be closer to your grandmother. That would seek the comfort of your grandmother was not hard to believe either. They think I’m there right now, with you.”
“Oh Zuko,” she sniffles. “I made a mess didn’t I?”
He chuckles lowly at that. “It would seem so. But I’m here, now, and all I’m asking is that you come back. We don’t have to go to the Fire Nation straight away. We could actually go to the South Pole first. You’ve got things to patch up there, and you must miss your grandmother.”
She nods because she does miss GranGran with with a burning fervor. And she does have things to patch up and mend with her brother and father. She sighs, hand going to her belly for comfort.
“That and I want to formally announce my intentions towards you to your Tribe. Your father told me that would help with it all. He’s working hard to change things, he’s called the laws archaic and has vowed to change them.”
“I’ll go back, to the South first. There you can … propose to me, officially if you want too.” She won’t pressure him into anything. A part of her still believes that he hasn’t fully forgiven her. “And then we can go back, to Caldera, your nation must be missing their Lord.”
“As much as their Lord has missed his Lady.”
The smile he gives her is earnest and endearing. Her heart breaks a little further. She really doesn’t think she can deserve his love after all of this but she’s willing to prove herself from this day forward, no matter how hard that is.
“I’ve missed you so much Zuko, so so much.”
And then he cups her face and kisses her deeply, with a passion that burns her soul and makes her body shiver in want. He is careful as he takes her legs and wraps them around his torso and then sets her back down on the floor.
“I love you,” he murmurs between kisses, “so much.”
She kisses him with all the unadulterated desire and need that only he makes her feel.
“Marry me,” he says, when he’s moved from her mouth to her neck.
“Yes,” she breathes out, “yes Zuko, I will marry you.”
*
Her return to her life wasn’t easy. There was much crying and apologizing and promising to never ever do something so rash and stupid. Facing her father had been harder than she had thought it would be, but when he hugged her and cried, she had not been able to ever fathom a life without him. When Sokka hugged her, she couldn’t believe that she had run away and left the protection and love that she only felt with Sokka.
Seeing Aang and Toph, whom she would later call her first set of children, cemented the fact that she would never think to leave her friends again.
But returning back to the Fire Nation with her soon-to-be husband only convinced her that despite all the difficulties she was to face, that she would never ever want to be in a place that didn’t have him. He was her home.
And with his hand on her belly, as their child greeted him a kick, she knew that no matter how hard things got, he would always find a way to make it easier for her. His love was greater than her fear, and she from then on she vowed to always fight to be deserving of it.