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Zuko tossed and turned for an hour before he gave up on sleep. He needed to move. Every time he got too still, too quiet, every time his breathing slowed with the approach of sleep, he thought of the way the crowd had cheered his death, and he started to feel sad and afraid. He didn’t want to feel sad and afraid. It was a stupid, bad, tacky play and he wanted to feel angry about it. So he got up, stomped out of his room through the house, and promptly tripped over Katara on his way towards the backyard.
“Hey, watch it!”
“Sorry!”
He grabbed at the railing and managed not to tumble down the stairs, although he did lose his footing, swing perilously downwards, and bump his shoulder. Katara snorted and helped him up, and Zuko sat on the step just above her.
“I guess I was in the way, huh?”
“Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t sleep, either?”
“No.”
“It was a stupid play.”
“It was a really stupid play.”
Zuko took a deep breath and released it, staring out at the trees before them. There were fireflies flickering in between the deep green leaves, and he smiled to himself. Katara and Sokka had been delighted when Zuko showed them how to capture fireflies in glass jars. They had never seen them before coming to the Fire Nation, and hadn’t had clear glass until coming to Ember Island. Suki and Aang had been excited, too, but it wasn’t a new experience for either of them. And besides, Aang was so easy to impress. Zuko had only just gotten Katara to stop glaring at him, so her delighted expression, lit by the glow of the little bugs as they ambled around in her hands, had been special.
“Do you think it was—kind of right?” Katara asked in a small voice. “The play?”
Zuko was surprised by the question; Katara had dismissed it a lot easier than the rest of them when they were at the theater. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey. We’ve got three people on our side who each mastered a different element by fifteen. Four if we could boomerang as an element—which we shouldn’t. But still. I think that gives us a fighting chance.”
Katara smiled.
“You left out Suki,” she pointed out. “And yourself. But that’s actually not what I was talking about.” She bit her lip. “Do I come off as too… boy-crazy?” she asked hesitantly, and then before Zuko could even fully take in the question, she began to chatter, running her hands anxiously through a lock of hair.
“I mean I know my parka wasn’t ever that low-cut, and this outfit does show more skin but it doesn’t seem like that much compared to everyone else here? And I’ve only ever kissed two boys so I don’t know where all those guys in the play came from. And even then, it’s not like I was throwing myself at them, or at least I wasn’t trying to, but maybe I really was—I don’t know—leading them on, I guess?”
“Katara, relax,” Zuko directed. He had never seen her so… self-conscious. Even when she was accidentally waterbending backwards, she hadn’t let it fluster her. He thought about touching her shoulder again, but now that she had pointed out the amount of skin her outfit exposed, he felt weird about it. “The playwright wanted the audience to laugh at us. He wanted to make us look bad, and… that’s an easy way to make a girl look bad. It doesn’t have anything to do with you personally.”
“You think?” she asked hopefully. She stopped tugging at her hair.
“Of course. I was with you in that cave, remember? So I know there was no flirting and a lot more yelling. I would’ve assumed the whole thing was just as inaccurate.”
Except that Katara had just revealed something interesting. She smiled and thanked him, looking out at the fireflies. He looked at her and wondered if either of the two people she had kissed had even been in the play.
Zuko himself was out, of course. Haru had also appeared—with a much more extravagant moustache than in real life—and there had been some Fire Nation guy who Katara had fallen in love with while in some kind of disguise? That part had confused him. There had been something about a factory that she had destroyed because—well, because Katara-in-the-play had seemed to have an unusual appetite for destruction. The Fire Nation guy had rejected her when she revealed herself out of costume, and Katara-in-the-play had wept, and the audience cheered. That didn’t seem realistic at all. And then there was…
“Which two?”
Katara stiffened, then slowly turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were tinged with red, and Zuko blushed, too. He hadn’t meant to actually say that out loud.
“How many people have you kissed?” she spluttered.
“Two. Well, th— two.”
“You were going to say three,” Katara said triumphantly. She stood, turned around fully, and put her hands on her hips. “Who is this mysterious number three?”
“Nobody! I meant two!”
“Oh come on, Zuko—”
“I asked you first,” he snapped. A whole squad of jellyfish-eels was squirming in his stomach, and he was half hoping Katara would back down. It was a stupid hope. Katara never backed down.
“Fine,” she sighed. She glanced up at the house. Zuko followed her gaze, but it seemed like everyone else had gone to bed; none of the windows were lit up. “Um… can we go down to the beach?”
“Sure,” Zuko shrugged.
They stood and began to walk down towards the water, taking the path through the trees. Zuko held up a small flame to light the way, but Katara pulled slightly ahead of him. Her arms were crossed in a protective posture, and she didn’t look back at him when she said, “Jet and Aang.”
“What?” Zuko yelped. The flame in his hand flared and then fizzled out.
“He wasn’t like they made him look in the play,” she continued defensively. “Or maybe he was, but we didn’t know it at first. He saved us from some soldiers and said he was a freedom fighter, and he was charming, you know? I thought he was… I don’t know. Gallant. I didn’t know that he was going to flood the town, and I dumped him—well, we left—when we found out, but before that, I told him about my family and he was nice, and…”
“I get it,” Zuko said, swallowing past the lump in his throat. I really, really get it. “So he was—?”
“My first kiss. Yeah. They had these treehouses, and one night at sunset…. But he was the only one the play got right. I don’t even know who that Fire Nation guy was supposed to be, and there was nothing between me and Haru except that I didn’t want him to rot in prison. I don’t think he was interested in me, either. I never flirted with him or anything. And okay, yeah, I did flirt with Jet, but he flirted with me first!”
Zuko believed her.
They stepped out of the trees onto the beach and he was hit with the smell of seawater, rolling in the wind the way the surf rolled over the sand. Katara was wearing shoes, but she left them at the edge of the grass. They sat on a piece of driftwood close to the high tide line and she dug her feet into the sand.
“When did you kiss Aang?” he asked. He didn’t want to hear more about Katara flirting with Jet.
“It was a couple of times—”
“A couple of times?!” Zuko repeated, louder than he should have. Katara groaned and covered her face. “He’s a twelve-year-old monk!”
“I was fourteen for the first one… and the first one doesn’t even count,” she said, lifting her head. “We were in this tunnel and we got lost, and there was a legend about how love would lead the way and there were statues of people kissing, so I think I was pretty justified in thinking that kissing would help.”
“You were lost in a cave,” Zuko said, deadpan. “And you thought kissing would help.”
“We were separated from the group and we were running out of light. We were desperate.”
“Did kissing help?”
“No,” she mumbled. “Our torch burned out and the glow crystals lit up the path. Then the other two times, I didn’t mean for it to happen. He kissed me. Once just before the invasion… and tonight, during the second intermission.”
Zuko looked at her closely. Katara was avoiding his gaze, looking at the ground and then the sky and then the beach over her other shoulder.
“So that’s what you were upset about.”
Katara shrugged. She cleared her throat and said, “Your turn.”
Zuko frowned down at the sand, digging in with his heel.
“There was Mai. You’ve met her.”
“With the knives?”
“Yeah. She was my girlfriend for a while after—when I went back to the Fire Nation. Before that there was this girl in Ba Sing Se. We went on one date, and we kissed afterward, but… I was pretending to be someone else, and I wasn’t very good at it. So it was just that one time.”
Katara nodded and gave him an appraising look. Zuko was struck with an unexpected feeling of guilt. He felt bad talking about dates and girlfriends and normal stuff when Katara’s stories were about freedom fighters and invasions. Sure, his own adolescence hadn’t exactly been easy, but at least he’d had brief pockets of normalcy. Katara had been the responsible one for her whole life, almost, whereas Zuko had had his uncle, and his uncle had been someone he could turn to, who could shoulder some of the responsibility and let Zuko be a kid for at least a little while… and now he was back to feeling bad about his uncle. He pulled one foot up on the driftwood and wrapped his arms around his knee.
“What about number three?”
He almost fell off the log.
“It’s nothing!” he insisted. “Nobody!”
“Come on,” Katara said playfully, shoving his arm. “Tell me! I told you mine, didn’t I?”
That was true… She had trusted him, and it wasn’t really fair of him to demand honesty and offer none in return. Besides, she already knew the worst of him, and she still wanted to be his friend. This—well, it wasn’t good, but it couldn’t be worse than any of that, could it?
“All right,” he said grudgingly. “But you have to promise not to tell anyone else, okay?”
“I promise,” she said immediately, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity.
“Good.”
He took a deep breath and let the sound of the waves crash over him.
The waves lapped against the side of the boat, a pleasant counterpart to the clink of utensils and the quiet murmur of happy people, and there was a warm feeling in Zuko’s stomach that has nothing to do with the hot meal. Jet caught his eye and jerked his head, and Zuko made an excuse to his uncle and stood. He followed the other boy to an empty doorway in a deserted corner of the ferry. They leaned against opposite sides of the frame, in shadow.
“That was some good work back there,” Jet grinned. “But admit it—the thing with the swords and the dishes was just showing off.”
“It seemed quicker,” Zuko shrugged.
“Oh yeah? And here I thought you were trying to impress me.”
“Why would I be trying to—”
Jet kissed him. It was a kiss like a punch, leaving Zuko stunned and breathless, until finally he jerked back and clapped a hand over his mouth. He stared at Jet with wide eyes and a burning face.
Zuko fell back on the sand, with his hands behind his back and his feet draped over the log. He closed his eyes against the stars.
“It was on the way to Ba Sing Se. I met this guy on the ferry. One night he kissed me.”
“Okay…” Katara said slowly. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “Was he—older? Ooh, was he married?”
“No,” Zuko said, bewildered. He opened his eyes. “Why would you even ask that?”
“Then why the mystery? Why didn’t you want me to know about him?”
He sat up.
“Because he was a guy!”
“So?”
“So?” he repeated incredulously. They stared at each other for a moment, and then something clicked. “So… is that… okay in the Water Tribe?”
“Kissing?”
“Two guys kissing!”
“Yeah,” she said, like it was nothing, like he was the one who was being silly. Zuko swallowed.
“Oh.” He picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle in a thin line back to the earth. “Well, it’s illegal in the Fire Nation. I mean, not kissing. But, things related to kissing. Like, you know—”
“I get it,” Katara frowned. “And if they found out, it might make trouble once you’re the crown prince again.”
“I’ll say.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s not natural. Men are supposed to be with women—it’s just how we’re made. People like that, they’re confused, a lot of time they’re not good fighters, they go after kids—”
“People like that are people,” Katara said hotly. “I think it’s pretty arrogant to assume what is and isn’t natural for other people. Just because you didn’t like somebody kissing you—”
“I did like it,” he mumbled.
“—doesn’t give you the right to say mean things—”
“I did like it!” Zuko said, louder. “I kissed him back!”
Jet chuckled softly.
“I thought you were the strong and silent type,” he teased. “But really you’re just shy, aren’t you?”
He wrapped his fingers loosely around Zuko’s wrist and pulled his hand away from his mouth, and Zuko—who knew a half-dozen ways to break a hold and a full dozen ways to take enemies to the ground, who had trained extensively in swords and knives and hand-to-hand combat and firebending—Zuko let him.
The second kiss was more bold and more gentle than the first. Jet cradled Zuko’s head in his head and his lips were soft and warm, and when Jet opened his mouth and tried to press closer, Zuko didn’t really have a choice but to do the same. He didn’t want a choice. He clutched at Jet’s upper arms and slotted their legs together and the white noise in his head got louder and louder...
“Oh,” Katara said. She knelt beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Zuko, it’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he said, shaking her off. “I’m probably going to be Fire Lord some day, unless my uncle has another kid. I need to have kids—”
“You can still do that.”
“—and I can’t be weak, or confused—”
“You are not weak,” she said in a firm voice. “This doesn’t make you weak. And so what if you’re confused? You’re sixteen! This kind of stuff is confusing! You’re allowed to be confused and you’re allowed to take time to work through it.”
“How much time, though?” he asked, and he hated that some of his desperation was leaking out into his voice. “What if I just get—stuck? I mean, I don’t even know what I should be trying to figure out. I really liked being with Mai and Jin, but maybe that’s not real, but—it should be real? Or maybe it was how I felt about that guy that wasn’t real, and I’ll get over it if I stop worrying. Or maybe I’ll just be confused and stuck forever.”
He growled in frustration and fell back on the sand, covering his face with his hands. He heard Katara lie down next to him.
“My dad’s friend Bato used to be married,” she said suddenly. “His wife died when I was a kid, and a couple of years later, he fell in love with one of the other warriors. Hirik. I didn’t really understand. There were two other men in our tribe who were together, but neither of them had ever been interested in women. Afterwards I learned that they probably would have had kids at some point, because the tribe was so small, but there weren’t very many women their age so it hadn’t mattered. Plus I think Bato was the first person I knew who was in a relationship after their spouse died, and I didn’t understand how you could do that. I asked him about it once, and he said…” She paused to get the words right. “Love is like fish.”
“What?”
“Let me finish! Imagine you have a basket with a couple of fish in it. When you give them away, they’re gone, and it takes a lot of work to replace them. A stingy person might not give the fish away at all. A lazy person gives them away, and then says ‘that’s it! I don’t have anything more to give!’. But if you’re a good fisherman, you just go out on your boat and catch more. The more you practice, the more you can bring back to share with everyone. If you hoard love, eventually you run out. If you get in the habit of loving people, you’ll always have enough to go around.”
It’s… not the stupidest proverb Zuko’s ever heard. The message makes sense, at least, although he doen’t see why fish needed to come into this conversation at all.
“Bato loved his wife a lot,” Katara continued. “But he and Hirik are happy together, too. I know it’s hard for you to trust people, Zuko, and I know people you love have hurt you… but I don’t think you should try to close yourself off from love. I think you have plenty to give.”
Zuko opened his eyes and looked at her. It was dark on the beach, but her face was so familiar that he could pick out her features with ease. The round curve of her jaw and her big blue eyes and the gentle smile at the edge of her mouth. He was so lucky to have her, and his body was awash with gratitude and the faintest bit of residual guilt.
He wondered if he could have loved Jet. How? a nasty little voice in his head asked, but he pushed it aside. At one point he would have thought how could two guys make out without realizing how wrong that is? but that night on the ferry, he had learned it was really pretty easy. Falling in love probably would have been harder. Much harder, he thought grimly, if he had been trying with fanatic, screaming-about-firebenders, swordfighting-in-public Jet. but smooth-talking Jet on the boat, making nice with uncle and helping hungry people get fed? Maybe. Maybe.
Katara raised her eyebrows, waiting for a response.
“I like your overemotional speeches about hope better,” he said quietly. “But that was still pretty good.”
She laughed and exclaimed in outrage at the same time, and a ball of water emerged from the ocean and dumped itself all over him. Zuko jumped up.
“Hey!”
Katara had stood, too, and he grabbed her and hugged her. She struggled against his wet clothes.
“Zuko!”
“Thank you, Katara,” he whispered in her ear, and she relented and hugged him back.
“You’re welcome.”
She bent the water away from their clothes. The water felt good, though, cool but not too cold in the humid air, and she suggested they walk in the ocean for a little bit. Zuko agreed. They walked parallel to the beach with the water lapping at their ankles. Zuko shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I wasn’t in love with him,” he said abruptly. Could-have-been-in-love wasn’t the same thing. “We knew each other for maybe three days.”
“What about Mai?”
“Yeah, of course. She was my girlfriend.”
“Are you still in love with her?” Katara asked. Her voice was carefully neutral. Her hand traced idle patterns in the air and tiny waves rose and fell at her side. Zuko bit his lip.
“I do like her a lot,” he hedged. “And I feel really bad for what happened at the Boiling Rock. But… but I’ve changed a lot, too, and I don’t know if she would like the new me. Whenever I was struggling with something, she just told me to stop worrying about it. And I know I worry too much, but still. I want to struggle and grow, and I don’t know if I could really do that with Mai, you know? It was the same problem with… the guy. There was a point where I thought… I was basically a refugee. I wasn’t a prince anymore, I wasn’t in the Fire Nation, so maybe it didn’t matter if I wanted to be with him…”
I’ve realized lately that being on your own isn’t always the best path.
“But we were a lot alike, and I think he would have pushed me towards some of my worse instincts.”
“What happened?” Katara asked softly. He shrugged.
“Nothing.”
“You can tell me.”
“Are you in love with Aang?”
The water fell back into the sea with a splash.
“I don’t want to talk about Aang,” she said sharply.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about Jet!”
He realized his mistake immediately. Katara stopped in her tracks and gaped at him.
“Jet? Jet-Jet? That Jet?”
“Yeah,” Zuko sighed. “That Jet.”
“Wait—and—on the ferry—so that—we—we both had our first kiss with the same guy ?”
“Yeah.” He kicked at the water. “And it was a fight with me that got him arrested and probably killed, so. You’re welcome.”
“Oh, wow.”
Katara wrapped her arms around herself.
“I don’t know if I’m in love with Aang,” she said. “Before the invasion, we didn’t really talk, he just kissed me out of nowhere. And then with the invasion failing, Dad gone, and then you coming and then Dad back—I thought I had more important things to worry about. Then, tonight…” A breeze blew over them and she shivered. “Is it getting cold?”
“Not really,” he shrugged. “But it’s probably warmer out of the water. Do you want to go back?”
“I guess.”
They meandered back towards the shore. They had covered a lot of ground, and the house was out of sight by this point, and their spot on the driftwood far behind. There was a little bluff, though, that offered some protection from the breeze. It really didn’t bother Zuko, because during a Fire Nation summer there was no escaping the humidity, and he thought it was a little funny a girl from the South Pole was cold. But Katara’s silk top was lighter than his, and he figured her worries were bothering her more than the weather.
“What happened tonight?” he prompted. She sighed.
“I went to find him during the second intermission. That was after… you know, the stupid cave scene? And he asked me if I meant what—what I said.”
“What had you said?”
“He asked me if what I had said on stage, about him being like a brother to me, was true. So right away I didn’t know what to say to that, and then he asked why we hadn’t started dating after he kissed me on the invasion, and I just—I don’t know. I really mean it when I say I haven’t been thinking about it. Every time it comes up, I stop and think of something else because I don’t know what to do. I told him I was confused, and then he kissed me again. Like that was supposed to make me less confused!”
“Well, if you really loved him, maybe a kiss would help you realize it. But it sounds like you just don’t love him.”
“Of course I do! Aang is—he’s one of my closest friends, and he means so much to me.”
“Good. So you love him. Go tell him.”
“Zuko! Stop it!”
“It’s an ancient Fire Nation decision-making tactic,” he shrugged. “A lot of times, with stuff like this, you really do know the answer, deep down. If someone tries to push you the wrong way, that little voice inside your head says ‘no, it’s the other way’ and then you know.”
“I’m not Fire Nation and it’s not working.” Katara dropped her head on her folded arms with a groan. “Ugh! I just don’t know. I don’t know how to tell the difference between… you know. Family-love and love-love. I’ve never had a boyfriend, and all the guys I’ve had crushes on were—it was way too different. There was one of the warriors in our tribe who was much older than me, and then there was Jet, who…”
She glanced worriedly at Zuko.
“Go ahead. You can talk about him—we kissed a couple of times, then I got cold feet and he figured out we were firebenders and he tried to stab my uncle. It’s kind of a sensitive subject but that doesn’t mean I’m sitting over here bawling my eyes out.”
“Okay. I guess, with Jet, I got really… swept up in the whole mysterious, sensitive misunderstood guy thing, and that was really attractive, but it wasn’t real. So—so I definitely didn’t feel the same way kissing Aang that I did kissing Jet, but that’s not fair because Jet was keeping something from me and Aang isn’t. Of course I won’t feel the same way.”
“You’re saying… you shouldn’t be excited about someone you’re in love with?”
“No, I’m saying… maybe real love comes first, and excitement later? But that doesn’t help me if I don’t know the difference between family-love and love-love in the first place, does it? Maybe I’ve got to kiss more people.”
Zuko did a double-take. Katara’s chin was resting in her hand as she stared moodily out to sea, and his face started to get hot.
“I thought you said—way at the beginning, you said you were worried about people thinking you were boy-crazy!”
“I know. But Aang and Jet are so not alike that I’m never going to figure this out by comparing just the two of them. I need more people to compare them to. Like an experiment.” She flashed him a sly smile. “You should kiss more people, too, you know.”
“What?”
“To get less confused. Kiss a couple more boys and a couple more girls and eventually you’ll figure it out, right?”
“Yeah, all these people dying to kiss me,” Zuko grumbled.
“Oh, come on…”
“The Fire Nation hates me for siding with the Avatar, everybody else hates me for being from the Fire Nation—”
“Okay, you don’t have to get into the whole thing every time.”
“I’m not very funny, I’m awkward, I’m too grumpy, I can’t juggle—”
“Who asked you to juggle?”
“—and then there’s this thing.”
He gestured bitterly at his scar and turned away, exhaling through his nose. He pulled his knees tight against his chest. Usually he tried not to let it bother him. Usually it didn’t—he had always been so much more concerned with the loss of honor the scar represented than the scar itself. But it was hard to ignore it whenever romance came up. Katara was a pretty girl. If she wanted to go out and find a dozen guys to kiss, just to help her figure things out, she would have no trouble. Zuko could hardly do the same.
That was probably why the idea made his stomach revolt so violently.
“Zuko?” Katara said softly. “You’re, um. You’re really good-looking.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not. I’ll be honest, the scar is a little bit unsettling at first… and the bald look, I don’t think you can pull it off. But you have a really nice smile, and you’re tall, and your face—it’s a good face. And your scar is a part of that, so…” Zuko looked at her, and judging by the way she blushed, his expression conveyed exactly how much he believed her. “Mai thought you were good-looking, didn’t she?”
“Mai knew what I looked like before. And before you say it, Jet thought my scar was proof that I’d fought the Fire Nation. He liked people who fought the Fire Nation. That doesn’t mean he liked the way it looked.”
“What about the other girl—what was her name? Jing?”
“Jin...” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe she felt sorry for me?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Katara huffed. “My point is, you’re being too hard on yourself, like always.”
“I’m not!” he protested. “I’m being realistic! And it’s not like I think I’ll be alone forever. I’m a prince and I can be a good friend and a good boyfriend… sometimes, when I’m trying, and after a lot of practice. I’m just saying that it takes a while. Some people are really attractive and can make people like them right away, and some people can’t.”
“Ridiculous,” she repeated, crisply. “Trust me, if you needed to find a bunch of people to make out with for scientific purposes, you would be able to find them. In fact—”
She snapped her mouth shut, tilted her head, opened her mouth, and closed it again. It was really weird.
“What?” Zuko asked warily.
“Nothing. Except—nothing.” She tilted her head the other way. “What if we kissed?”
His eyes widened.
“What?”
“For science! I need to figure out the difference between a friend-kiss and a real kiss, and you’re my friend, so that would be perfect. Just a friend-kiss. And you need to find out if you really like kissing girls, so I can be one of your girl-kisses. Not, in any way, a girlfriend-kiss, just…”
“A kiss with a girl… who is a friend,” Zuko finished.
“Yeah!” Katara said in a strangely perky voice, sitting up straight with her hands in her lap.
Are you sure that’s such a good idea? he wanted to ask. What if our friends find out?, that was another good thought, as was I’m sorry, I don’t think this is going to work. Instead, Zuko opened his mouth and what came out was “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
There was a pause broken only by the quiet rush of waves in the distance. Zuko scooched closer and brushed the sand off his hand, and tentatively touched the side of Katara’s head. Her eyes were as big and dark as the sky above them, and his heart was pounding and his lungs somehow felt bigger than usual. It was a struggle to fill them. He swallowed.
“I’m a little nervous,” Katara laughed. “Stupid, huh?”
“Yeah,” Zuko croaked.
He leaned forward and closed his eyes, and tilted Katara’s face up to meet his. Their lips touched and they froze. It was Katara who pressed harder and reached up to rest her hand on Zuko’s collar, and that emboldened him, too. He opened his mouth and sucked her bottom lip between his for just a second—he kept his tongue firmly planted in his own mouth, because they had not discussed tongues and that would just be rude—but if this was supposed to help clarify the line between a friend-kiss and a kiss-kiss, he had better do his part. Katara made a soft noise in response and his hand moved unconsciously from the side of her face to her hair.
Alarm bells went off in his head and Zuko pulled away. But then—Katara followed him. She kissed him again, and he kissed her back, and the frantic pace of his heart faded into the background. It was deeper this time, with a rhythm to it like the push and pull of the tides. Zuko lifted his other hand, realized it was sandy, and brushed it frantically against his trousers before cupping the back of her head, and Katara giggled against his mouth. Something sparked in his chest.
He was breathing heavily when they drew apart again. They stared at each other for a minute until twin spots of pink appeared on their faces. Zuko looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. Katara smoothed her hair.
“Um. Did that help?”
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You?”
It had, but… not in the way he had expected.
Kissing Jin had been nice. She was a nice girl, and he had spent the entire night feeling like an absolute idiot, but it had been an interesting sort of experiment to see how normal boys went out and met normal girls. Kissing Mai had been better. Mai was easy. Mai knew him, and didn’t really expect much out of him, and there had been something fun about showing off for her. He didn’t regret those experiences, but they hadn’t been… life-defining.
Kissing Jet had been exciting. Even before the kiss was over, he had known he wanted another one, and another. They had barely known each other but they had recognized each other, and he had known it was wrong but for a couple of hours he had really been willing to throw away everything he’d had. The walls of Ba Sing Se, the lines to get inside, the housing assignments, the depressing reappearance of rules and bureaucracy and the way things were Supposed To Be had frightened him away again, but that had been real. He knew it was real, and that knowledge had haunted him for months.
Katara was real, too. She was… confusing, fascinating. She wore her heart on her sleeve, showing the good and the bad with no shame. He hadn’t paid much attention until they were in the cave together, and then he had tried not to think about her too much, except as the Avatar’s friend, the one who kept the group going, the one whose trust he needed to earn. But now, how could he not think about her? She was all around him. She was a bit shyer than Jet at first—trying to test out a theory, not seduce a potential boyfriend—but once they closed their eyes and surrendered to instinct, he felt that same sense of recognition, the feeling that everything was going the way it should and thinking would only get in the way.
Had she felt this? he wondered. Any of this? He thought so, but he couldn’t tell and he didn’t know how to ask.
“Yeah,” he said throatily. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. Now you just need to go kiss some boys.”
“Yeah, you too,” Zuko said. It was hard to get the words out, and he turned his head to stare at the ocean.
“But not Sokka,” Katara said suddenly. “Just—please don’t kiss my brother. After Jet, and me, it would be way too weird.”
“I won’t,” Zuko said with a puff of laughter. “Plus, you know. Suki.”
“Yeah, Suki could probably decapitate you with a butter knife.”
They were both quiet for a long time. Zuko looked at her again, and this time he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Katara was really, really pretty, he thought. He had known this for a while, but he had never really appreciated the beautiful shape and color of her eyes and the flutter of her eyelashes, the plumpness of her lip as she caught it between her teeth and gazed up at him with an expression he couldn’t begin to pick apart.
He was leaning down again.
Katara turned away, and his heart plummeted.
“We should be getting back to the house. It’s late.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
The walk back was long and silent. Zuko thought about apologizing a dozen times, but apologizing meant acknowledging what had happened—almost happened—and if Katara was happy to ignore it, so was he.
They had reached the backyard, and Zuko was about to mount the steps when he realized that Katara had stopped.
“Zuko?”
He looked back at her.
“Yeah?”
There were fireflies dancing lazily around her ankles. She took a deep breath, but she looked calmer and more certain than before.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly. “I think I was right, before. About having more important things to think about besides romance.”
“Oh.” He remembered what had woken him in the first place—the crowd cheering at the comet, his death, and the destruction of most of the world. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Because… we’re all really young, even though it doesn’t always feel like it, and we’re all dealing with something huge , and terrifying, and that makes everything else feel like life and death. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be, you know?”
“No,” he frowned.
“I mean…” She bit her lip. “I mean… if someone came up to you and said ‘hey, we’re going to die tomorrow, so you might as well date me,’ your standards might be different, right? There are a lot of people you could have a nice time with for a day, or a week, without any big problems coming up. People you couldn’t date for six months or a year. Or, on the other hand, if it’s someone you already know, and that makes it complicated, you might decide you don’t want to spend the last week of your life figuring out complicated when you could be having fun instead.”
“I understand,” Zuko said. He sounded hoarse to his own ears, and the corner of his mouth crooked up. “If you really like someone, you want to think… long term. And right now, we don’t have long term. It’s not just that the war is so much more important, it’s also that the war makes it a lot harder to know what you really feel.”
“Exactly,” she said, relieved. She took a step closer and a tiny, hopeful smile lit up her face. “So… I don’t think I’m going to say yes or no to anyone for a little while, or—worry about finding a bunch of people to kiss. I think I’m going to wait.”
I can wait, he thought, staring deep into her eyes.
“Good,” he said.
The hopeful smile spread wider, and she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“Good night,” she whispered.
She climbed the steps and Zuko turned to watch her go. He remained still for a long time, thinking, alone with the fireflies.