Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prelude

i.

The Western Air Temple was nighttime-quiet, wind curling and whistling through the upside down spires, badgerfrogs croaking in the distance. Five silhouettes, shrouded by sleep and blankets, were clustered around the remains of a fire, one positioned deliberately between two others.

Zuko couldn’t blame Katara for her distrust. It was well-deserved. But that didn’t mean he was okay with it. Knowing what it was like to be in her good graces and that he’d denied them was anguish enough. Living day-to-day with her, a living, breathing reminder of his inept choices, was agony. He berated himself constantly, pondering what he could do to prove to her that he’d never turn his back on her again.

So when she’d rolled her sleeping bag out between him and Aang that night, vitriol burning in the oceanic depths of her eyes, Zuko had bitten back the angry retort that danced on the tip of his tongue. He’d flopped onto his back without comment, staring up at the frescoed ceiling and attempting to ignore her as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She was watching him, he knew, waiting for the moment he’d attack Aang. But she was also fifteen and struggling to herd a group of bumbling children around the world in an attempt to save it.

Her breathing had evened out rather quickly.

Zuko, kept awake by thoughts and a plague of memories lit by green crystals had lain awake much longer. He’d traced the lines of the fresco with his eyes until they drooped and grew heavy and had, eventually, fallen asleep sprawled on his back, one hand tucked to his chest, the other stretched out towards Katara.

ii.

As it happens, people tend to shift in their sleep, seeking out warmth and comfort. Katara, having grown up in the Southern Water Tribe, was used to falling asleep every night squished between Sokka and Gran Gran on soft pallets piled with warm pelts. Huddling close was a survival tactic, something she often found herself doing with her friends during their travels. Waking up with one of Toph’s feet in her face was a common event at this point.

And so, as the western winds swirled around the temple and the campfire died out, the waterbender unconsciously sought out the warmest, coziest place in the temple. There wasn’t far to roll, really. She’d crammed her threadbare sleeping bag and lumpy pillow between Aang and Zuko rather unceremoniously. Lost to dreamland, she shifted onto her stomach, her left hand reaching out across the paving stones and making contact with something significantly warmer than the floor.

Warmth, her subconscious knew, was a very good thing. With a rather delighted, content sigh, the waterbender rolled and burrowed, molding her back to the wall of heat.

iii.

Zuko, having grown up sleeping in a too-large bed that was nothing more than a lonely expanse of mattress, liked having something soft to wrap an arm and a leg around as he slept. It was a comfort thing, really. Not so much of a physical one as it was an emotional one. There were no extra pillows in the temple. At least, not that he’d been able to find. He suspected that the younger kids had stolen them for some sort of game with Toph. So he’d been sleeping with only one for his head. Thus far, he hadn’t slept well at all. Between threats on his life and Aang’s frequent insistence that everyone have slumber parties out on the balcony, Zuko had been dozing in fits and starts, unable to get comfortable on the stone floor or otherwise tormented by his past mistakes.

Caught in the liminal space between asleep and awake, the firebender could only register that there was something pliant and snuggle-able tucked close to his side. Immediate delight in this discovery encouraged him to roll onto his side and tug the thing close, an arm wrapped tight around it. He was called back into unconsciousness in a matter of moments, blissfully unaware.

Chapter Text

Hwyl

i.

Just before the first yawning stretch of dawn, a sharp pain in Zuko’s solar plexus jams him into consciousness. Groggy and wheezing for breath, he cracks open his eyes to find himself looking into Katara’s livid face.

“Fucking— Agni, K’tara!” he mumbles.

“Get off me!” she hisses.

“What?”

“Get. Off. Of. Me.”

“What’re you talking about?” Zuko, pissed that he’s been awoken with violence, slides his hand away from the pillow he’d been wrapped around to rub at his bruised sternum. In the process, his fingertips brush against the very delightfully feminine curve of a hip.

And just like that, the pain radiating through his body is the least of his concerns.

He’s up and crab-walking away from Katara in a flash. The waterbender is on her feet just as quick, hair a bushy mess and hands fisted on her hips. She draws herself to her full height, nose twitching with fury. He’s vaguely aware that he can smell her on his clothes. A summer storm and daisies and…

Katara leans down into his face and points a very threatening finger between his eyes. “Never. Again,” she growls. And then she stomps away towards the girls’ bathroom, nose in the air.

ii.

She doesn’t speak to him for a week after that. Doesn’t even look at him.

And, somehow, Zuko feels like this is progress.

Before The Incident, her gaze had tracked him everywhere, slicing across the room, sharp enough to cut glass. She’d saved her best derisive snorts for anything he said. She’d always put herself between him and Aang.

He knows why. Whether or not she’d admit it to herself or anyone else, Zuko can see it all there in the way Katara keeps hastily trying to wall herself off whenever their paths cross in the temple. He’d seen those barriers crumble beneath Ba Sing Se. Her eyes had grown soft, she’d turned her heart towards him. Now… Now he sees it all in reverse, watches her face close off and her body language turn cold.

It’s fear. Fear that he’ll snatch her one last hope for peace and her one last shot at some semblance of happiness out from under her feet again.

So her silence feels like progress. The absence of her gaze feels like ten strides in the right direction.

Somehow, in his sleep, Zuko has managed to incite something other than fear in her. Even if it’s anger. Even if it’s revulsion. Katara has felt something towards him that wasn’t terror.

She has given an inch and Zuko can run a mile with that. He can prove that he’s worthy of her trust once more. Tireless, he will set things right.

iii.

Zuko escapes prison having made a friend. He earns the trust of the chief of the Southern Water Tribe. Along the way, he loses Mai. Perhaps for good.

A week spent in hell seems a rather tame compromise given the looks on Sokka and Katara’s faces as they clamor for their father’s attention, though. The firebender doesn’t expect much of a reaction from Katara and she doesn’t give him one. And that’s okay. It’s enough to know that Zuko has helped to give her and Sokka the freedom of one of their most treasured people.

Two of their most treasured people, actually. Katara and Suki seem thick as thieves. Which makes sense. Katara is a lone teenage girl in a sea of boys and she doesn’t seem to see eye to eye with Toph very often. She must be as grateful for Suki’s friendship as Zuko is for Sokka’s.

The night of their return, Katara makes a big fuss over Hakoda and outright argues Aang down when he suggests another balcony sleepover with the new additions to the gang. Her father will sleep in a real bed, she declares and her tone brooks no arguments. So everyone files off to their separate rooms.

Sleep does not find Zuko easily, though, so he wanders alone through the temple, the ghosts of his forefathers’ cruelty dogging his every footstep and lurking just around every corner. This is a crucial part of his penance, he feels, living amongst the ruins of a place Aang or one of his friends may have once called home. Retribution for hunting the Avatar. For hunting a child. For causing hurt and fear. This place is an excellent reminder of what he might turn into if he doesn’t continue to walk the straight and narrow path Uncle had worked to set him back on.

An excellent reminder of what he used to be.

Zuko’s meandering feet carry him to a courtyard that hosts gnarled tree roots within its walls and a crumbling balustrade. The moon is a catfox smile in the sky, framed by a field of distant scattered suns. Several benches in various states of ruin form a ring in the center of the courtyard. Zuko selects the most stable of the bunch and sits down, pulling his boots off.

The world is quiet here, tucked away from the main part of the temple. Only the seemingly endless ghostly winds whisper through. Several minutes slip by on zephyrs as Zuko allows himself a few meditative breaths and recenters himself on his true mission—teaching the Avatar firebending. Not making friends, not earning his way back into Katara’s good graces…

Aang.

Aang is the mission.

The reluctant-stubborn-dragging-his-feet mission.

Zuko groans and rubs his hands over his face, fingers pressing at his eyes. Uncle would have made a better teacher, he thinks. Calmer, more patient, understanding—

Soft footsteps shatter the prince’s solitude, someone advancing on his left. When he turns, it’s to find Katara emerging into the courtyard, her face inscrutable as she stares at him.

“I’ll go,” Zuko says, reaching for his discarded boots.

“No.” For the first time in a long time, Katara’s gaze doesn’t cut him to the bone. Her voice is sharp, though. Frigid. She edges half a step back, hesitating, and then softens her tone. “No. That’s… It’s fine. I was looking for you.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that. The last time Katara sought him out, she’d threatened his life. It’s unnerving to know she’d been looking for him once more and that, this time, she looks uncertain of her goal. His boots slip from his fingers and hit the ground with a soft thump.

“Do you...want to sit?” Zuko ventures, gesturing towards the empty space on his bench.

“Okay,” Katara says.

She doesn’t budge, though, so Zuko looks away, reaching deep for his patience and willing himself not to explode in pleas of what can I do? How can I prove myself loyal to you? Instead, he studies the stars, tracking the points of the dragon and the phoenix. Eventually, Katara approaches the bench and sits, hands tucked beneath her thighs, her torso leaning away from him.

Zuko waits.

Maybe that’s what Katara needs. Someone who waits with the intention of understanding and doesn’t push her to feel or communicate. He’s not a patient person, but he can try.

“Thank you,” she says at last. “For what you did for Sokka. And for my dad and Suki. And for… For what you did for...me.”

He glances at the waterbender out of the corner of his eye. She’s not looking his way and her cheeks are ruddy.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says.

“Still,” her stiff posture softens a fraction, she doesn’t lean away as much. “Nobody else would have done that. But you did. Without a thought.”

“Oh,” Zuko says. “No, I had thoughts. It’s just that at the end of the day none of those thoughts mattered. Not more than your father’s life. Not more than you and Sokka’s happiness.”

Katara’s throat bobs as she swallows. “I still don’t know how to trust you,” she whispers.

It shouldn’t sting. Zuko knows this. It’s no secret. But it does. It burns like an errant flame across his soul. “I took advantage of you,” he tells her. “I took your kindness for granted. I have a lot of regrets, but what I did to you, Katara? That’s one of my biggest.”

Looking at her, even out of the corner of his eye, becomes too difficult. The firebender looks down, studies the calloused planes of his hands as he slumps over his knees. They remind him of Ozai’s hands, long fingered and capable of inflicting everlasting damage. They’re ugly and they’re terrifying. A dark, tentative hand stretches out, encapsulates one of his own.

“I…” Katara pauses. Her hand slides up over his wrist, fingers, soft and cool, brushing over the delicate skin on the underside of his forearm. A shiver quivers down his spine, unbidden. “You’re really warm,” she says.

Zuko looks up into her face, heart lodged in his windpipe. Her brows are furrowed, her eyes narrowed as she studies the place where her hand rests.

“Firebender,” he grunts. “Comes with the territory.”

“Oh.” Her eyes drift up to find his, glimmering like molten silver in the darkness of night. “Right. I should have thought…”

One of them shifts a little closer. He isn’t sure who. Maybe both of them do. Katara’s shoulder presses against his bicep. There is a little frown pulling on the corners of her mouth. Some impulsive part of him—the part that sometimes thinks too much about the way she touched his scar in the catacombs—wants to smooth his thumb across her lips and coax the hurt from her face. If he could burnish it from her soul, he would. It’s a foolish desire, though, because then she wouldn’t be Katara.

“I wish I could trust you.” Katara’s voice is soft. It wavers, but her grip on his arm remains steady. “I want to trust you, Zuko. But I… The thought of it scares me. What if you…?”

Zuko brings his free hand to cover hers where it rests on his arm. “I won’t,” he promises. “Katara, I’m not going anywhere. I swear. Whatever I can do to begin rebuilding this, please—” his voice cracks. He is not a patient man. He has to ask. He needs to know. “ Please just tell me. I’ll do it. Anything.”

The brunette looks at him, her eyes raking over his face with desperation. “I don’t know,” she says. It sounds like a confession. “I don’t think there’s any one thing. But I’ll think about it.”

Chapter Text

Epoch

i.

Katara thinks about it. A lot. Zuko gives her no other option than to think about it. He’s in the kitchen when she wakes up in the morning, getting a start on cooking for everyone. He invites her to spar and never goes easy on her. When Toph demands that Zuko carry her about on his shoulders, he does so without complaint, a small smile playing about his lips. Hakoda and Sokka spend literal hours talking to him.

All of the people surrounding them trust Zuko and all Katara can do is vacillate helplessly between bouts of erratic, irrational anger and a horrifying blackhole of vulnerability. Whether she’s spitting acid or refusing to acknowledge his existence, Zuko takes it all in stride, seeming to fill holes in her day where she needs help and support that she’s unwilling to ask for.

It is infuriating and frustrating to see him work so tirelessly for something she doesn’t know that she can grant him. She’s angry at him and she’s angry with herself. The desire to scream and rage ebbs and flows within her. She wants to shout at him, tears running hot down her cheeks, that it’s his fault, that he shattered her, that nothing he does will ever make up for what she’s lost.

But the truth of the matter is that Katara was broken long before Zuko turned his back on her beneath Ba Sing Se.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

So she watches, helpless, as she learns that her former enemy is naught but a boy hardly older than her with emotional traumas that match and exceed her own. He mends fences and tells stories, commiserates with Toph about shitty parents and has scads of terrible jokes up his sleeve (most of which he can’t even remember that well).

Zuko is human. There is, Katara discovers, nothing monstrous about him.

She doesn’t know how to come to terms with that.

ii.

Morning explodes into existence one day not long after Sokka and Zuko return from the Boiling Rock. Katara’s eyes flick open to pandemonium. Explosions, gusts of wind as Aang bends. The world seems to be crumbling down around her ears as debris rains from the ceiling. Her companions are screaming and the entire temple seems to tremble, as though it might dislodge itself from the cliff. The quaking threatens to send them all to their knees.

Something hits the doors with intense force and what follows sounds as though the world is being ripped in two. Someone shouts Katara’s name. She looks up, eyes growing wide as she sees two large sections of the ceiling hurtling in her direction and then—

Then, something collides with her from the side and she’s flying, weightless, boneless, through the air, propelled out of the way of danger. When they hit the floor, she glimpses red, smells cinnamon and cardamom and boy. Together, they tumble and roll, skidding to a stop across the room where Katara finds herself pinned beneath Zuko, his arms wrapped securely around her.

The memory of waking up in his arms not even a month ago burns like shame across her skin. He’s as warm now as he was then and it doesn’t feel the way she expects it to, doesn’t feel wrong, doesn’t repulse her, doesn’t—

“What are you doing?!”

It didn’t feel that way that night either—

“Keeping rocks from crushing you!”

Katara says something snarky in return, she’s not even sure what. She just spits something out and then squirms out of his arms and sprints headlong into the action. In the moments that ensue, she loses so many things all over again. Her sense of safety, her father, some of her friends, and then Zuko—

La, he’s falling! He’s falling and nobody is reaching out! Why is nobody—!

Across Appa’s saddle she scrambles, nausea welling up into her throat, hand outstretched, reaching, reaching…

She leans, nearly tipping herself out of Appa’s saddle and the great beast adjusts his flight pattern just in the nick of time. Katara’s hand closes about Zuko’s wrist and she heaves him in the right direction, back, back… Her head thumps against the saddle, knocking her vision silly, but there is a distinct warm weight sprawled over her. Zuko’s head is jammed between her chin and her throat. She could almost curl into his firebender’s warmth and laugh until she cries, let out a shout of victory, safe in the knowledge that there’s still time to figure this out. That he’s still around. That he can still help Aang.

Suddenly, Katara’s fragile hope lingers not on the shoulders of one boy but two. And, just like that, she’s furious at Zuko again. He left them! He stood down his sister! How dare he throw himself into the path of danger with no regard for his safety? The world is relying on him. How does he not see that?

Katara can’t have Zuko taken from her like so many others have been.

Like her mother was.

iii.

They are rain-drenched and Katara is shivering visibly where she sits atop Appa’s head. Storm clouds whirl past, spraying them with an endless sheen of water. Zuko delves into the closest pack and pulls out a blanket before clambering over the edge of the saddle to wrap it around the waterbender’s shoulders. One of Katara’s hands darts up to wrap around his wrist.

“Thank you,” she says in a voice that is hollow.

“Of course.”

Zuko moves to pull away, but Katara’s grasp on his wrist tightens. “I’m not ready to go back yet,” she confesses. “Is there somewhere—anywhere else we can go? Please? I need more time before I have to deal with— With all of that.”

He considers this request for a long moment. The others are safe for now, tucked away on an uninhabited island. Considering the rations they’d had left, Zuko thinks they’ll be fine for another day or two. He shifts, uncomfortable. The angle he’s perched at is not ideal. Especially given how far away the ground is.

Where do you take the Avatar’s waterbending master when she wants to be alone, he wonders.

Anonymity is a hard thing to come by when the entire world knows who and what you are. Zuko can’t remember the last time he didn’t have to disguise himself in the Fire Nation. But… No, that’s just not true, is it?

“Head southwest,” he tells her.

Katara nods and tugs on Appa’s reins. The sky bison grunts and his flight trajectory shifts. Again, Zuko attempts to pull away from Katara, but her grip on his arm stays firm. Beneath him, his legs are starting to cramp up and his knees are aching.

“Katara?”

“Please,” she says. Her voice is hardly audible over the wind whipping past. “Stay here.”

His heart goes out to her. That she should have to seek comfort with someone she detests… Zuko sighs. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah. Can you scoot up a little bit?”

She does so and Zuko slides up behind her on Appa’s head, bookending her with his legs. Though her hold on his arm eases up, she still doesn’t let go, keeping his arm wrapped around her shoulders. Appa’s reins drop from her hand and she reaches blindly for Zuko’s other arm, wrapping it around her belly. “Don’t let go,” she requests.

Zuko nods. The way Katara trembles in his arms makes him wonder if she’s coming down with something. With the cold lingering in the upper atmosphere and the rain misting around them, he wouldn’t be surprised. So he holds her a little tighter, a little closer, hoping that his inner fire might be enough to keep her from getting too sick. After a few minutes in close proximity, though, he realizes it’s not just that she’s shivering from the cold—she’s crying.

“Katara…”

The waterbender hiccups a sob. “Don’t leave,” she says. “Okay? Don’t…”

He squeezes her just a little tighter and she sinks into his embrace, clinging to his arms where they’re wrapped around her. “I’m not going anywhere, Katara,” he promises for a second time.

iv.

The cold doesn’t dissipate.

Ember Island is sticky with summer heat and the bath water Zuko heats for her sends steam curling up into the air. He opens up his mother’s room for her and drapes extra blankets on the bed. He scrounges together enough ingredients from their packs to cobble together a nearly flavorless stew.

Still, a chill remains in Katara’s bones, filling her soul like an icy mist.

There was nothing inside of Yon Rha, but she feels strangely as though there is now nothing inside of her either. No anger, just a yawning emptiness that drifts through her, aimless and wandering.

“I’ll be just down the hall,” Zuko says, pointing across the way and one door down. “That’s my room over there. If you need anything…” He trails off, bright eyes studying her face.

Katara nods and, when Zuko steps away, the cold seems to settle in a little more. There is a hollow space in her heart where she used to house her hatred for him, too. The concept of hating him now feels alien and objectively cruel, sinfully shameful. Because Zuko is only one person—one person in search of himself, in search of acceptance, striving to do what is right—and she cannot lay one hundred years of injustice at his feet.

His hand reaches out and she thinks he might touch her arm, but he doesn’t. He only lights a lick of flame in his palm and says, “Goodnight, Katara,” before ambling to his room.

v.

Sleep eludes Katara.

Under her pile of blankets, she tosses and turns, cold from the tip of her nose all the way down to the soles of her feet. It isn’t until midnight looms upon her that she realizes—it’s not just that she’s cold and it’s not just that she’s hollow.

It’s endless, vacant loneliness.

She goes without thinking, snagging a luxurious silk robe from a chair on her way out the door. It’s a lovely wine red but blends in well with the darkness of the hallway as she slips on soft feet towards Zuko’s door. The fabric flows over the skin of her thighs like water, much finer and less scratchy than the robe she’d once donned as the Painted Lady.

Outside Zuko’s door, Katara pauses, listening. There’s not a sound. But then, she’s noticed he doesn’t snore the way Sokka and Aang do, their relentless buzzing droning on and on throughout the night.

The waterbender tells herself that she’ll knock once and leave if Zuko doesn’t answer. Her courage fails her, though, and all she musters are a few quiet taps of her fingernail against the door and a timid whisper of his name. Somehow, this is enough to rouse him. Katara hears the creak of floorboards as he crosses the room. When the door swings open, he blinks at her with bleary eyes, the scarred one hardly cracked open. There is a pillow crease down his right cheek, he’s bare-chested, and his hair stands up on end.

“Whuzz go’n on?”

“Can I get in with you?” Katara asks and the words make her face flame.

“Wha?”

“I’m cold.”

She’s lonely.

“Okay.” Zuko yawns and rubs a hand over his face. “Sorry, I’m… What’s going on?”

“Would you mind if we...shared?”

The prince blinks at her, looking a little more awake. “Shared...what?” he asks.

“The bed, Zuko,” Katara snaps, feeling her defenses rise. “Not like… Not like that. And just for tonight, I swear.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything, just stares at her through the blackness of night. Silence hangs too long for comfort in the air and Katara grumbles out a never mind, turning to leave. A palm lands heavy on her shoulder, holding her in place. She glances at Zuko over her shoulder. His face is unreadable.

“Are you going to punch me in the chest again?” he asks at last.

“I didn’t punch you,” Katara says, indignant. “I elbowed you because I— You know what? Forget I said anything.”

“Katara, it’s fine,” Zuko says. The door to his room swings open wider. “You can come in. It’s fine. I was just— Never mind. Here.”

He steps aside to allow her entrance into the room and Katara steps through the doorway on nervous tiptoes. Moonlight floods through the window and a bed stands on the right hand side of the room, the sheets rumpled and pillows scattered across the mattress. Zuko crosses the room and begins rearranging the pillows so that they sit properly at the headboard. When he’s done, he turns back to her, squinting like he’s not quite sure she’s real.

“Is there a side you like better?” he asks.

“A side of what?”

Zuko gestures to the bed.

“Oh.” Katara’s hands fly up to play with the ties of her borrowed robe. She thinks it would be perfectly alright if she just sort of evaporated on the spot. “I-I… I don’t know. I’ve never… Donethisbefore.”

“Right,” Zuko says. “Yeah, uh. Me either.”

“Didn’t you have a girlfriend?”

A blush crawls slowly up Zuko’s chest and reaches for his face, vibrant even in the moonlight. “It wasn’t… We weren’t like Sokka and Suki,” he splutters. “I mean, we… Y’know. But she never...stayed.” He freezes suddenly as though he hadn’t realized who he was talking to. “Please disregard all of that.”

“Sure.”

Unbidden, images of Zuko kissing the girl with the knives flit through Katara’s mind. The girl with the knives has seen Zuko naked.

“This is purely platonic.”

“Of course.”

Katara thinks that the girl with the knives has some pretty decent taste because it’s not like Zuko is unattractive. And even though he can sometimes be a jerk, he’s not the homicidal maniac she once thought he was. He’s actually kind of...nice. And nice and not-unattractive do not often go hand-in-hand.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Katara says.

Zuko isn’t moving from his position next to the left side of the bed, so she moves around to the right. Moonbeams shimmer across the floor here. The sound of distant waves rolling ashore soothes over her raw soul. She feels a little less tattered here, a little less cold. When she looks out the window, a tree smattered with colorful tropical flowers greets her eyes and Yue shines down on a partial view of the beach.

“You can close the curtain if you want.”

“That’s okay. I like the moon.”

“It’s relaxing.”

“It is.”

There is a rustle of fabric and Katara turns to see that Zuko is sitting on the edge of the mattress, his back to her. She knows that if she thinks about what she’s doing and who she’s doing it with, she’ll lose her nerve. So she doesn’t allow herself to dwell. She only steps quickly across the floor and stretches herself across the empty expanse of mattress, curling onto her right side so that she can see the moon. Zuko’s weight shifts on the other side, the sheets twitch up and over her body, and she hears him let out a long, slow exhale.

“Zuko?”

“Mm?”

Katara squeezes her eyes shut. “Would you, um… The way it was the other night?”

Silence. Her heart thumps in her chest once. Twice. She feels the shift of Zuko’s weight again, a little closer this time.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Is that okay?”

Silence. Then, tenderly, “Whatever you need, Katara.”

It seems like eons pass before she feels the firebender slide closer, one arm looping over her waist in a loose embrace, a knee gently nudging at the back of her leg. The cold seeps out of her bones, hovers just beneath her skin.

“This alright?”

“A little closer?” she whispers.

Zuko’s other arm slides under her pillow and his head lands next to hers. His knee nudges between her legs and she allows it, reaching to tug at the arm around her waist until his body is flush with hers.

“Okay,” he says, voice rumbling against her back. When Katara squeezes the hand that rests on her stomach, Zuko squeezes back, strengthening his hold on her for just a moment, his face nuzzling into her hair.

All day, it’s felt like there was a band wrapped around her chest, restricting her breathing and weighing her lungs down. As Zuko’s arm loosens, Katara feels the band pop and relief floods through her body. Though the cold loneliness still orbits around her and threatens to take root again, it seems to be banished from her bones for the night.

“Thank you, Zuko.”

“Whatever you need, Katara,” he repeats.

vi.

They don’t talk about it the next day. Not when they wake up, a tangle of arms and legs, Katara’s robe pulled loose and drooping off her shoulder to reveal an expanse of smooth skin that Zuko had never noticed before (at least not in that way). They don’t discuss it as they scrounge a measly breakfast together. And it isn’t mentioned while they spend the morning sprawled across the beach.

In fact, Katara doesn’t say much of anything at all.

Zuko showers but swears he can smell her lingering on his body whenever he moves, daisies in his hair, rainwater on his hands. He finds it maddening the way she seems unaffected by what happened. She follows him through the house and down to the beach in silence, her dimpled face pensive. And all he can think about is finding some way to touch her again. He doesn’t just want to smooth the frown from her lips with his thumb anymore, he wants to kiss it away.

And that...is troubling.

“We should probably meet back up with the others,” he suggests just before noon.

A cluster of sand slips through the hand Katara has it fisted in. “Oh,” she says.

“It’s just that we’re out of food and they have the money. And we have Appa.”

“Right.”

“What do you think about bringing them back here?”

No answer. Katara studies the sand between them.

“Katara.”

“Huh?” She looks up at him, blue eyes wide.

“What do you think about making the beach house home base until the comet?”

“Oh.” Katara’s frown deepens and Zuko’s mouth goes dry, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. She looks back at the house, brow furrowed and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he can’t manage to peel his gaze from her. “Is that safe?”

He shrugs. “I don’t see why not. Nobody comes here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ember Island is for tourists. Last time I was here, I walked around and nobody noticed my face or recognized who I was. And the house has been empty for a decade or more. It’s not even a blip on Ozai’s radar.”

“Alright. If you’re sure. It would be nice not to camp for a while.”

“I’m sure,” Zuko says. “When can you be ready to leave?”

Katara’s frown turns into a grimace. “Do you really need me for that?” she asks. “I just… I need a little time alone. To think.”

He tries to tell himself that he’s not slouching in disappointment, but he knows that’s not true. It feels like another rejection, another refusal to believe in his loyalty. Zuko is utterly at a loss for what else he can do.

“I’ll meet you there when you get back.”

The waterbender’s finger points to the dock that abuts his family’s land. A fuzzy memory of a boat lives in the back of his mind and he can’t help but wonder what happened to it. Probably Ozai or Azula in a fit of rage.

“Okay, we’ll—”

“No,” Katara corrects him gently. “I’ll meet you there when you get back.”

Zuko pauses and peers into her face. She offers him half of a smile and then looks away, picking up another handful of sand before watching the particles sieve back to the earth. The firebender has no way of knowing that Aang will get to Katara first. He has no way of knowing why she wants him to meet her on the dock in the first place (Azula would call him stupid because he’s willing to let his guard down for the world’s most formidable waterbender right next to the ocean). All he knows is that Katara is asking him to seek her out and that, this time, there is not even a hint of malice in her words.

And that is undeniable progress.

Chapter Text

Continuation

i.

Zuko doesn’t expect progress to blossom into friendship with such unabashed suddenness. Katara smiles when he offers to help her cook dinner that night, she sits next to him on the lanai while everyone eats, and there are no snide remarks or derisive laughs. When everyone else elects to head down to the beach for an evening swim in the ocean, Katara declines and chooses to hang back at the house even though it means they’ll be alone together.

Together, they find suitable rooms for their friends, stripping dust cloths from the furniture and spreading new linens across the beds. The room next to Zuko’s and across from Katara’s is Ozai’s. It’s agreed that the Fire Lord’s room will stay locked.

“No use in giving Aang nightmares before the comet,” Katara says.

The room next to hers was Azula’s. When she suggests making it up for Suki, horror drops over Zuko’s countenance.

“What?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Azula paid a visit to Suki in prison. Maybe more than one. She’s not...nice to prisoners.”

“Oh, La,” Katara breathes. She shuts the door to Azula’s room with finality. “Maybe that’s just a room we leave closed, too.”

“There are more,” Zuko says, gesturing for Katara to follow him over to the opposite wing. “This is the royal suite. My family hasn’t been here since before my grandfather died, so it should be relatively nightmare free for everyone.”

They settle that Lu Ten’s room will go to Aang, Iroh’s to Toph, and what was once Iroh’s wife’s room to Sokka and Suki. Azulon’s room is another they leave closed and locked.

“Do you ever wonder,” Katara muses as they tuck sheets around Aang’s bed, “if we would all know each other if there hadn’t been a war?”

Zuko tries to picture it. Aang, one-hundred-and-twelve years old, bouncing around the world and charming people with his tricks and silly disguises. Toph continuing to flout her parents’ authority and trying to break free of their hold on her. Katara and Sokka never leaving the South Pole but in possession of a whole, happy, intact family. Himself with… What? Without a scar? Without true friends? It seems a lonely existence, he thinks. To not have Sokka’s intelligent ideas and childlike humor. To not have found something like a real little sister in Toph or a sage councilor and fierce sparring partner in Suki. To live without Aang’s enthusiasm for everything in the world.

To not have earned Katara’s friendship. To not know her at all.

Even if he still had his mother, he would end up losing so much in that scenario.

“No,” he tells Katara, flinging open the bedspread. “I’ve never thought about that.”

“I have.” Katara’s eyes study the pattern on the bedspread as she smooths a few wrinkles out of it. She turns and sits on the very edge of the mattress, face downcast. “A lot.”

Zuko perches himself next to her, hesitating before taking her hand. “I think that, all things considered, and even though I’ve lost a lot along the way, I’m glad this life has led me to all of you. And even though it can be hard not to wonder what if, there’s so much to be thankful for despite everything else,” he says.

She looks up at him, eyes soft and glittering, deep indigo in the light of the few candles they’ve lit in the room. “You’re right,” she agrees.

A door slams open downstairs and is followed by a cacophony of their friends’ voice—Suki’s ringing laughter, Sokka telling a terrible joke, Toph and Aang roughhousing, Momo’s incessant chittering. Zuko watches as Katara stands, her hand sliding free of his.

“Are you coming downstairs?” she asks.

“No, it’s getting pretty late.”

“Right.” A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. “You rise with the sun.”

It’s a good-natured jab, but Zuko still flushes. “Don’t let Aang stay up too much later,” he grumbles. “I need him awake and ready to train early tomorrow. If Sokka and Toph get their way, that won’t happen.”

“I’ve got your back.”

Those words, said in this context, shouldn’t mean so much to Zuko. But they do.

Katara leaves the room on soft footsteps, sparing him one last soft smile before she passes through the doorway. It’s not until he hears everyone else greet her with raucous enthusiasm that Zuko rises from the bed they’ve made up for Aang and extinguishes the candles in the room. At the top of the stairs, he pauses for just a moment, listening to the laughter and chaos of the gang’s interactions. It’s a far cry from his last trip here with Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee. It’s a happy sound that gives him hope.

ii.

Zuko lies awake in his bed for a long time. He can hear the sounds of the others as they prepare for sleep themselves. Silence eventually settles over the house and then he hears only the distant crash of waves on the beach. Though the mattress is as plush as he remembers it being in childhood, he cannot get comfortable.

On his back, memories plague him, unspooling across the dark backdrop of the ceiling. Ozai’s cruel words ring in his ears. His mother’s face, slipping into darkness the night she left, stares at him from the shadows. When he rolls onto his side, though, he realizes he can smell Katara. Daisies on the pillow, a storm in the sheets. And then he can think of nothing but her, broken and crying in his arms.

With a sigh, he rearranges the pillow they’d shared, curling an arm and a leg around it. But this doesn’t help, either. All he can think about now is how she’d sat up in bed this morning, her robe dipping over the curve of her shoulder.

There is a gentle sound outside his door and he half rolls over. After a beat of silence, he writes it off as the house settling and turns back on his side, begging Agni for sleep. If he doesn’t get enough, he’ll be cranky and butt heads with Aang and it will be hard to shake that mood for the rest of the day.

“Zuko?”

Katara.

The firebender shoves the pillow back to where it traditionally belongs and slides out of bed, studiously ignoring the swoop of his stomach and the tremble in his fingers as they close around the doorknob. He employs the carefully neutral mask of royalty so well-practiced in his younger years. Katara stands there on the opposite side of the door, eyes darting nervously down the hall, a hand clutching the v-neck of her robe.

When the door swings open, she looks at him, eyes unfathomable. “I’m cold,” she whispers.

Though the rational part of him lectures that it’s a bad idea (her brother is across the house! Aang very clearly likes her!), Zuko steps aside.

Neither of them say a word. Zuko closes the door and when he turns around Katara is already curled into a half moon on his bed, the dips and curves of her body thrown into relief by the moonlight. Heart in his throat, he eases in next to her, tugging the sheets up over their bodies.

“Again?” he asks. It’s the only word he can get out.

Katara reaches a hand out and he slides his palm into hers. When she tugs, he follows willingly, fitting himself against her the way he had last night, his left leg fitting between both of hers, his right arm wedging itself under the pillow. Not an inch of her is cold, but Zuko doesn’t comment on it. He only hopes that she can’t feel the way his heart hammers against his ribcage when she snuggles closer.

“Thank you, Zuko.”

“Whatever you need, Katara,” he promises on a breath.

Beneath the pillow, the back of her hand slips into the cradle of his palm.

Chapter Text

Limerence

It becomes a routine, easy and familiar. He begins leaving the door of his room cracked so that she might slip in without knocking. Some nights he’s already dozing and wakes to find her trying to slide beneath the sheets without disturbing him. Other nights he waits up for her, only extinguishing the candles once he has her pulled close. Eventually, she drops the pretense of being cold.

There are some sleepless nights where they lie there, Katara tucked in Zuko’s arms, whispering their fears of the future or divulging secrets or telling terrible jokes. He learns the shape of her ear and the slope of her nose. She never sleeps without her necklace. But one night, she does wiggle out of his grasp and shed her robe muttering that it’s impractical to sleep in. Mouth dry and hormones raging, Zuko struggles to sleep the rest of the night, very, very aware that Katara is an attractive girl. He wakes up the next morning, hard and frustrated, and leaves her in his bed, as he does every morning, to meditate in the courtyard.

It takes him longer than usual and there’s a lot of self-deprecation to deal with, so he’s only just managed to find his center and is lounging on the steps, waiting for Aang (who is, at this point, nearly an hour late), when Toph plops down next to him. She digs in her ear with a grubby finger and props a dirty foot up on her knee.

“You smell like Katara,” the earthbender says by way of greeting.

Zuko scowls. “Okay,” he grunts.

“And she’s starting to smell like you.”

“Fantastic.”

“It’s like… Damp campfire and flowers.” She wrinkles her nose. “No, actually, that’s not quite it.”

“Great.” He knows Toph can feel his heart pounding away in his chest, so he doesn’t bother trying to lie.

“Whatever’s going on, I won’t tell.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“With you?”

Toph shrugs. “Sure.”

“You’re twelve.”

“I’m a vault, Sparky. And my feet see everything. You think I don’t know what Snoozles and Fan Girl are up to?”

“You shouldn’t know.”

“Well, I do. I’m not Twinkletoes, Sparks. I’m well-versed in the butterfly-birds and the wasp-bees talk.”

Unbidden, the memory of the robe slipping from Katara’s shoulders and down her back flashes through Zuko’s mind. His fingers twitch at the recollection of her taut stomach beneath them. “It’s not like that,” he protests, but the words sound half-hearted, even to him, and the memories only sear themselves into his mind with more veracity.

“Well,” Toph says, “whatever it is like, it’s not nothing. To either of you. I can tell.” Her toes dig into the ground and she places a palm flat on the paving stones beneath them. “Incoming!”

Aang emerges into the courtyard first, face bright as usual. Close behind is Katara in her Fire Nation reds, her bare shoulder and stomach taunting Zuko and making him cranky. He doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t want to think of her that way. He wants Katara’s friendship and he doesn’t want to ruin it because his hormones have suddenly picked the most inconvenient time to notice that she’s pretty.

“You’re late,” he snaps at Aang. Pushing himself from the stairs, he steps into the yard and strips off his shirt. The early morning sun beats down hot, provoking his inner fire as if it senses how much tension he has to work off this morning.

“Sorry, Sifu Hotman!”

“And don’t call me that! Hot squats, now!”

“Whoa, hey.”

Brown fingers wrap around Zuko’s bicep and he snorts out a lick of flame to quell the want that curls in his pelvis. Katara steps into his line of sight not half a beat later, brows knit with concern. Her fingers squeeze on his arm and she tugs him away from Aang and Toph. They linger in the shade of the doorway and he can’t bring himself to look anywhere but at her left earlobe.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Zuko grits out.

“You don’t seem fine. You haven’t snapped at Aang like that in a long time.”

“He was late.”

“He’s always late,” Katara says with a laugh.

In the distance, the avatar continues counting hot squats. Zuko gives up on looking at Katara’s earlobe because it’s doing nothing to divert the memories of her in his bed in her underwear. He stares at her, unblinking, and hopes that she has no idea. Their friendship, so new and tentative, is already a delicate balance that’s hard to maintain.

“Are we okay?” Katara asks.

“We’re fine.”

“Did I say or...or do something wrong last night?”

Zuko thinks there is a brief pause in Aang’s counting before it hastily starts up again. “Not now, Katara,” he says. “We can talk about last night later.”

“If I did something—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Katara. I promise.” He pulls her hand from his arm and gives it a gentle squeeze before he steps away. “We’ll talk tonight.”

But Katara doesn’t seek him out as usual. And he thinks he can blame it all on the Ember Island Players.

Chapter Text

Evolution

At ten o’clock, Zuko starts to worry.

Around eleven, he begins to pace the length of his room.

Fifteen minutes before midnight, he looks across the hall and sees that there is light under Katara’s door. The floorboards creak under his footsteps as he approaches to knock. When he whispers her name, it sounds like a shout in the otherwise silent beach house.

“You can come in, Zuko,” Katara says, voice muffled by the door.

Every candle in the room is lit, clusters of light dotting nearly all of the flat surfaces save the floor. The double doors to the balcony are open, curtains fluttering on a salt-scented breeze. Katara sits in a lotus position in the middle of the bed, that Agni-damned red robe tied loosely around her body, her sarashi peeking out where the neck dips low. Her hands are in her lap, her shoulders curved.

“I think this might be a fire hazard,” Zuko attempts to joke.

“Guess it’s a good thing you’re here, then.”

As he approaches, Zuko eyes her closely, noting her pink nose and red-rimmed eyes. He leans against the post of the bed and folds his arms over his chest. “You okay?” he asks.

“Are you?” she counters quickly.

Zuko sighs. “I won’t say that wasn’t upsetting,” he says, “but at the end of the day, it’s propaganda. Likely paid for by people sympathetic to Ozai.”

“They cheered at the end, Zuko. That doesn’t bother you?”

“It might bother me more if the people in that theater were from the general populous. Only the wealthy vacation here. People who have profited off the war. Those aren’t the people my uncle would want to appeal to. Nor would I.”

“You’re being strangely pragmatic about this.”

“If I get emotional, it’s just one more thing to distract me when the comet comes.”

Katara sniffs and runs a hand under her nose. “I guess I understand that,” she mutters.

“Wanna talk about what’s bugging you?”

She eyes him, face wary, seems to sink back into herself a little more. “I don’t know.”

“Want me to leave?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Zuko steps away from the bed and begins a slow tour of the room. He can still see touches of Ursa in the room—her hair brush lying next to Katara’s whalebone comb on the vanity; a portrait of his mother with him and Azula on the dresser next to an unfurled waterbending scroll; the crimson drapes that frame the bed pulled back and puddled on the floor, Katara a blue-eyed anomaly in the middle. It’s strange to see Katara and her things living so peaceably amongst his mother’s, but not entirely off-putting.

“Aang was upset,” the brunette says after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah,” Zuko replies. “He was radiating tension the whole time. I get it, though.”

“No, you don’t.”

He turns to look at her. Her whole face has gone a shade of tomato that clashes spectacularly with the hue of her robe.

“What don’t I get?”

“He was upset about the actors playing us.”

“They were all terrible. I think Toph was the only one of us who—”

“No, not all of us. Us.” Katara gestures between them.

“Oh.” Zuko feels his face heat.

“I went to check on him at intermission and he started asking me all of these questions about if he and I were ever going to be together and if I only see him as a friend and-and if all that stuff they implied about you and me was true.”

“What, uh, what did you say?”

Katara groans and flops back onto the mattress, arms and legs splayed like a starfish. “I didn’t know what to say!” she explodes. “He’s my best friend! And he’s twelve and… And I told him that we’re in the middle of a war and I’m confused!”

“What are you confused about?” Zuko asks. His heart has taken up residence somewhere near his feet. When he tries to tell himself that he’s not hurt because it was only his libido that was interested in Katara, a voice in his head that sounds disturbingly like Iroh hisses back that he’s lying to himself.

The waterbender props herself up on her elbows and gives him a petulant look.

“I don’t understand what that face is supposed to mean.”

“I’m not confused,” Katara says slowly. “That’s something you tell people when you want to let them down easy.”

Zuko frowns. “Does Aang…understand the nuance of that?”

Katara heaves another over dramatic groan and then turns to flop face-first into the pillows. She says something, but the words are muffled by feathers and fabric.

“I got none of that.”

She turns her face to the side, shoves the curling mass of her hair out of her eyes. “I said,” she enunciates, “obviously he doesn’t because he kissed me.”

“Oh.” And Zuko had thought his heart couldn’t sink any lower. He clears his throat and takes a few half-hearted steps closer to the bed. “Did you want him to?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“He didn’t give me the option,” Katara says. “He just sort of...came at me.” She shoves her hand in her face like an imitation of what happened and then lets the appendage drop over the side of the bed where it dangles, her fingers inches from the floor. “That’s the second time he’s done something like that.”

“That’s not okay,” Zuko says.

“I know.”

“Do you want me to talk to him or something?” he offers weakly.

“About what?” Katara says, sounding vaguely amused.

“I don’t know,” Zuko says, searching his memory. “I can give him the same talk Uncle gave me about respect and honor and-and consent and—”

“It’s nice to know that you’re the consummate gentleman, Zuko,” Katara cuts him off. She pushes herself to a seat and then props herself against the headboard and pillows, giving him a wan smile. “But I don’t think Aang would take well to that right now if it came from you.”

“It was a play. They were actors.”

“I know. That’s the most upsetting part about this, I think. Out of everything Aang could have possibly taken away from that mess, it was that. Not that your people are being fed lies and propaganda, not that people want him to die. He thinks that his crush on me is the most pressing problem!”

Zuko sighs and shuffles forward to the end of the bed. “He’s only twelve, Katara. When you’re twelve and you think a girl is pretty, sometimes it can be a little all-consuming. His priorities aren’t always going to be perfect. I think it’s up to the rest of us to keep him on track.”

“What if he’s too distracted by it, Zuko? What if- what if he fails the day of the comet and it’s my fault? I’ll be the girl responsible for the destruction of the world!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Zuko says. He can tell she’s spiraling and needs something to reel her back in before she digs herself too deep. ”That wouldn’t be your fault.”

“I’ve obviously done something to encourage this.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. We can’t make people have feelings for us, Katara. If it happens, it’s something that’s out of our control. Just like you can’t force yourself to return someone’s feelings. If you feel something for someone, it’s just something that’s happened.”

He thinks he needs to hear himself say that right now as much as Katara does.

She studies him for a few silent moments, eyes soft in the candlelight. “Sometimes the timing is just terrible, right?” she says.

Zuko gives her a half-hearted smile. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry he did that without your consent.”

“Why are you sorry? You’re not the one who kissed me.”

“No.” He keeps his eyes trained on hers, refusing to let them dip down to her lips. It’s not fair of him to wonder about that at this moment. And it’s absurd to feel… Jealous? No. No, he’s not jealous. “I’m not.”

“Do you think I should tell him that I don’t feel the same? I don’t want to hurt him and that will, but…”

“Oh!” Zuko feels his eyes widen. His heart claws its way back into his chest and begins pounding with renewed vigor. “Agni, Katara. I don’t know. On the one hand, we need Aang as focused as possible. But on the other, it sounds like this is already splitting his focus pretty bad.”

“You’re a big help, Zuko.”

“Suki could probably give you better advice,” he admits.

“Maybe,” Katara says. Her shoulders heave with a sigh and she lets her head loll back on the headboard. “Do you want to sleep in here tonight?”

“Do you want me to?”

She shrugs, gives him a soft smile. “I’m kind of used to it at this point. Might be weird if you don’t.”

“Might be weird if I do.”

“Why’s that? It’s been a month and a half now. It ceased being weird a long time ago.”

“To you.”

Katara cocks her head to the side, looking slightly wounded. “Not to you?” she asks

“It’s not that,” Zuko says. The back of his neck burns. “It’s just...this is my mom’s room. This was her bed. Sleeping with you here would feel a little…” He shrugs.

“It’s platonic,” Katara says much like he did the first night. He thinks that maybe there’s a slight questioning upswing to her voice and refuses to let himself dwell on it.

“Still. It seems…”

“Insensitive to her memory.”

“Yeah.”

“I understand.”

Hopping off the bed, the waterbender moves to close the doors to the balcony before starting in on the candles.

“I can do that for you,” Zuko offers.

Katara pauses over a candle, her cheeks pink. “Oh.” She chuckles. “That’s right.”

He watches as she saunters past him on small, light feet, snagging his hand with one of hers as she heads for the door.

“What’s happening right now?”

“We’re going to your room,” Katara says, as if the answer should have been completely obvious.

“You want to?”

They pause in the doorway, Katara peers up at him. “Do you not want to?” she asks.

Zuko swallows hard, his mouth and throat parched. “Whatever you need.”

“You keep saying that. That’s not how this works, Zuko.”

“Then how does it work?”

“It goes both ways. It’s not just about me or just about you. Give and take requires cooperation and reciprocation. And honesty. You keep saying ‘whatever you need.’ Do you need this?”

He looks at her. She’s lovely, curling tendrils of hair falling around her shoulders and face, her eyes wide with curiosity, her lips parted just so, like he could lean in to kiss her and it would be flawless. Her hand, small and smooth, fits around his perfectly.

“I don’t need to,” he says truthfully, voice raw and rough in the quiet of the night. “But I want to.”

Katara steps forward and Zuko retreats, his back colliding with the doorframe. He nearly flinches away when her free hand floats up and brushes over the border of his scar. The breath he exhales is shaky. Nobody else has ever touched it. And here she is for the second time, her slim fingers tracing the lines of ruin.

She will be his undoing.

“I don’t need to either,” she whispers. “I haven’t in weeks.” Her hand slides down his neck, comes to a rest over his heart. It leaps to life at her touch, but if she notices the sudden, relentless beat beneath her fingertips, she doesn’t let on. “I keep coming back because I want to.”

The air is thick, something almost palpable and sticky stirring between the two of them.

“Is that okay?”

“I think you know it is, Katara.”

Her eyes are clear, so clear, reflecting candlelight back at Zuko as if an inner flame lives beneath her skin as well. He could either drown or burn alive there, trapped between her and the doorframe, and die a happy if exceedingly tense man. He wants to touch her, to trace his fingers over the line of her jaw and sink his hands into her hair, but he doesn’t have the nerve to ask and he’ll be damned if he becomes the second guy tonight to do something without her consent.

“Zuko?”

“Yeah?”

“The candles?”

“Right. Yeah.”

A slice of the firebender’s hand and all light winks out, plunging them into darkness. He’s electrically aware of Katara, though, can still feel her eyes locked on his, and counts his rabbiting heartbeats as they linger.

Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight…

Katara’s hand tugs his and he stumbles forward, feet catching on nothing but air, before he follows her down the hallway to his door.

Agni, this is different than opening the door to find her there or feeling her slip beneath the blankets and into his arms as he sleeps. It feels nothing like watching her slide through the open door and across the floor either. He feels as though a sailor adrift at sea must feel when the voice of a siren calls out to him—helpless and willing and positively enamored.

It’s habit that, once the door is closed on them, he sheds his shirt.

It’s with a deep, stabilizing breath that he averts his eyes to the wall when Katara turns her back on him and lets her robe slither to the floor in a whisper of silk on silk.

It’s with her earlier predicament in mind that he holds his shirt out to her across the sea of luxurious sheets and plush mattress that separate them.

Katara looks at him, backlit by the moon and seeming to glow with all the power of Tui and La. “What’s this?” she asks.

“This morning you asked me if something was wrong with last night. If we want to be friends, Katara… Holding you like this, the way you are now, that can’t happen again. It didn’t feel much like friendship to me.”

Zuko knows she’ll leave without a moment’s hesitation if she doesn’t like what he’s said. His shirt hangs suspended between them, hooked on his fingers and his words. Eventually, Katara takes it and tugs it on.

“Thank you.”

“Whatever you need, Zuko.”

He watches, transfixed, as she places a knee on the mattress. The hem of his shirt flirts with the skin of her upper thigh. She doesn’t move to lie down, though. She says instead, “Can I try something?”

Zuko thinks that she could try anything. She could bloodbend him or make good on her promise to end his life and he’d almost take it in stride. He nods and his entire body sings with nerves and anticipation.

And then Katara is there in front of him, eclipsing the moonlight but for a faint ethereal glow that surrounds her like a halo. Her hands seek out his, placing them on her waist, and he thinks he feels her fingers trembling. She shifts closer, her right hand curling around his neck, nails scraping at the bottom of his scalp. On a deep inhale, she brings her left hand to his cheek and it’s different from when she touched his scar just minutes ago, every nerve ending here alive and on fire. Zuko exhales and her name follows, a reverent question. He’s not sure what he’s asking, but it lights a spark in the waterbender and she surges up, her lips catching his scarred cheek with a gentle, searching kiss.

He thinks he might burn to ash like a phoenix within her grasp, a victim of the surreal way in which he feels only half of her kiss and of the tender way her gaze searches his when she pulls away. Zuko can’t help but chase her touch, resting his forehead against hers, the tips of their noses brushing.

“No,” Katara murmurs. “No, this doesn’t feel like friendship.”

“Katara?” Her name leaves his mouth before he can stop to think.

“Mm?”

Her eyes are closed, the fringe of her dark lashes tickling the apples of her cheeks. His courage finds him again.

“Katara, I’d really like to kiss you,” the firebender says and then he is sucked into a deep, never ending pool of stormy blue when her eyes flick back open. “Not tonight,” he hastens to add. “Not after everything that happened at the theater. But at some point. Would that… Would that be okay?”

He expects to have to wait for an answer, but Katara is quick to nod, her nose bumping against his. “Yes,” she agrees with a breathy laugh. “Yes. That would be great.”

Yes, he has definitely burned to ashes beneath her hands and is now something new and unknown.

“Really?”

“When?” she asks.

Zuko lets go of her waist to throw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know, Katara! If I told you, that would take away from the romance and anticipation, wouldn’t it?”

Katara laughs again, her head thrown back, a smile wide across her lovely face. “Romance?” she teases. “Anticipation?”

“You don’t have to make fun of me,” Zuko grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’m not! I swear.” She’s clinging to him like a barnacle, her arms twined around his neck. “It’s just… No boy has ever told me he wants romance and anticipation with me before.”

He levels his best glare at her, but it comes off half-hearted and he knows it. Now that he’s had the experience of making her laugh, he wants to do it again.

“Did I ruin it?”

“No.”

“Good. Now, come to bed, Zuko.”

Before he’s fully aware of what’s happening, Katara is tipping and tugging until they collapse onto the mattress, a mess of limbs, him atop her. The headboard smacks the wall with the force of their collision and Katara breaks out into laughter again.

“You keep laughing like that,” Zuko says, “and you’re going to wake up everyone else and we’re going to get in trouble.”

“Pfft.” Katara waves the concern away with a dismissive hand. “I’m the mom friend. The mom friend never gets in trouble with the other friends.”

“But I can. Especially with your brother.”

“And what exactly is Sokka going to say? Nothing that will stick. We’re the ones with the moral high ground here.”

Katara wiggles out from beneath him to curl up on her side of his bed. It doesn’t take Zuko long to follow. He pulls her as close as possible, but it somehow doesn’t feel close enough after the night’s revelations. She smells floral and stormy and lets out a throaty hum when he nuzzles his face against her neck.

Chapter Text

Expectancy

i.

Zuko keeps Katara in suspense for a while. She spends every waking moment steeped in anticipation and has a difficult time sleeping at night knowing his intentions and that he’s holding back.

In the mornings, he wakes before her. His side of the bed has grown cool by the time her eyes open, but he takes to leaving her steaming cups of tea on the kitchen counter. It’s always terrible, the tea, either over-steeped or made without enough leaves, but it’s more than any of the others do for her and his entire body seems to light up whenever he sees her drink it, so she does without complaint.

Physical touch ceases to be a barrier for them. There’s always a quick, surreptitious glance, though, to make sure no one is watching (they can’t hide everything from Toph’s feet, however, and Katara is fairly certain the earthbender is on to them). Zuko helps her cook every meal, fingers lingering too long when they trade produce or knives, his palm sliding hot over her waist when he walks past her, his chest pressed against her back as he watches her stir or saute, chin propped on her shoulder.

Katara is clumsy with her attempts, but she learns how to retaliate in kind. Zuko is particularly receptive to her fingers carding through his hair. When they crowd around a table with their friends at night to talk about Sokka’s plans or play a card game, she finagles a seat next to the firebender so that she might twine her fingers with his beneath the table or run her fingers up the sensitive skin on the underside of his forearm. He looks at her sharply whenever she does so, his pupils dark and wide, the irises molten and shimmering.

When they spar, the tension building between them comes to a head, fire and water colliding in great bursts across the courtyard until the whole thing is filled with dense steam and one of them has the other pinned, an ice or fire dagger to the throat. Zuko smirks at her in these moments as if he can tell just how keyed up she is.

“You’re not playing fair,” he mutters into her hair one night.

It’s been five days since they went to the theater and Katara is a thrumming mess of sexual tension. It’s worse than Jet. So, so much worse than Jet.

“Me?”

“Yes.” Zuko’s lips brush over her neck and she thinks she might disintegrate.

“I’m not playing fair?”

“That’s right.”

Katara harrumphs and twists herself around in Zuko’s arms until she can look at him full on. “I’m not the one telling people I want to kiss them and then waiting an eon to do it,” she counters.

“I’m not waiting an eon!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes!”

“Huh. Well, my lips feel very un-kissed.”

Zuko sighs and rolls away from her, onto his back, his face very nearly maroon. “Agni, Katara! I didn’t join up with this group in an attempt to win you over.”

“You joined for the wrong reasons, then,” she teases.

But the prince is not amused. He pinches the bridge of his nose and gives her a rather put out look out of the corner of his eye. “Look.” Zuko turns back onto his side and props himself up on an elbow, his free hand reaching out to toy with the ends of Katara’s hair. “I wanted to help Aang defeat my father. You know that. And when I realized how pissed you were at me, I just wanted to prove to you that I could at least be an ally, someone you could rely on. Friendship seemed too much to ask for.”

He pauses and Katara waits, watching as he mulls over his next words. When he does speak, he is careful and deliberate.

“I mess things up a lot. And… Whatever is going on here, Katara, it’s not some stupid crush and it’s not just physical. Not for me. I really like you. A lot. So I want this to be right.”

Katara hears the sharp inhale she takes when her breath catches in her throat. “Oh.”

“Did I say too much?” He looks pained.

“No,” Katara says. What comes out of her mouth next is astounding to even her. “You know I like you too, right?”

La, does she like him, this grumpy, moody boy with a knack for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time and a heart of absolute gold. It’s a logistical nightmare, she knows this. She’s Water Tribe and he’s the Tui-damned prince of the Fire Nation. They’ve spent so many dark and painful months as the bitterest of enemies. But he holds her like he’s afraid of losing her and he doesn’t look at her like she’s hung the moon, the sun, and the stars in the sky. He knows the darkest corners of her heart and he’s still here. If she can only give him half of what he’s given her, she’ll never stop working her tail off to try to give him the other half.

Zuko’s eyes glow like embers at her words and he casts her the smallest, most sincere smile, so eager and sweet that it pierces right through her heart.

“I thought maybe you might,” he says, “but it’s still nice to hear it.”

Katara laughs and buries her face in the muscled planes of his bare chest, reveling in the distant, chaotic drumming of his heart.

“So is it okay if I wait to kiss you until I’m ready and the timing is perfect?”

“Of course.” She slips a hand over his ribs and around to his back, stroking her fingers down his spine. “But, I mean… I’m totally ready for it. Just so you know.”

“No pressure.”

“None whatsoever.”

ii.

She wakes up late the next morning. At some point, Zuko brought her cup of terrible tea up to the room and set it on the nightstand, which probably means his firebending lessons with Aang are over. Katara takes a sip and gags. It’s even worse reheated!

“Gross,” she mutters, swinging her feet out of bed and snagging her robe from the floor.

A peek into the hallway reveals a silent, deserted-sounding beach house, so Katara doesn’t bother changing out of Zuko’s shirt. Rancid tea and robe in either hand, the waterbender makes for her room feeling positive. She thinks they might be getting away with their little flirtation and it’s nice to have something that just belongs to her. It’s nice to wake up feeling cared for.

It’s nice to wake up with the scent of him in her hair, the memory of his warm hands holding her close.

Consumed by her sappy thoughts, Katara shoulders her way into the room she’s supposed to be sleeping in and promptly lets out a shriek, slopping tea all down the front of Zuko’s shirt and the floor.

Amused grey eyes blink at her. She slams the door shut, heart racing, head wooly and light with shock.

“Suki!”

“Morning, sleepyhead. Wanna talk about it?”

iii.

“We’re going to the beach,” Suki tells Sokka, ducking low as a boulder whizzes past her head. “Watch your aim, Toph!”

“Just keeping you on your toes, Suki! This is earthbending practice, Twinkletoes! Knock that shit off!”

Katara tries desperately not to look at Zuko who sits on the kitchen stoop, polishing and sharpening his dao swords. He can see right through her and she knows it. His eyebrow is halfway up his forehead as he studies body language and listens to any scraps of conversation that drift his way. Katara mouths later to him, but he only blinks at her.

“Sweet!” Sokka cheers. “Let me go grab my towel!”

“No, Katara and I are going to the beach. Girl talk.”

At this, Zuko sets his swords aside and becomes fully invested in what’s happening.

“If it’s girl talk, why aren’t you taking Toph?”

“No thanks!” Toph hollers. “I’m good! Stop avoiding my attacks, Twinkletoes! You’re an earthbender right now!”

“But Sifu Hotman—”

“Don’t call me that!” Zuko calls from his seat on the stoop.

“—says that his uncle Iroh told him that learning from the other elements is important! C’mon, Toph!”

“I don’t have time for you to be avoidant, Aang. The world doesn’t have time for you to be avoidant. You haven’t mastered earth yet. Now focus!”

There is an ear-splitting crunch as Toph opens a chasm in the courtyard right beneath Aang’s feet. He drops with a comical yell. Momo’s concerned chittering and Toph’s maniacal laughter ensue. Maybe the beach is better, Katara thinks. The house is bound to be chaotic for the next several hours anyway.

Suki links her arm through Katara’s and tugs her towards the beach. They’ve just hit the sand when Zuko’s voice hollers the waterbender’s name, his footsteps pounding down the path behind them. Suki gives Katara an all-too-amused look.

“I need to talk to Katara,” she tells Zuko. “You can talk to her later.”

“No, um…” Zuko doesn’t quite look at either of them, his eyes darting around as though looking for the words he wants to say. “I just have a really quick question about...about lunch. I won’t keep her long.”

The warrior stares at him. “In the name of Oma’s bastard children,” she mutters. “Fine. But you get five minutes.”

“She’s not a prisoner.”

But Suki only gives him an unamused roll of her eyes before snagging the beach bag from Katara’s hands and striding away.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Katara tells Zuko.

“So I’ve heard.” He rifles a hand through the dark shag of his hair. “Are you okay, Katara? You look upset.”

“I’m fine. I’m just mad at myself, that’s all. Actually, I should probably just tell you now…” Try as she might to keep her tone light, Zuko immediately looks on edge. “Suki found us out.”

“How?”

Katara wrinkles her nose. “I wasn’t as careful as I usually am this morning. The house was so quiet when I woke up that I thought everyone was out and that I could just sneak across the hall without anyone noticing, but Suki accosted me in your mother’s room. I...hadn’t bothered changing out of your shirt.”

Zuko pauses to take this in, scratching at the side of his nose. “Okay,” he says at last.

“I— That’s it?”

“We’re living with four other people. The fact that we’ve gone unnoticed this long is pretty much a miracle.”

“Suki wants to talk to me about it.”

“Oh.”

“Call me crazy,” Katara says, “but I thought you’d be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

She stares at him and he has the decency to look abashed.

“I see where you’re coming from.”

“You’re a pretty private person, Zuko. And this...whatever it is, is between us. Trust is important to me and I wouldn’t want to violate yours.”

“Whatever semblance of privacy I thought we had went out the window last week when Toph told me that you and I smell alike and offered to talk to me about it,” Zuko says dryly.

“I knew she knew!”

“Suki probably just has concerns given my history with all of you.”

The words fall between them with all the weight of a ten ton rhino and hurt so much worse. Katara’s throat tightens up and her stomach gives an inelegant flop.

“That’s not fair.”

“It is fair, Katara.”

Zuko glances over his shoulder, checking that the path up to the beach house is void of any of their friends, and then steps closer, reaching out to grasp her hand. The weave of his fingers through hers is grounding, a root of reality striking deep into the heart of their secret stolen moments.

“It’s okay to let people look out for you,” he says. “It took me a long time to learn that.”

“I don’t want Suki to think that way about you.”

His palms and fingers are calloused from the hilts of his swords and the heat of his element. They are not the hands Katara expects to belong to a prince. Oddly enough, they remind her of the hands of her people. Blisters from heat, like accidental burns from cooking over a fire. Callouses like those on her elders’ hands, the ones that come from ships’ ropes and weighty nets brimming with fish. Strange, she thinks, to find similarities to one’s homeland in the hands of someone her people would find so decidedly other.

Stranger still to know that a few months ago she wanted him out of sight forever and now she wants to protect him from the smallest of injustices.

“But she does.” Zuko shrugs. “It’s another reminder of what I have to make up for personally and globally. I hurt Suki, too, Katara. I can’t lose sight of that.”

How Zuko shoulders the burden of his ancestors’ actions on top of his own, Katara cannot even begin to fathom. It must be a near impossible weight, horrendous to carry alone. And yet here he is, humble and headstrong and willing to work hard for acceptance. A lesser person, Katara thinks, would fall apart under the stress. Heedless, she dives in to hug him.

The firebender’s arms are steady and warm when he reciprocates the gesture, hands splayed broadly across her back. Katara allows herself one long, indulgent moment to breathe him in and fall under the spell of his thrumming heartbeat. As she pulls away, Zuko’s hands fly up to cup her face, his eyes bright enough to rival the summer sun that hangs overhead.

Disarmed, her breath catches in her throat.

And she can’t possibly understand why he’d pick this moment. It seems far from perfect and—

But Zuko’s lips only brush her forehead in a fleeting kiss before he steps away.

“Have fun talking to Suki. Just… Maybe don’t share anything too embarrassing?”

Katara thinks she might actually kill him.

Chapter Text

Revolution

i.

“I have concerns,” Suki says.

Using the Fire Lord’s beach house as a hideout has its perks. There are comfortable beds to sleep in, the kitchen has an actual range to cook on and an ice box to keep things cool in, and there is a seemingly endless stretch of private shoreline made up of soft, bright white sand. Katara and Suki sit just near enough to the tide that they can dip their toes in the water as it rolls ashore. It’s hot, but Katara thinks she can sense the end of summer looming upon them and, with it, Sozin’s Comet.

“Zuko said you might.”

“Well, at least one of you thought about the repercussions.”

Katara sighs. “Nothing is happening, Suki.” She draws a glittering ribbon out of the water and bends it into the shape of a crescent moon.

“Says the girl who clearly didn’t sleep in her own bed last night and wandered in this morning wearing the prince of the Fire Nation’s shirt.”

“You’re sleeping with my brother.”

“Your brother isn’t descended from warlords responsible for multiple genocides.”

Katara cuts her eyes to Suki, gaze somewhat frigid as the seawater falls out from under her influence and back into the ocean. “So we’re supposed to hold a sixteen-year-old boy accountable for the actions of his forefathers?” she says. “That’s not a sound argument and you know it, Suki.”

“What about all of his actions then, Katara? Burning down villages, trying to capture the Avatar, hurting so many people? Do we just forget about all of that? Because I can’t.”

“Nor can I,” Katara says. “And Zuko never will either. But he’s trying to atone for all of that.”

“I guess it’s different for all of you,” Suki replies. “He’s Aang’s firebending teacher and he lets Toph walk all over him. He helped Sokka with the prison break and he bent over backwards to make you happy. But all I ever got was, ‘Oh. Sorry about that. Nice to see you again.’”

“Talk to him about it,” Katara says gently. “He’s a lot more receptive than you’d think. If he knew you felt this way, he’d be so upset with himself.”

“You really think so?”

“I know it.”

The brunette can feel Suki’s eyes on her, studying and searching for some sort of changes. She wonders if it’s even possible to see the marks Zuko has made on her. Have his humility and clumsy care left indelible lines on her skin? Is his touch tattooed on her hands in a color that only other people can see? When she walks, does she leave cinders in her wake? Do her shoulders droop under the weight of the burden he carries?

“What happened?” Suki whispers. “Two months ago you would have bitten his head off if he so much as looked at you.”

“It wasn’t any one thing,” Katara says. The tide laps at her toes, warm like bathwater. “It was the culmination of a lot of things all at once. And when we tracked down Yon Rha, I realized that Zuko honestly had my back. No matter what. He didn’t care what choice I made, he just wanted to support me and help me find closure in whatever way I needed. Not… Not whatever way he thought was best. I felt like I finally had a friend who understood the way Mom’s death impacted me.”

“A friend?” Suki goads slyly.

Katara rolls her eyes. “Yes, Suki. A friend. He took care of me when we stopped here. He cooked dinner and made sure I ate and… And I realized that I was afraid of what happened if I lost him. Not just in terms of how that would impact Aang’s training or the end of the war, but how I would feel if he just suddenly wasn’t around anymore.” She sighs. “I didn’t like the thought.”

“Okay.” Suki squishes her feet into the wet, compacted sand, leaving dainty toe prints behind. “I’m not quite connecting the dots still. You were wandering around the house in his shirt this morning.”

“I wasn’t wandering the house. I was crossing the hall to my room.”

“Which you haven’t spent much time in. If any.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Katara, this morning was the third in a row that I’ve gone to your room looking for you and come up empty. It’s okay to talk to me about this. I can put my personal feelings about him aside and I’m not going to blab to your brother.” The warrior nudges Katara in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t get me wrong, I understand. Completely. Past aside, Zuko’s hot. So if you’re sleeping with him—”

“That’s all we’re doing,” Katara cuts in. “We’re literally just sleeping in the same bed.”

Suki raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“I’m serious. He won’t even kiss me.”

“Hold on,” Suki says. “Start from the beginning. You’re all over the map here and I can’t follow.”

“You have to swear you won’t tell Sokka.”

“Warrior’s honor.” Suki presses a hand to her heart, a playful smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“Suki!”

“Trust me, Katara. I wouldn’t dare tell him. Pretty sure Zuko’s his best friend at this point and he might have an actual hippocow if he finds out. Best to wait until after the comet to loop him in. And, even then, Zuko can be the one to do that.”

And so, as the tide ebbs and flows, Katara allows herself some time to indulge. For the first time in her life, she has a female friend her own age with whom she can discuss boys. Sure, that friend is the leader of an elite team of warriors and the boy in question will one day lead a nation if their plans for the comet are successful, but for now Katara feels like a normal girl whose only worries are flippant and silly.

She’s not the Avatar’s waterbending master, she’s not preparing for battle, she doesn’t have to worry about what will happen if they fail the day of the comet. She’s just a girl talking to her friend about a boy.

It’s nice.

ii.

The next morning, Zuko plucks a fragrant red bloom from the tropical tree outside his window and leaves it on the pillow for her. Katara walks around with it tucked behind her ear for the rest of the day until Aang makes an errant comment about how pretty she looks with it and Zuko’s face turns stormy and sullen. She knows then that it’s no longer a question of if she has to talk to Aang, it’s when she’s going to talk to Aang.

When dinner time rolls around and nobody has seen hide nor hair of Zuko since lunch, though, Katara knows there’s someone else she needs to talk to first. So she makes sure that everyone gets enough to eat, plates up enough food to split with Zuko and then steals silently up the stairs once the others have all gone out to the courtyard, taking their bowls and rowdy conversation with them.

Outside the door to Zuko’s room, Katara hesitates, unsure if she should knock. It seems an odd thing to do. The firebender definitely doesn’t expect her to at night, but while it’s technically night, it’s not night and this is still technically Zuko’s room. And…

And she’s overthinking this big time.

But Katara did grow up with a boy, so she knows about the importance of a warning knock.

So she knocks… And then she barges.

Zuko, sitting on the bed, forearms resting on his knees, a dagger in his left hand, does not look at all surprised by her entrance. He only raises an eyebrow and says, “I would’ve come down to eat with all of you.”

“Oh, really?” Katara challenges.

Her tone is partly a bluff. She’s a little thrown off. It’s surreal, being in this room when it’s not draped in midnight’s shadows and fairy swaths of moonlight. The colors of sunset cast it in a vastly different light than those of sunrise when she’s groggy and bleary-eyed and only just awake enough to steal quietly back across the hall.

Now she can appreciate this room for what it is and to whom it belongs.

There is a bookcase crammed full of novels whose spines glitter with golden words and scrolls that look careworn and well-loved. A tapestry woven with dragons in every color hangs on the wall. Zuko’s swords, sheathed, hang over the headboard. There are two small portraits sitting on his nightstand, one of his mother and one of his uncle. He has a table and cushion set up for meditation and the table’s lacquered mahogany surface is dotted with white candles of various sizes. Dried pools of wax stand in stark contrast to the dark wood.

Bits and pieces of young Zuko collide, clash, and coexist with the scant belongings of current Zuko. It’s endearing the way the fables and fairytales on the shelf are in dichotomy with the weapons on the wall above the bed, how the dragon tapestry is clearly meant for a small child of perhaps four or five.

And it’s also...horribly sad.

If the last time his family had been here was when they were happy… How long ago was that?

Zuko snorts. “Yes, really,” he says. A flick of his wrist and the dagger whistles across the room and embeds itself in the wall above his meditation table with a thwack.

“Because it looks to me like you were just planning on staying up here to sulk.”

“I’m not sulking,” he mutters.

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Katara sets the plate of food on the dresser and crosses her arms over her chest. “Could’ve fooled me,” she retorts.

“I’m just...thinking.”

“Anything you’d like to talk about?”

He looks at her from under the fringe of his hair, a long, questioning bout of scrutiny that ends with a sigh and a glance out the window. “Don’t bother yourself with it, Katara.”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” Katara crosses over to the bed and situates herself in front of the firebender. She reaches for one of his hands, but he pulls away. Hurt lances through her heart. She winces, drawing her hand back to her lap. “Please don’t block me out, Zuko. I care about you and I just want to talk about what’s bothering you.”

The way his bright eyes cut back to her is laced with suspicion and confusion. Somehow, though, it doesn’t seem personal. Rather, it seems like he’s thinking of something or someone else that haunts him and made him believe that sharing his thoughts and emotions was somehow a bad thing.

“It’s stupid,” he says at last. “I’d rather not bother you with it.”

“Do you know what would bother me more?” Katara presses closer, looping her arm around his calf and resting her cheek against his knee. “Not talking about it.”

She waits, impatient but understanding, her fingers stroking absentmindedly down his calf to his ankle and back up again. For a minute or two, silence prevails. Katara watches as the shape of Zuko’s mouth eases from an angsty scowl, to a slip of neutrality, and then into a crooked little line of thought. Funny how she’d always assumed he’d be impossible to read. No, it’s all there on his face, subtle and yet clear like the first sunrise after midwinter in the South Pole.

When he doesn’t say anything, Katara does. “This morning, you did something incredibly sweet for me. It made me feel special and I wanted to show you that. But then Aang said what he said and it made you upset,” she says quietly.

Zuko groans and buries his face in his palms.

“It’s not the end of the world. I’m going to talk to him and—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s… Agni, it’s so stupid! I’m envious of a twelve-year-old kid because he told you that you’re pretty!”

Katara can’t help it. She laughs and works to pry Zuko’s hands away from his face, clasping them to her chest once they’re free. He looks at her with all the hurt petulance of a teenage boy and another giggle bubbles forth as she says, “You do remember the part of this where I told you that I like you, right?”

“No, I- I know, Katara it’s just…”

“What?” she prods.

“Katara, you’re… You,” Zuko says.

“With you so far.”

“And I’m me.”

“Yup.”

“And… Aang is the Avatar.”

Katara shrugs. “So what?”

“So—?” Zuko’s mouth hinges open and he blinks at her. “Katara! The Avatar thinks you’re pretty! What do you mean, ‘So what?!’”

“Zuko,” Katara says, insinuating herself further into his arms. He drops one leg to the mattress to allow her closer. “If we all had to like people back just because they liked us or because of their social standing, that would be absurd. Pretty sure we discussed that the other night.”

“But he’s good at stuff like that. Compliments and things. And… And he’s not the prince of the Fire Nation. It would make things easier for you.”

“Oh, Zuko.” Katara presses her palms to his cheeks, her thumbs brushing over opposing textures and her nose nudging at his. “Easier doesn’t mean better or happier or more fitting, you know that, right? I like you and everything else is just...logistics. We can untangle all those knots when and if they arise.”

The firebender sighs and lets his head droop forward so that their foreheads touch. “Well, for what it’s worth,” he says, fingers brushing over her cheek. “You’re not just pretty, Katara. You’re beautiful and strong and terrifying and…” He falls silent when the waterbender presses the pad of her index finger to his lips.

Looking into his eyes at this proximity is like staring into the sun, brilliant and consuming. People would warn her, she knows, to use her common sense, that the sun can be blinding and hurtful. But when its power is wielded by someone so earnest and caring, what else can the sun be but warmth and happiness?

“You keep talking about this perfect moment,” Katara whispers, “but, Zuko, there are just moments. They’re endless and they all tend to blur together, but if you don’t seize one of them, every single one will pass us by.”

“Are you—”

“Yes, Zuko.”

And if being held by Zuko at night is like dozing off next to the fire during the winter solstice, then kissing him is like standing in the midst of a volcanic explosion and knowingly surrendering herself to its power. Katara expects hesitancy. She expects one fleeting press of lips.

But the kiss rolls on and on, a tide of want and heat that threatens to drag her under. One turns into three turns into five turns into… Push and pull, give and take. And it’s new and she’s clumsy, but she is nothing if not a quick study. The part of lips, the shocking nip of teeth, the questioning nudge of a tongue… Katara turns each new moment of exploration back on Zuko, pressing closer, her hands in his hair, either of his splayed on her neck and her back. It’s an electric sizzle grounded somewhere between reality and the spirit world. And this, she realizes, is what people talk about.

“I brought dinner up,” she says at one point, breathless.

“Okay,” Zuko says.

Then he kisses her again.

iii.

Katara is supposed to practice waterbending with Aang after dinner.

She’s late.

Very late.

Zuko insists on walking her down to the beach, taking a circuitous route through a patch of rainforest that abuts the property and stopping an inordinate amount of times to back her against one tree or another and press searing, open-mouthed kisses to her lips.

Really, maybe she wouldn’t be as late if she hadn’t dragged him behind a rocky, volcanic outcropping to do the same. But the moon is high and bright. This close to the ocean, she can feel the relentless roll of the tides within her blood and Zuko’s drumming heartbeat sets her own off in rapid pursuit. He lights an awareness in her that is only magnified by the night and the moon and the sea.

When Katara finally brings herself to draw away from Zuko and into battle with their protege, she is nothing short of razor sharp and swift. She is ferocity and she is raw power and with the entire ocean at her back, not even the Avatar can bring her to heel. At the end of the spar, she’s riding a high and wild with the power of her element. Unstoppable. She feels unstoppable.

She and Aang dip respectful bows to one another and she takes her leave. But she only gets six or seven steps away when the airbender calls out, “Katara, can we talk?”

That stops her.

Electric energy floods out of her and dread rolls in on a chill. She turns to look at Aang, registers the hopeful cant of his face and posture, and knows this is when.

“Sure, Aang,” she says levelly. “What about?”

She knows. And she feels sick with the knowledge of what she’s about to do to the person she considers her best friend.

“About the other night.”

“Aang…”

“I was just wondering if you’ve thought about it any more.”

Katara sighs and shuffles back towards him a few paces, sand clinging to her wet feet and ankles. “No,” she says.

“Oh!” Aang’s eyes, already so innocent, fly wide. “Well, that’s okay. Maybe we can just talk it through together right now!”

“That’s not what I… I don’t need to think about it. What I said the other night about being confused? I was...trying to spare your feelings.”

It takes a while for her words to sink in, but she sees the moment they do. Aang recoils as if she’s slapped him with a water whip. He seems to shrink and deflate right before her eyes.

“Do you like someone else?” he asks, voice fragile.

The whole truth would be too much, too overwhelming. If Aang knew, he’d feel as though she’d betrayed him on a much deeper level. And he seems so much younger here beneath the moonlight, so much more easily harmed.

No. He doesn’t need to know that she likes Zuko.

“Do you think it would be easier to accept this if there was someone I liked?” Katara asks gently. She’s tempted to reach out and comfort him, but she knows that it will be detrimental in the end so she only wraps her arms around her torso. “It wouldn’t be, Aang. This isn’t about whether or not I like someone else. I just...don’t feel that way about you.”

“But…” Aang wavers for a moment and then his eyes grow steely and he draws himself to his full height. “But we kissed at the invasion! And at the theater!”

“No, Aang. You kissed me. I didn’t…” La, give her the strength to do this… “I didn’t...want you to. And you didn’t even bother asking if that was something I wanted.”

She can see him casting about for his next argument and knows what’s coming even before the words leave his mouth.

“Then what about the Cave of Two Lovers? We kissed and the crystals lit up!”

It’s easy enough to recall. A torch on its last few flickers of light. The very faintest touch of lips, hardly even there, just as the whole place illuminated with luminescent green crystals. Crystals that haunted their journey throughout the Earth Kingdom.

“Those crystals are used as light sources all throughout the Earth Kingdom, Aang,” Katara reasons. “They were what lit up the catacombs Zuko and I were thrown in. And I didn’t have to kiss him to make that happen. Those crystals just glow in the dark!”

“But we kissed!”

“We did,” she agrees, hesitant. It’s strange to think how much weight he puts on that one instance when she’s been kissed—really kissed—by two other boys and knows the difference. “But I just didn’t feel the same way you did afterward.”

Aang inhales in a sharp hiss. His eyes well with tears. Katara’s heart twinges and pulsates with the pain of hurting his feelings, as though it might be bleeding out right into her chest cavity. He turns away from her and marches towards the shallows of the ocean, plunking himself down just out of reach of the tide.

For several long minutes, Katara allows Aang time to process what she’s told him. She cannot hear him crying over the relentless call of the ocean, but she can sense it, the water he wipes away from his cheeks with the backs of his hands and his arms. And, oh, La, she’s the one who’s done that to him and it feels horrible.

After a while, she makes her way closer, seating herself a few feet away from the airbender and digging her toes into the sand. Then, she waits.

“So that’s how this is then?” Aang whispers after a few beats, the words garbled. “You decide we’re not going to be together and we just aren’t? That’s the end of the discussion?”

“That’s how it works, Aang. If one person doesn’t feel—”

“But I do! And you’re supposed to be my forever girl!”

“I don’t want to be anybody’s forever girl!” Katara exclaims, tossing her hands up in exasperation. Bits of sand fly off her fingers and through the air. “I just want to be me.”

“You can be yourself with me!”

“No, I can’t. Aang, you just don’t see me the way other people do. You have this… This idea in your head of who I am and I’m just not.”

“Katara, you’re perfect. You always make the right choices and you—”

“This is what I mean,” the waterbender says. “I’m not perfect, Aang. I’m… I’m vengeful and I’m stubborn and I don’t always make the right choices. You should see the person you want to be with. Really see them. All the bad, all the good. And they should see that in you, too. And… And you should both be willing to accept all of it.”

Aang sniffs and wipes his arm under his nose, eyes cast to the side and refusing to look at her.

“You’ll find someone someday, Aang. If you want to,” Katara says. “It just...won’t be me.”

“Is there a chance you’ll change your mind?” he asks.

“I won’t make promises I can’t keep.”

The tide rolls in and out, in and out, washing close to their toes but never touching. Katara, usually warm beneath the moonlight, feels nothing but cold.

“Can you just leave me alone?”

“Aang…”

“Please, Katara.”

And so she does, dusting the sand from the seat of her pants. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she says solemnly before turning away and trudging back up to the beach house.

Zuko is waiting up in bed, a thick book propped open against his thighs, when she walks into the bedroom. He looks up with a smile that fades rapidly into concern as Katara shoves his reading aside and tucks herself against him, soaking up the warmth he radiates and urging away the wretched feeling growing within.

“What’s wrong?” Zuko whispers. His arms come up to wrap around her, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure and seeming to draw away the pain.

Still, Katara’s voice is hollow when she answers, “I broke his heart.”

Chapter Text

Augmentation

i.

They begin running simulations.

Sokka has no shortage of plans and attack strategies. He and Zuko have hashed over what the firebender learned during the last war meeting he was privy to no less than fifteen times. The two of them refine and revise each strategy after its run a few times over the course of a day while Suki trains Katara in hand to hand combat out in the courtyard. Toph, all too enthused about her typical role of Melon Lord, meanders between the two sets of friends, cackling her Melon Lord cackle in an attempt to ease the tension.

It doesn’t work well, if at all.

Time slips by, rapid and blurry. The days leading up to the comet begin to dwindle all too fast.

Everyone is a disaster.

Sokka’s eyes are ringed with blueish shadows. His plans are forever unrolled before him during mealtimes. He pays outrageous sums of money attempting to get letters to Hakoda and Pakku. Suki drills Katara as though she’s attempting to squeeze in the entire Kyoshi Warrior training program in their remaining days. Normally composed, she begins to look frazzled and worn. She and Zuko become silent sparring partners, swords ringing through the early morning hours.

When she isn’t emulating the Melon Lord, Toph’s bravado seems to fade. Zuko watches one night as she corners Suki and Katara to request their help writing a letter to her parents. The three of them disappear for hours and Katara comes to bed long after midnight, looking pale and shaken.

Aang grows frustrated, furious that he’s expected to put aside the Air Nomads’ teachings in favor of taking out the greatest threat to the world. Zuko knows that telling the Avatar he’ll need to kill Ozai is a heavy burden for a kid. But he also knows the Fire Lord on levels his friends will never understand. If Aang doesn’t do what needs to be done, Zuko doesn’t see an easy recovery for any nation in the world. The thought of it haunts him.

The unofficial leaders of the group, Zuko and Katara do not have the luxury of falling apart in front of their friends. His room becomes their safe haven. More than a few tears are shed, a lot of frustrated words are vented. When Zuko begins having nightmares, he learns of Katara’s relentless insomnia when she is always there to ease him back into peaceful sleep. What had started so gradually and then turned into something lighthearted and curious becomes something intense and serious.

There is no one Zuko trusts more than Katara. There is no one in the world he can talk to the way he talks to her. Secrets simply don’t exist between them. They begin to operate as a seamless team during simulated battles and this bond bleeds into all other aspects of life. Together, they keep the ship afloat through endless loads of laundry, strict training schedules, and three square meals a day.

Zuko begins to feel like the reluctant, overworked father to four rowdy, messy, wound up children.

Nights are really the only time he can get alone with Katara. They come in a mixed bag of nightmares, tears, laughter, and kisses that send him reeling. Zuko wouldn’t trade a single one in though, even if he could switch all of the bad nights for some more of the good. He takes Katara’s stress and sadness in stride, sends up silent thank yous to Agni for every giggle that lights up her dimpled face and every kiss that leaves him aching. Whatever they’ve built together (and they don’t dare decide at such an inopportune time) is far more than he ever dared hope for from her and so much sweeter and stronger than what he knew in the past.

With the scant good offered up these days, though, comes more and more bad. Slowly but simultaneously rather quickly, the atmosphere in the house slips further into silence and grows more and more tense.

The tension between Aang and Katara is worse than the general air between them all.

“He’s mad,” Katara tells Zuko one night as she paces around his room. “I thought telling him that I didn’t feel the same would make him sad and cause him to lose focus, but this is so much worse.”

“It’s going to work out,” he replies. “I know it seems bad right now, but he’ll be okay eventually and the two of you can go back to being friends.”

“It’s not that.” Katara sighs and leans against the bookcase, arms folded over her chest. “Zuko, he doesn’t have control of the Avatar state. When he gets angry, his emotions launch him into it and can’t control himself. If that happens during the comet…”

“What do you mean he doesn’t have control of the Avatar state?”

All of Sokka’s plans rely on Aang using the Avatar state to take out Ozai! Zuko can’t think of a single strategy they’ve drawn up that doesn’t! And the comet is so close now. They’re two weeks out and Zuko’s already starting to notice effects. His inner fire doesn’t smolder at night any longer. It’s an always-burning inferno in his chest. When he and Aang train, the flames are brighter, hotter. Zuko has been astonished by the pure force he’s able to bend with and knows they’ll have to move lessons to the beach if they don’t want to burn the house down.

“He was supposed to master it. We split up in Ba Sing Se so that he could,” Katara says. Her eyes are a bit wild, a bit desperate. “But he didn’t. He said…” Her gaze shifts to the floor. “He said helping me in the catacombs was more important. Letting go of me would’ve unlocked his last chakra, but he refused.”

Zuko feels like he’s been dragged off a sea wall by a tidal bore, the implications of this information hitting him in relentless waves that threaten to drag him into hopelessness.

“But,” his voice comes out hoarse and distant. “But we need the Avatar state if we want any hope of defeating my father the day of the comet.”

Katara only looks at him, her blue eyes full of sorrow.

ii.

The next day, things finally come to a head during one of the simulations. It’s Zuko’s least favorite plan, the entire group focusing on clearing a path to Ozai for Aang, but ignoring the threat that is Azula who will no doubt be left behind to oversee things in the Fire Nation. Toph doesn’t take it too seriously either, having perhaps a little too much fun in her role as Melon Lord, her diabolical cackles bouncing off the cliff faces and her face lit up with glee. Overall, though, things go relatively well. Sokka and Suki are a seamless team. Zuko is delighted to note that he and Katara work together just as well, consistently backing one another up and working in tandem. They operate back to back, alternate attacks on stone soldiers, and aim low when the other partner aims high. It’s exhilarating working with the waterbender rather than against her.

He can’t help but wonder if it feels the same for Aang and Toph to work with one another, or if the new nature of his relationship with Katara is contributing to how well they work together. It’s like they’re an extension of each other.

Things take a sharp turn south, though, when it’s Aang’s time to shine.

He swoops in, his staff aimed at the Melon Lord’s watermelon head. Zuko watches with Katara’s nails digging into his arm and his breath caught in his esophagus. He is dimly aware of the way Sokka lunges forward as though to push Aang to follow through. Suki stops him, though, an arm thrown out in front of his chest. The boulders under Toph’s command crash to the ground as she pauses to listen.

And Aang…

Aang does nothing.

His shoulders droop, his staff clatters to the stony ground. “I can’t do it,” he says.

The words are quiet, but they’re all it takes for the tension to explode.

Zuko sees red. Literally. In his fury, he sees the world as it will be under his father’s command, a sea of crimson banners, earthbenders and waterbenders decimated, continents made up of firebenders and nonbenders only.

Blood.

Death.

Pain.

Misery.

“What’s wrong with you?!”

Is that him?

Zuko shoves aside his fury, seeking out the pain of Katara’s nails digging into his forearm. It’s still there, sharp and burning. He allows it to pull him back to reality. When his vision clears, Sokka is glowering at Aang and the Melon Lord’s head has been lopped in two. Sokka’s space sword drips with melon juice.

“You heard Zuko. Ozai won’t hesitate to kill you,” Sokka says darkly. “So you need to prepare to do the same.”

“But—”

“But nothing. This is about the world, Aang. My mom died to save my sister. Your people are gone. Don’t let all of those sacrifices be in vain.”

iii.

Dinner is bleak.

Aang isolates himself from everyone, choosing to sit on the opposite side of the courtyard with his back to all of them, plate cast aside, knees pulled to his chest. It’s like he wants them all to know how angry and hurt he is and is willing to cast his pall of misery over the group just to prove his point. It’s a childish action that makes Zuko realize exactly how much younger Aang is than the rest of them (Toph excluded).

“Zuko?” Suki ventures quietly, her voice tentative over the quiet clatter of plates and chopsticks. Her eyes are wide and fearful when he looks at her. She swallows hard and sets her plate aside, sandwiching her hands between her knees. “I… I know what Azula is like.”

He can feel his face burn with shame and horror. Suki likely has scars, he knows. Physical ones aside from the mental and emotional trauma. The fact that she can even be in the same room with him let alone trust him after all that he and his family have done is unfathomable.

“I just…” Suki sniffs, her eyes darting away for a moment and then back to Zuko. “Is Ozai really that much worse?”

Suddenly, they’re all looking his way. Sokka and Suki, huddled together, his arm around her shoulders. Toph, her eyes pointed a little to the right of his shoulder. Katara, next to him, on the side where he bears Ozai’s brand, her face woeful and desperate for his answer. Zuko can even hear Aang turn their way, eager for a word that the firebender cannot say.

“Yes. He is.”

Crickets.

“Right,” Sokka chuckles half-heartedly after a few moments. “But is there a chance that it won’t be as bad as we’re anticipating?”

“No,” Zuko says. “It will be as bad or worse.”

“You don’t know that,” calls Aang’s somber voice.

Zuko stiffens, feels his face grow hard. He turns to glower at Aang who is already glowering at him. “I have personal experience with my father’s cruelty, Avatar Aang,” he growls. “Don’t try to tell me that I don’t know what to expect from him the day of the comet!”

“It might not be that bad, though!” Aang insists, rising from his position across the courtyard. “We can’t just always assume the worst in people! Maybe there will be a way to help the world recover afterward!”

“There won’t be!” Zuko thunders. Katara’s hand on his thigh is the only thing keeping him seated. “You’re naively searching for solutions that don’t exist! My great-grandfather slaughtered your people. My grandfather is responsible for the obliteration of the Southern Waterbenders. You think Ozai didn’t learn from them? You think he’s capable of good?!”

“Everyone is capable of good!” Aang shouts back. “Aren’t you supposed to be an example of that?!”

“Aang!” Katara says, sounding scandalized.

Zuko is on his feet now, exhaling a long stream of smoke from his nostrils. “Two weeks from now, Avatar, Fire Lord Ozai will burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground. He does not intend for there to be any survivors. How much longer after that until the Northern Water Tribe falls?”

“But—”

“No!” Zuko exclaims, stalking closer to Aang. “There are no ‘buts’ in this situation! Ozai has no sympathy. He is cold-blooded and evil. He wanted to overthrow my uncle to be first in line to the throne, which means he’s likely the reason my cousin Lu Ten is dead. He is definitely the reason my grandfather is dead. At one point, he plotted to kill me. And when I told him it was wrong to sacrifice an entire battalion of new recruits, he burned my face to teach me a lesson!”

Aang’s face goes slack with horror. There is a collective inhale from the others. Someone drops their plate and it shatters on the ground. Zuko stands there in the aftermath of his words, his deepest, most disturbing secret laid bare to all of his friends, his chest heaving.

“That doesn’t mean he deserves to die,” Aang says eventually.

The words hit Zuko like a slap to the face. Shards of porcelain scrape and skid over the tiled ground as someone rises to their feet behind him.

“How can you say that to him, Aang?!”

Zuko whirls around. Katara is standing there, her eyes fury-bright, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She marches forward, vengeant and righteous, and comes to a stop next to the prince, her eyes boring holes into the airbender.

Aang takes half a step back. “You don’t actually agree with him?” he chokes out.

“Yes. I do.”

Something strikes deep into Zuko’s heart, nameless and warm, all-encompassing in the way it washes over him. Relief? Affinity? Affection? Whatever it is, it spreads roots immediately and bolsters him enough to turn back to Aang, a united front with Katara.

“How can you say that?” Aang challenges. “Katara, you don’t think like that!”

“Yes,” Katara reiterates coolly. “I do.”

Tension burns bright between them. Zuko watches as grotesque understanding wrinkles at Aang’s nose and screws his face into a mask of disgust. He isn’t sure if the airbender is going to erupt into tears or angry shouts. Perhaps some sort of reaction from Katara would trigger either of those reactions, but she remains cool, her face a mask of impassivity that would impress even Mai and Azula.

Eventually, Aang storms towards the door to the house, barking out, “I’m going to meditate! Nobody bother me!” The door slams shut behind him.

Katara’s hand finds Zuko’s and she squeezes. Hard. “You okay?” she asks, her voice gruff.

Zuko glances at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s staring fixedly at the moon, but her hand is firm and warm around his. “Yeah,” he says.

“Okay,” Katara says. Then she announces to the others, “If anyone wants to join me, I’m going down to the beach to blow off some steam.” She pats her water pouch for emphasis.

Suki and Toph are quick to follow Katara down the path leading from the courtyard to the beach. Zuko turns to Sokka, tired and infuriated.

“I think we need to come up with a new plan,” he says.

Chapter Text

Resolute

i.

“So…” Sokka drawls slowly.

There are dozens of potential battle plans littered across the dining room table, covered by or covering stacks of books, stuck to the table with candle wax or splattered with spilled ink. The gang hasn’t used this room once for its intended purpose since their arrival. It has always been Sokka and Zuko’s war room. They are seated across from one another, Zuko examining the plans and very aware of the way Sokka is eyeing him.

“What?”

“We gonna talk about it, buddy?”

“About Ozai?” Zuko says. “No.”

“I meant you and my sister.”

This prompts Zuko to look up from his work. Sokka is squinting at him in a sort of appraising way that doesn’t indicate anger and allows the firebender to dismiss his words as harmless. “Also no,” he says, returning to his perusal of a horribly-drawn battle plan.

“Are you being nice to her?”

“I said no, Sokka.”

“You aren’t?”

It’s a trick and Zuko knows it. Sokka, thinking he’s a master of conversation clearly believes this will get Zuko to reveal some sort of critical information he thinks he deserves as Katara’s brother. Unfortunately for the warrior, Zuko grew up with Azula which means this kind of clumsy manipulation just makes him want to laugh pityingly.

“Don’t you think Katara would make it well-known to everyone if I wasn’t?” He sighs and casts the scrap of paper away, folding his arms over his chest.

“Fair point,” Sokka says.

“We need a different plan.”

“We have plenty of plans.”

“None of which will work because Aang refuses to listen to me.”

“But we need Aang to defeat Ozai.”

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose and frowns. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “Maybe we don’t.”

Sokka leans forward, intrigue lighting up his face. “What’re you thinking?” he asks.

“I can trade roles with Aang the day of the comet.”

A comically large grin spreads across Sokka’s face and he snorts out a laugh. “Good one, man! I needed that!”

“I’m serious.”

“Okay,” Sokka wheezes. He bows to Zuko in a very mocking manner. “Whatever you say, Avatar Zuko!”

Zuko, unamused and very much pushed past his limit for patience today, rolls his eyes and waits in stony silence for Sokka’s laughter to fizzle out. When it does, Sokka is left to gape at Zuko in astonished horror.

“No,” he says quietly. “Zuko, you’ll get yourself killed.”

“Maybe,” Zuko says. “Or maybe not. Uncle Iroh is a far better firebender than Ozai and he trained me. He thought I was good enough to teach the Avatar. With the power of the comet backing me, I might be able to take him out.”

“Zuko, none of us would ask you to kill your father.”

“I know that. But we’re talking about the fate of the world here, Sokka, and if Aang won’t do it, someone has to.”

“So Aang just sits idly by while you do the dirty work?”

“We can have him deal with Azula. I’ve been teaching him how to redirect lightning. We can send Katara with him to patch him up if he gets hurt.”

“Oh, you think Katara’s just gonna let that happen?” Sokka retorts. “I know my sister. No way is she letting you go off to battle Ozai alone. She’ll want to be there with you.”

“I won’t be alone,” Zuko reasons. “I can take you, Suki, and Toph. To be honest, I’ll need the help.”

Sokka takes a moment to consider this, then pulls a new piece of parchment, a brush, and some ink towards himself. “Let’s run some pros and cons of you deposing your father,” he says. “Con: You could get killed. Aang has the Avatar state which would give him an edge.”

“Katara says he can’t control it.”

“He can’t,” Sokka grouses. “He relies on her to pull him out of it. But at least he’d have that edge against Ozai. There’s some sort of self-preservation instinct that happens. His past lives would help him survive.”

“Sending him to Azula is lower risk,” Zuko says. “If he gets killed while in the Avatar state, no more Avatar. Ever. The world will be fucked.”

“Couldn’t that happen if he fights your sister?”

“She’s only fifteen.”

“So’s Katara. And if you think she wouldn’t kill someone—”

There is a great, resounding crash from the direction of the kitchen. Zuko and Sokka trade looks of wide-eyed alarm before leaping from their cushions and creeping on stealthy toes towards the door to the kitchen. Sokka’s sword sings as he unsheathes it. Zuko readies a cluster of flames in his hand, then he counts to three, breathes deep, and barrels through the door with Sokka right behind him.

A large metal bowl they’ve been using to store fruit spills its contents across the tiles. Apples and ash bananas are rolling across the floor. Momo, chittering wildly, soars through the air, a plum caught in his paws. On his hands and knees in the middle of all this chaos is Aang who is attempting to scoop all the loose fruit off the floor. Upon Zuko and Sokka’s intrusion, he yelps and sends fistfuls of cherries flying across the room.

“What are you doing?” all three boys exclaim at once.

Sokka sighs and sheaths his sword. Zuko lets the fire in his hand dissipate and Momo lands on his shoulder, biting into his pilfered plum and dripping lemur spit and juice all down himself and the prince’s shoulder.

“I didn’t eat dinner,” Aang says abashedly, getting to his feet.

“And whose fault is that?” Sokka retorts. Zuko socks him in the shoulder, a silent attempt to shut him up, but he continues. “Katara made a perfectly delicious meal and you had to go and pick a fight.”

“I’m not the one who started yelling!” Aang turns stormy gray eyes on Zuko, an angry sneer pulling at his upper lip. He mutters, sounding disgusted, “I can’t believe Katara would agree with you.”

“Katara is perfectly capable of thinking for herself,” Zuko says.

“Well, she never thought that way before you showed up!” The airbender lets out a groan of frustration then throws himself dramatically over the counter and buries his face in his arms. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Refusing to listen to Zuko when he tells you what needs to be done,” Sokka deadpans.

“Not with that! With Katara!” Aang pulls himself away from the counter and begins pacing the perimeter of the kitchen, all the while thinking out loud. “We kissed at the invasion—”

“What?!”

“And then we kissed the other night at the theater—”

“What?!”

“But she says she doesn’t like me! You guys are older. You’ve kissed girls.” Aang pauses and considers Zuko. “Well, Sokka has at least. I don’t know about you.”

“I’ve kissed girls,” Zuko grumbles. Apparently they’ve both kissed the same girl and he doesn’t quite know how to feel about that.

Sokka picks his way inelegantly across the kitchen, smashing plenty of berries and ash bananas beneath his boots in the process. He selects an apple from the mass of fruit spilled across the floor, polishes the dirt off of it using his shirt, and bites into it. The look he gives the firebender as he eats is distrustful and calculating.

“Is everyone kissing my sister?” he says around a mouthful of apple.

Aang whirls around to face Sokka and Zuko shoots the older boy the darkest look he can muster.

“Who else is Katara kissing?” the airbender asks.

“Um,” Sokka says, glancing nervously from Aang to Zuko and back again. “Y’know… Jet?”

“Katara didn’t kiss Jet.”

Sokka chuckles. “Sure she did.”

“She wouldn’t. Jet was terrorizing people!”

“Oh, she definitely did. I saw it happen.”

“I didn’t!”

“Just because you didn’t see it happen doesn’t mean it didn’t. You’re not omnipotent, Aang.” Sokka considers his apple for a moment. “Seems like she’s got a type,” he mutters.

Zuko, unsure of how to process the information that Katara kissed Jet (that Jet? The one from Ba Sing Se? Does she have a type? If so, what does that say about Zuko?), snags a cherry from the floor and heaves it at Sokka’s head. It beans the other teen between the eyes.

“Hey, man!”

“So Katara and Jet were together?” Aang says.

“What?”

“Yeah. If you kiss someone, that means you’re going to be together.”

“That’s...not what that means,” Zuko says.

“Oh, it’s not, is it?” Sokka challenges, his eyes boring into the firebender’s from across the room.

“How many times did you and Suki kiss before you asked her out?” Zuko snipes back.

“Fair point.”

“You can’t just kiss a person and expect them to return your feelings,” Zuko tells Aang. “That’s not how it works. Especially if you go around kissing people without their consent.”

The atmosphere in the room darkens as though someone has stolen the moon from the sky and snuffed out all the candles. Zuko knows he shouldn’t have said it, not when Katara had explicitly told him not to talk to Aang about it. The words are out there now, though. He can’t cram them back into his mouth. There’s no possible way to backpedal when Sokka’s already processed them and his face resembles a thundercloud.

Zuko wonders if there’s any alcohol left in the liquor cabinet in the Fire Lord’s office.

“Did you kiss my sister even though she didn’t want you to?” Sokka demands, voice low and curling with anger.

“I didn’t know she didn’t want me to!” Aang protests. “She said she was confused and I thought that would help!”

“No, no,” Sokka says. “No. You don’t kiss people who tell you they’re confused!”

“But how else—”

“Ask! Always ask, Aang!”

At last, Zuko’s brain and his mouth reconnect. “Aang,” he says, “do you think there’s a chance you’re using Katara as an excuse not to think about Sozin’s Comet?”

Aang’s shoulders stiffen and it’s like all the air is sucked out of the room. Nobody moves, nobody says a word, not until Aang lifts an arm into the air and calls for Momo. The little lemur leaps from Zuko’s shoulder and soars across the kitchen to join his master. Aang stalks from the room.

“I’m going to meditate,” he says.

Left in the kitchen with Sokka and all of the tension Aang ran from, Zuko sighs and runs his hands through his hair. Then, he wheels around on his heel and makes a beeline for the Fire Lord’s beach house office. He can hear Sokka calling after him the whole way there and, eventually, his heavy footfalls in the hallway behind him.

“What’re you doing?” Sokka asks, watching from the doorway as Zuko roots around in desk drawers for the brass key he knows will open the cabinet beneath the window.

“Hopefully getting drunk,” Zuko replies. His fingers finally locate the key and he pulls it from beneath a messy pile of blank paper. The lock to the cabinet sticks, but a little jiggling finally goads it into giving way and the doors swing open, revealing a dusty collection of bottles.

“Why?”

“Because we’re sixteen years old and trying to prevent the end of the world,” Zuko says.

“Oh.”

Zuko roots around through the cabinet, shoving aside the Earth Kingdom wine in favor of the Fire Nation whiskey he knows Azulon kept in high supply. He selects two bottles that are still corked and offers one up to Sokka for his approval.

“So,” Sokka says once more, taking the whiskey. “You and my sister, huh?”

Zuko grabs a third bottle from the cabinet.

ii.

Morning greets him with a queasy, rolling stomach and the feeling that his head has been split in two. Groaning out a mouth that feels stuffed full of cotton, Zuko blindly reaches an arm out across the mattress, searching for the waterbender that’s usually sprawled across the other side of it. He comes up empty, though, his hand finding purchase against nothing but the sheets. Cracking open one timid eye, he finds that the heavy blood red curtains have been drawn closed over his window, not a single sliver of light filtering through.

“K’tara?” he croaks.

Nothing.

Zuko shifts, lifting his lead-heavy head so he can look towards the door, pulse hammering through his skull all the while. The door is shut tight. There is a tall glass of icy water sweating on his nightstand, so Katara has at least been here.

He manages two gulps of water before he has to shove his head under his pillow. In muffled silence, he rides the waves of his roiling stomach and attempts to breathe in a way that will relieve the pain in his head. How many bottles did he and Sokka go through last night? All three of them? It’s likely considering how he feels.

The door clicks open softly and Zuko musters the strength and will to lift his head once more. “Katara?” he grates out once more, the pillow slipping from his head.

“Good to see you awake,” her voice answers. She has the kindness to whisper and close the door without a sound.

Zuko shoves the pillow away from his head completely and blinks at her with groggy, bloodshot eyes. “You’re so pretty,” he says.

It’s true. She is. All electric blue eyes and soft, curling hair, a dimpled smile and an effortless grace highlighted by inherent toughness. Underneath that sweet, soft exterior is steel and ferocity. He likes her so much.

Katara snorts and plunks a glass of... something down on the nightstand next to the water. “Thank you,” she says. “You told me that about fifty times last night.”

“It’s true.”

“Thank you.” She nudges the glass of sludge towards him with a finger. “Drink this when you can sit up. Suki says the Kyoshi Warriors swear by it.”

“What is it?”

“You know,” Katara sits down next to him on the edge of the bed, “I watched her make it and I don’t think you want to know. She says it’s a fifty-fifty shot on whether or not you’ll throw up, but either way you’ll feel better.”

Zuko eyes the glass, distrustful of whatever sits inside. It looks like somebody scooped up a pile of sick and served it to him in his ancestors’ best crystal. Just looking at it makes him feel like his insides are attempting to hurtle their way out of his body.

“I think I’ll wait a few minutes,” he chokes out.

A ribbon of water snakes up and out of the other glass and slithers its way around Katara’s fingers. “Need some help with the headache?” she offers.

“Agni, yes.”

It takes several moments of maneuvering, but Zuko manages to prop himself into a seated position, back leaning against the headboard. Katara leans close, the water twined around her fingers glowing blue and bright enough that he has to close his eyes against the vibrancy. She’s quiet as she works the icy water over his temples and sets to work on soothing the pounding in his head. When he can manage to open his eyes, he finds that hers are closed in peaceful concentration, her face is placid and soft.

Not for the first time, Zuko is baffled about how they’ve ended up here. He’d give up so much to ensure her safety and her happiness, and that thought terrifies him because he’s sixteen and prone to doing foolish things. He knows she’d never ask him to, but if it came down to it the day of the comet, he’d lay it all on the line for her.

Zuko should want to do as he told Sokka and send Katara with Aang when the time comes. He should want to make sure the Avatar has the best healer and backup he possibly can. But he doesn’t know if he can part from her and head into battle with his father wondering all the while if she’s safe or if she’ll come back to him alive.

“Sokka told me your new plan,” Katara says softly, her words so coincidental that Zuko jerks away from her hands, wondering if she’s read his mind. The water splashes from her grasp and all over his shoulders, but her eyes betray nothing when she opens them. They are only flinty with the stubborn determination he so admires. “I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Ozai is Aang’s responsibility as the Avatar, Zuko.”

“And Aang won’t do what’s necessary.”

“He will.”

“You seem to have a lot of confidence in that.”

Katara’s palms are pressed to his face, her fingers tease at the roots of his hair around his temples. “I wouldn’t call it that,” she says. “It’s just...hope.”

The peripheral vision in Zuko’s left eye has never been what it once was and any sensations of touch are so phantomlike that they almost don’t exist, but he can make out the blurry movement of Katara’s thumb smoothing over his scar.

“Whatever happens the day of the comet,” she says, “whatever you do, I’m coming with you. We’re a team.”

“Aang might need you,” Zuko protests.

“The world might need the Avatar, but it needs you just as much. I’m going with you, Zuko. It’s my choice.” Katara’s eyes turn soft and the corners of her mouth turn up into a sad, wistful smile. “You didn’t let me deal with my past alone. There’s no way I’m letting you deal with yours without me.”

Zuko thinks of Ozai and Azula and their unerring, unnerving talent for ferreting out his weaknesses and his stomach gives another unpleasant lurch that has nothing to do with his hangover.

Chapter Text

Penultimate

i.

Aang’s bedroom door remains closed and locked throughout the morning. Unease regarding that fact settles over the rest of the group. Katara manages to coax Zuko and Sokka, both equally (and deservedly) green around the gills, into eating some plain rice and komodo chicken for breakfast. She still isn’t certain whose idea it was for the two of them to get drunk last night, but they’d been a giggling sloppy mess when she, Toph, and Suki had come back from sparring at the beach. There were insulting cartoons of Ozai littered all over the war room, Zuko had been wearing Sokka’s helmet, and Sokka had greeted his sister with a loud, delighted cry of, “My best friend and my sister!”

The secret, it seems, is not so much of a secret any longer.

It is, however, the least pressing of the issues.

Katara sighs as she paces the courtyard, unable to sit or stand still for any length of time. “Someone needs to go check on him,” she says to the group at large.

“Okay,” Toph says, picking at something between her toes. “So go.”

“I already tried!”

“If he doesn’t come down for lunch, we’ll all go up together as a group,” Zuko says and Katara doesn’t miss the way he elbows Sokka into agreeing.

It’s not like Aang to freeze them out for this long. And she knows that’s what it is. A freeze out. She openly disagreed with him last night and allied with Zuko (rightfully so, she thinks) and he’s upset about it. It means nobody in the group disagrees that Ozai should die. It means that his belief in sparing the life of a man responsible for the deaths of thousands is his and his alone.

“What’s that?” Suki says, shading her eyes with her hand and squinting up at the cloudless sky.

In unison, Zuko, Katara, and Sokka turn to watch with her as a small black dot in the endless blue comes speeding towards them, growing larger with every second.

“It’s a messenger hawk!” Sokka crows. “Maybe Dad wrote back!”

Excitement jumpstarts Katara’s heartbeat as she watches the hawk’s shape solidify and sharpen. But the hawk barrels towards Zuko and not Sokka and the canister on its back bears no telling marks or sigils. Landing at the firebender’s feet, the hawk screeches and impatiently shuffles its wings.

“Alright, alright,” Zuko mutters. He leans forward to detach the canister from the bird’s back and then it takes off like a shot, a flurry of feathers that startles them all. “Guess whoever sent this doesn’t want a reply.”

As the others gather around, Zuko turns the canister around in his hands, searching for some sign of who sent the hawk. There is nothing, though, only smooth dark metal.

“Who’s it from?” Sokka asks.

Zuko shrugs. “No idea.” When he goes to uncap the canister, Toph throws out a hand to stop him.

“Wait!” she says. “How do we know this thing is safe to open? What if your sister or Ozai are trying to hurt you somehow?”

Zuko blinks. “How?”

“Could be filled with blasting jelly,” Sokka supplies.

Katara scoffs. “Sokka, if it was filled with blasting jelly, the bird wouldn’t have made it here,” she says.

“You don’t know that! Maybe it’s blast-proof. Maybe it only explodes when you open it!”

“Hand it here,” Toph says, holding her palm out. “I’m the resident metalbender, I’m the only one qualified to check this thing over.”

Zuko places the canister gently in her grubby, open palms and Katara winces when the earthbender doesn’t handle it with the same level of care. Toph runs her fingers over and around the canister, her brows knit in concentration, pausing every once in a while to really concentrate.

“I’m not getting anything,” she says.

Sokka takes the opportunity to seize the canister then. “Alright,” he says, “time for some Water Tribe ingenuity!”

Katara isn’t the only one who gasps out a protest as her brother hurls the canister across the courtyard. It bounces off the fountain and bursts open, the lid pinging across the paving stones. As the barrel of the canister cartwheels through the air, something flies out of it and clatters to the far side of the courtyard.

Nothing blows up.

Katara, her heart hammering in her throat, white-knuckled fist pressed to her mouth, rounds on her brother feeling like fury incarnate. “What were you thinking?!” she shrieks.

Sokka shrugs, lackadaisical. “Just testing a hypothesis,” he says.

About to unleash a speech about responsibility and care upon her brother, Katara is distracted and calmed by the gentle squeeze of Zuko’s hand around her wrist as he passes her by on his way to pick up the object. He casts her the small, sincere smile she’s come to adore.

“We’re all still alive,” he says.

As she watches him cross the yard with long, purposeful strides, Katara can’t help but wonder when Zuko learned how to remain calm when she is feeling anything but. It feels innate, as if, without needing to think about it, he’s balancing her out as opposed to letting her ire ignite his own.

“What is it?” Suki calls as Zuko kneels down to pick up the object.

The firebender flips the object through the air like a coin, a funny little smile on his face as he catches it.

“It’s a message from my uncle,” he says.

The unbridled joy in his eyes when he turns to the rest of the group is contagious. His smile spreads to Katara who exchanges a look with Suki. The warrior answers with her own grin, inspiring Sokka to give a loud whoop of excitement that lights up Toph’s face as well. In her heart, Katara’s hope burns a little brighter.

“Does he say where he is?” Toph asks.

“No, it’s just a pai sho tile,” Zuko responds. “But I know someone who can help us find him. We should all start packing; we’ll need to head out to the Earth Kingdom immediately. Toph, can you help me find something in Uncle’s room that is undeniably his?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem at all, Sparky.”

ii.

Katara catches the last of the bags that Suki tosses up to her in Appa’s saddle. Zuko sits a few feet away from her, poring over a selection of maps, his excitement a palpable vibration in the air. There is a stinky sandal shoved into the depths of his pack. Katara had wanted to wash the thing before it went anywhere near their belongings, but Zuko insisted that they needed to keep the sandal as it was with no competing scents.

“Are you ready?” she asks him quietly.

He looks up from a map of the western Earth Kingdom and gives her such a tender smile that her heart somersaults. “The time frame is going to be tight,” he replies, “but if we can find Uncle, he’ll have some way of helping us figure this out. I know it.”

Returning his smile, Katara darts in to press a fleeting, impulsive kiss to his lips, heedless of the others on the ground. As she pulls back, he catches her, a hand brushing over her cheek to draw her back in, his mouth warm and pliant as it works against hers.

There is an indignant squawk from down below that puts an effective stop to the kiss and makes Katara roll her eyes.

“Just because I said I was cool with it doesn’t mean I want to see it!” Sokka protests.

“Nobody asked you, Sokka,” Katara says, leaning on the rim of Appa’s saddle to glare at him.

“I’ll tell Dad on you.”

“Please don’t,” Zuko says, appearing next to Katara and looking sheepish as he ruffles a hand through his hair. “He...scares me.”

“Katara should scare you more, sister-kisser.”

“Sister-kisser?”

“You heard me.”

“I thought he was your best friend,” Suki teases, hip-checking Sokka with a smirk.

“He is, but he’s also a sister-kisser and that will never be forgotten.”

“Are we ready to go?” Katara asks. “I feel like we’re short on bags…”

There are several heartbeats worth of silence as everyone does a headcount. Katara sorts through the bags once more, heart faltering when she sees that Aang’s belongings aren’t among them.

“Where’s Twinkletoes?” Toph asks.

“Katara and I knocked on his door and told him to pack,” Zuko says. “He didn’t answer, so we asked Sokka. Did you…?”

“Suki and I both went,” the warrior says. “We didn’t get an answer either. I thought maybe he was just still mad at me for last night.”

A pall settles over the group but it has hardly a second to set in before all five spring into action, Katara and Zuko launching themselves out of Appa’s saddle in order to sprint towards the house with their friends. Though they’re running, Katara feels like it’s something they’re attempting upstream through a river of molasses. Footsteps seem to take forever to kick back echoes, the paintings on the walls seem to be too in-focus for the speed at which they all blur past. When they skid to a stop outside of Aang’s room, she has to catch Toph around the waist to stop the earthbender from bowling her over.

Zuko’s demanding knock sounds like a hollow drum beat that rattles around Katara’s brain. The way he calls Aang’s name seems to take forever. He jiggles the doorknob and it’s still locked.

“I can—” Toph begins to offer.

She’s cut off, though, by a ripping crunch as Zuko kicks the door in and straight off its hinges.

“Or you can do that.”

And then they’re all left with the horrifying reality that Aang’s room is empty and the world’s one hope for peace is gone.

iii.

Katara is leery of the scummy, rank Earth Kingdom tavern they find June in. She’s leery of the fact that they’re working with a bounty hunter to find Iroh. And she’s especially leery of the fact that Zuko somehow has no problem figuring out exactly which nasty tavern to find June in. The woman is working for free, though, and has made no issue about needing to give Appa breaks to rest and eat. She volunteers for watch shifts, too, and, at the end of their weeklong journey from the Fire Nation to Earth Kingdom and over and across the country’s endless rocky terrain, she stops to thank all five of them personally.

“I hope you and Prince Pouty make your thing work out for the long run,” she says, taking the canteens of water Katara offers her with a casual salute. “He’s a lot less scrunched up and shouty than he used to be. And watch your own back the day of the comet, huh? The world’s gonna need a lot more girls like you if you’re all successful.”

“Is that your way of saying good luck?” Katara says dryly.

“Nah, kid,” June laughs. “You don’t need luck. You’re a fighter and you’re strong. But people like you need a reminder sometimes to make sure they look out for number one before they look out for numbers two, three, or ten.”

“I will.”

“Make sure of it.”

June swings herself up into Nyla’s saddle, somehow executing the movement with all the swagger and confidence she walks with. The beast rears up, eager to get moving again once June has the reins in her hand. She looks down at the from her perch and, just for a moment, looks young and sad and just as lost as the rest of them.

“I’ll see who I can round up to fight back,” she says. “Can’t make any promises. I don’t run with the best of crowds, but I’m sure there are some angry earthbenders out there willing to throw some rocks at Ozai’s head.”

“Thanks, June,” Zuko says, dipping a low bow that looks far too formal for a prince to be bestowing upon a bounty hunter. “And thank you for your help finding my uncle. He’s not the Avatar, but I think the world stands more of a chance if he’s willing to take action.”

June offers up what Katara thinks is supposed to be a smile. “Kick ass, kids,” she says. Then, with a tug on Nyla’s reins, she vanishes into the night.

Sokka takes charge of setting up camp, tasking Zuko and Toph with fire duty, Katara with cooking, and himself and Suki with hunting and foraging respectively. The meal is surprisingly hearty, but none of them have much of an appetite, their food growing cold and going mostly uneaten as they sit in silence around the campfire. Zuko doesn’t offer up any of his uncle’s jokes, Sokka takes to scanning the skies as though Aang might drop in on them at any moment, and Toph looks small and scared as she huddles away from the others.

First watch falls to Zuko and he encourages Katara to sleep like the others, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead before bidding her goodnight. Sleep doesn’t come looking for Katara, though, and she tosses and turns, missing the reassurance of the firebender’s arms around her. So she slides off Appa’s leg and tiptoes as lightly as possible so as not to wake up Toph.

The night is black, no moon to light the way, and the campfire is burning low under Zuko’s watchful eye. He doesn’t seem surprised to see the waterbender standing there, only unfolds his limbs so that she might tuck herself against him. And she does, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest and nuzzling her face into his neck. In return, he holds her close, palms steady and sure against her back.

“Even if Aang doesn’t show up, we can still win,” Katara whispers. She doesn’t mean for them to, but her words sound like a question.

“We’ll do everything we possibly can,” Zuko agrees. Even his voice wavers, though, and she has to pull back to look at him. His eyes are sad, his mouth a grim line.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just thinking about Uncle,” he says. “After everything he did for me… You know he’s like my real father? And I did nothing but yell at him and belittle him for years. I turned my back on him so many times and…”

Something warm and wet drips onto Katara’s nose and it takes her a moment to realize that Zuko is crying. Her heart floods over with sympathy.

“What if he doesn’t forgive me, Katara? I’d deserve it.”

“Zuko.” Katara sits up on her knees so she can look him in the eye and uses her thumbs to wipe at the tears smeared on his cheeks. “I’ve never met anyone who works harder for forgiveness than you. And… Real fathers forgive, I promise. They do it in a heartbeat. Iroh isn’t Ozai. He believes in you and he loves you and he will never ever turn you away.”

The pai sho tile lies in the grass next to Zuko’s foot and Katara picks it up, placing it in his palm and folding his fingers over it with reverence.

“He’s calling you home, Zuko.”

The firebender laughs and it comes out watery and choked. “Do you know that’s all I ever wanted?” he asks, scrubbing a hand over his scarred cheek. “I just wanted my father to put an end to my mission and call me home.”

“This is that moment, Zuko.”

“You and your hope,” he says affectionately.

“It’s not just hope this time. It’s knowledge and it’s certainty.”

They hold each other close as Zuko’s watch wears on, exchanging the occasional whispered promise or affirmation. Her back against his chest, they map out the heavens with their fingers, tracing constellations and comparing the cultural myths behind the shapes they find there. Though her body is weary, Katara’s mind is alert, drinking in every moment of these few hours they steal together, these soft, sweet moments before they risk their lives for the future of the world. She wants to remember him as he has been these past few months, wants to never forget the way he holds her close.

The world is about to change and though she hopes she still has Zuko in the aftermath, she knows it will never be this simple again.

iv.

That relative simplicity ends just a quarter of an hour before Zuko’s watch ends.

Toph’s earth tent slams abruptly into the ground and a ring of fire blazes to life around them. A low, angry groan emitting from his maw, Appa lumbers to his feet, unceremoniously ejecting Sokka and Suki from their sleeping area. The ring of fire tightens, urging the five friends and air bison closer together, and Katara’s bending water sparkles in the light of the flames.

“Now what are five nice kids such as you doing trying to sneak up on a bunch of old farts in the middle of the night?” says a voice that bears a mad, familiar quality.

Katara’s stance falters as she exchanges a look with Sokka.

“Is that...Bumi?” he asks her.

In a snap, the circle of fire winks out as if it never existed at all and a series of distinct shadows pops up one by one on top of the wall June had led them to. There is crazed cackling that brings to mind memories of Omashu and crystals that grew into jail cells.

“You bet the Earth King’s left nut it is!”

In the shadows’ hands are lanterns that light up as if on cue, illuminating the faces of many familiar people. Katara counts among their number Bumi, Jeong-Jeong, and Piandao before her eyes land on the next two people in line and her water splashes to the ground as she presses her hands to her mouth in shock.

“Katara, what—”

“Dad!” she cries.

And then she’s running forward, tears blurring her vision. Sokka’s twin cry of joy is hardly audible over the rush of her hammering pulse, but he’s just as fast-moving as she once he realizes what’s going on. Hakoda is quick to catch them in his arms. The strange navy robe he’s wearing is too fine, to ornate, not Water Tribe, but he smells like home and he feels like hope.

“What?” Pakku says. “No hugs for your favorite teacher?”

Katara laughs—she laughs—and disentangles herself from her brother and father to bow low to the craggy old waterbender.  Pakku returns the bow, but grumbles, “Just like her grandmother. Can’t forgive a man.”

“We only forgive those who work hard to prove their worth,” Katara teases. She shoots a wink over her shoulder at Zuko who, like Suki and Toph, is staring, dumbfounded, at the reunion. “These are some of our masters, guys. Jeong Jeong was Aang’s first firebending teacher.”

“Master Piandao was my swordmaster,” Sokka chimes in, executing a very formal Fire Nation bow to the other man.

Zuko’s mouth hinges open comically. “You’re kidding me!” he exclaims.

“He was a much more entertaining student than you, Prince Zuko. I hope you’ve learned a thing or two from him.”

“I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Suki says. “Why are all of you dressed like that?”

“Oh!” Zuko fishes the pai sho tile out of his pocket and holds it up for the adults to see. “I know. My uncle sent this. It has something to do with some crazy secret society, doesn’t it?”

“Secret society?” Katara echoes, looking to her father.

Hakoda raises his hands as if to absolve himself of the matter. “Don’t ask me how I ended up here, Katara,” he says. “I met Iroh by chance. He invited me to a game of pai sho and the next thing I know…” His fingers pluck at the lotus-collared robe and he shrugs.

“I told him you’d make a good recruit,” Pakku growls. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Where… Where is my uncle?” Zuko’s voice cuts in, quiet and shocking in its timidity.

Hakoda smiles at the firebender, sympathy clear in his bright blue eyes—eyes that, Katara notices, Sokka’s begin to look more like every day. “He’s waiting for you back at camp, son. Why don’t we help you kids pack up here and we’ll take you straight to him?”

v.

A veritable sea of tents stretches out beneath the Earth Kingdom sun, each topped with a navy flag that ripples in the wind and housing all manner of people, men and women alike, benders and nonbenders in equal abundance. The ground rumbles under the influence of spars, someone somewhere is always cooking food, and for the first time in a long time, Katara knows that if she’s looking for her father, he’s bound to be close by.

She’s the last one of the gang to wake in the morning, having waited up in their provided tent for Zuko to return. He never had and she’d nodded off not long before dawn, hoping to see his cot mussed in the morning—a hope that proves pointless when she rolls over to find it untouched and empty. Though a touch of disappointment sings through her heart, Katara can’t help but believe that it must mean something good has come of Zuko’s visit with his uncle.

“Hey!” Bright grey eyes framed by a brilliant shock of auburn hair pop into the tent. “Your dad says to meet him for breakfast in about ten minutes. He and Sokka are sparring and making the most awful puns.”

“Sounds like them,” Katara says, rolling her eyes. “Now you see where Sokka gets his sense of humor from.”

It feels good to slip back into her Water Tribe blues after so many long months of red silks and linens, and it feels even better to wind a section of her hair into a bun rather than tying it into a topknot. Her mother’s necklace glints proudly at her throat and Katara finds herself overwhelmed by the fact that she no longer has to hide it away under a gaudy, heavily-jeweled strip of red.

“You used to braid your hair,” Suki observes as she watches Katara pin her brunette locks into place. “Wouldn’t that be more bearable in this heat?”

Katara laughs. “It would be,” she agrees. “Tradition in my tribe won’t let me, though. Single braids are for girls. This hairstyle is for young, unattached women. It’s our cultural way of signaling that we’ve reached the age of majority. And then,” she pauses, fumbling to affix one of her hair loops, “when you’re engaged or married, you wear your hair up. Nobody apart from your husband or kids is supposed to see your hair down after that. It’s considered too intimate.”

Suki nods in understanding. “It’s not the same,” she says, “but the Kyoshi Warrior uniform carries meaning too. Each aspect has a certain significance, right down to the way we draw the lines of our makeup. And we’re sort of supposed to become the uniform, you know? Every moment spent awake is a moment we spend living Kyoshi’s values.”

“Will you go back when all of this is over?” Katara asks, turning to study her friend.

Though a proper uniform would be too much to ask for, someone in the White Lotus’ encampment has scrounged together some green clothes to lend Suki. The clothes are expensively stitched and made of fine fabric, the forest green pants and sage tunic trimmed with a pattern of golden flowers.

“Yes,” Suki is quick to reply. “Actually, I was hoping you might consider coming to train as a warrior yourself.”

“Really?”

“Why not? I’m certain you’ll have things back home you’ll want to take care of first, but it would be an open invitation. You could come whenever you’re ready.”

“I…” Katara presses a hand to her heart, affection for Suki welling up in her eyes. She crosses the open space between them in two long strides and embraces the other girl fiercely. “I would be honored, Suki.”

vi.

Breakfast is a rowdy affair and Katara is pleased to see that Iroh and Zuko join them for the meal. There’s no chance of asking him how it went, but Katara can see the difference in the quiet, confident set of Zuko’s shoulders and the way his mouth can’t help but keep quirking up at the corners. Over Sokka and Toph’s loud attempts at catching Hakoda’s attention and Suki’s strangely heated debate with Iroh about some white jade bush, Katara makes sure to catch Zuko’s eye so that she can cast him her biggest, most supportive smile. In return, he nudges a plate of fried and braided bits of dough towards her.

Today will bring difficulties, she knows this. They will have to tell the leadership of the White Lotus that Aang has disappeared. Hasty, alternate plans will no doubt have to be made. But there are little things, little bits of happiness in all the terror: The way Toph makes Hakoda laugh uproariously until tears are leaking from his eyes, Sokka’s dramatic yelp of protest when Suki steals the last portion of steamed fish right from beneath his nose, the mystic wisdom of a proverb spilling from Iroh’s lips, the undeniable sparkle in Zuko’s eyes when he looks at her, and the way she just knows that he’ll never stop looking at her as though she’s somehow helped him see.

Beneath the table, her foot brushes his. He ducks his head, but she sees him smile and…

Yes. These coming days will bring darkness and destruction, but if these little flecks of happiness continue to blaze through the bleak blackness, then nothing that is bad will prevail.

Chapter Text

Catastrophe

i.

As Grand Lotus, Iroh presides over the meeting. There is no uproar when Katara, tunic fisted in her hands, announces to the organization that Aang has disappeared. Her words are only followed by disappointed murmurs from the delegation of men and women gathered around the stone table. Iroh holds up a silencing hand and the people in the tent fall under his command.

“Our destinies are upon us,” he says. “Avatar Aang will face the Fire Lord.”

“I think we need to keep in mind,” Sokka says evenly, “that Aang has a habit of running away. And one time he ran, he disappeared for a hundred years. Zuko came up with a secondary plan. He’s willing to face Ozai himself.”

The room goes utterly still.

Katara wants to scold her brother for his lack of faith. She wants to berate him for acting as though Aang hasn’t grown at all since they freed him from the iceberg. But there is a cool, detached part of her that says Sokka has a point and reminds her that keeping a level head is the best course of action. She doesn’t know if Zuko still actually intends to go toe to toe with Ozai on the day of the comet or if he’ll take on Azula instead. Either way, she’s determined to be at his side and that means maintaining the calculating, precise attitude she knows will help her against either of them. This is not the time to lose her cool. So she breathes deep and centers herself.

“That is not a wise idea,” Jeong Jeong says. “We cannot afford to lose the crown prince of the Fire Nation in a foolhardy attempt to intervene in the Avatar’s business.”

“Uncle,” Zuko says, hands open in a plea, “you’re the strongest, most powerful firebender I know. If… If you don’t think I’m capable, would you do it? I’m sure you could defeat the Father Lord!”

A period of silence ensues as everyone around the table either gapes at the prince or looks determinedly away from him. Katara cringes. Secondhand embarrassment is thick in the air. She tugs at the hem of Zuko’s sleeve.

“What?” he whispers.

“I think you meant to say Fire Lord,” the waterbender whispers back behind her hand.

“That’s what I said.” The tip of his ear turns pink and then the base of his throat. He scans the group, taking a good few seconds to process everyone’s faces, the blush slowly creeping its way up to his face. “Isn’t it?”

Katara pats Zuko’s back sympathetically and turns to his uncle. “General Iroh,” she says, “I- we know that’s a lot to ask of you. But… Would you be willing if it meant taking back your throne?”

“Even if I could defeat Ozai,” Iroh says, “and I don’t know that I could—I am afraid that the throne of the Fire Nation is not mine to take back, Master Katara. I abdicated my claim after the death of my son. The throne is, by right of being the Fire Lord’s firstborn child, Prince Zuko’s.”

The prince’s face, previously an alarming shade of crimson, drains of all embarrassment and turns as white as a sheet.

“Were I to challenge Ozai,” Iroh continues, “history would see it as a brother killing another brother for power. If we are to restore peace in the world and renew the Fire Nation’s reputation, Zuko must become Fire Lord. He is the leader the world needs: an idealist with a pure heart and unquestionable honor.”

“He’s sixteen, General Iroh,” Hakoda cuts in. “Even in the Southern Water Tribe we don’t expect our kids to lead when they reach the age of majority. And ours is fifteen!”

“Please do not misunderstand me, Chief Hakoda,” Iroh says, bowing his head. “I would never leave my nephew to fend for himself. The throne is, by rights, Zuko’s. The most that I can do is act as regent until he reaches our age of majority at eighteen. And that may only happen by approval of the Fire Sages.”

“Uncle…”

Iroh gives Zuko a smile that is small and sincere, warmth radiating from his eyes. The gesture steals Katara’s breath. She’s seen that smile so many times on Zuko’s own face. And… Oh. Does he know how much of Iroh lives in him? That smile must be learned on Zuko’s part. It has to be. That small upturn of lips is a reflection of the man he considers his real father, a hint at the bond they formed after losing the family they eventually found in each other.

She misses the next several minutes of the conversation, caught up in thinking about how proud Zuko would be to know Iroh has rubbed off on him. One day, she promises herself, she’ll tell him about it. She’ll save it for a day when he really needs it because that day will come and he’ll need that knowledge more than anything else.

“But we have to have a backup plan!” Sokka’s protests burst through Katara’s thoughts and tug her back into the conversation. “We can’t just rely on destiny to bring Aang to Ozai!”

“We must,” Iroh insists.

“Fine.” Sokka sits back in his seat and folds his arms over his chest, his chin turned up in defiance. A tic works away in his jaw. “Then I’m going to take out the Fire Nation air fleet.”

Hakoda’s mouth drops open. “Son!”

“Sounds like you’ll need a partner who spent time talking to the Mechanist in prison,” Suki interrupts. “I’m in.”

“You’ll probably need the world’s only metalbender for that,” Toph adds. “I’d be glad to be of service.”  She holds her hand out to Suki who high fives her, the slap of their hands landing with finality in the silence that follows.

Eventually, the eyes of their elders all land on Zuko who swallows hard. Beneath the table, Katara’s hand finds his and he squeezes. “You’re certain the Avatar will do what’s necessary?” he asks Iroh.

“I am certain that the spirit world is doing what it can to convince Aang to act,” Iroh amends. “He will show up. What his decision will be in that moment… None of us can know. We must only have faith that he will do what the world needs in order to maintain balance.”

Zuko sighs and Katara sees him glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She gives him an infinitesimal nod of solidarity.

“I’ll take the fight to Azula, then,” he says.

“We will,” Katara corrects him.

Her father’s face tightens with the force of his frown, but Iroh only considers her statement with a ponderous hum before saying, “It is wise not to enter a pit of two-headed ratvipers without a trustworthy companion. Your choice in partners is noteworthy, Nephew.”

“It’s not his choice,” Katara says. “It’s mine.”

ii.

There is not enough time.

It slides past like water through her fingers.

Katara steals every last possible second she can with her father and brother, but she can’t hang on to any of them for long enough to commit them to memory with the amount of vivid detail she would prefer. How does one remember the precise depth of a laugh or the amount of laughter lines around an eye? If she’d known of her last moments with her mother, would she have remembered more or less? Because it seems like she’s simultaneously doing both with her father and brother.

She spends a rather remarkable, illicit evening with Toph and Suki stealing into others’ tents like shadows and rearranging their belongings while they sleep. They run on pure energy and tension, darting through the night like lightning bolts and leaving havoc in their wake. Katara wants so much more time with them, these girls who are like sisters, who willingly and unflinchingly go into battle with her. She has so much more to learn about them. They have so many unlived experiences to have together. She wants to hold them close and never let them out of her sight.

The last night…

The last night belongs to Zuko.

When the camp has slipped into sleep, they slip away from it, a stolen bottle of wine in Katara’s hand that they uncork on a hill overlooking the ocean. There, Katara spends the night beneath the warm black sky, the indifferent gaze of the stars, and Zuko.

As much as they try to give each other, time comes to steal more away. Kisses grow hungry and hands set out on new explorations, but the hours continue to flow on, greedy and fickle. She knows the root of this desperation, she can feel the need for connection keeping them afloat in the ravenous tide of time. It’s something she recognizes when it reflects back at her in Zuko’s eyes.

When she says, “This isn’t how this should happen for us,” there is no anger or disappointment in his face, only agreement and understanding. So she kisses him sweetly, pouring her heart into it, promising everything that words would fail to convey.

She would kill for him.

She would die for him.

By the time the comet’s tail fades from the sky, she just might do both.

iii.

The sky is blood. The air is dry and electric. Katara’s heart sets up a wailing, incessant rhythm in her chest as Appa closes in on the caldera. Next to her, Zuko is a vibrating line of tension that reminds her of a one-stringed lute. His pupils are wide and dark, the thin rings of his irises shimmering with the light of ten thousand suns. Power radiates off him like a blinding, beautiful halo.

“Whatever happens next,” the firebender says, tightening his grip on Appa’s reins to begin a stomach-plunging descent, “whatever Azula says or does… If something happens to me…”

His head turns towards her and the movement seems to take eons. In that stretch of time, Katara knows what will come next. He’s going to tell her to run, to not worry about him, to save herself. But then his eyes meet hers, fierce behind the flickering dark fringe of his hair and Katara remembers that Zuko is not a mythic hero. This is the boy who knows her darkness, who has seen how deep her vindictive streak runs, who has never ever underestimated her or refused to see her for who she is.

“Finish it, Katara.”

It won’t come to that. The waterbender is certain of it. Zuko is calm and cool, centered on this mission. Used to being underestimated, he will use his sister’s over-confidence to his advantage. There will be a fight, that much is guaranteed. The blood of Agni runs through the siblings’ veins and today is when the world falls in their thrall. But it won’t even come close to being a fair fight. Azula doesn’t have her brother’s heart or his drive to prove himself. She doesn’t have enough to lose.

If something should happen to Zuko, Katara will drain the blood from the sky, subdue Azula, and bend the world to her will to bring him back.

And she promises him just as much, positive that she won’t need to follow through.

iv.

The world exists in flickering blue and orange shadows seen through hazy plumes of smoke. Gone are the lazy, sticky, humid days of summer. Relief from the heat doesn’t exist. Jets of fire scream out of Zuko’s fists. The ocean itself might evaporate if he so much as touched a finger to the surface of a wave.

Across the courtyard, the princess is panting, gasping for breath as the prince regards her coolly, his shoulders set straight, his back strong with assuredness. There is an ease to his stance as if his sister’s tactics are an old, careworn book that he has read cover to cover thousands of times. Zuko knows when to block, when to advance, when to provoke. He has Azula putting in all the effort and running herself ragged.

For a split second, Katara sees the end of it so clearly.

Azula on her hands and knees, yielding to her brother. Soldiers and Fire Sages kowtowing in a change of allegiance. A victory so solid and pure and satisfying that it would be impossible for it to come true.

But then Azula’s frigid eyes slice Katara to the core and her fingers stir the energy in the air. The very fabric of the air around the princess rips open in a series of rapidfire pops and sizzles. Her arms juts forward and Zuko dives and his entire body lights up blue…

In that moment, Katara’s heart stops and the world drops out from underneath her.

“As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard.”