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Summary
Zuko goes into exile with a scar, a mission, and a wife.
The girl wears ill fitted ceremonial silks. She is too thin, with jutting bones and hollowed eyes. Dirt smudges her cheek. Her lower lip has a healing split in it. Gaudy as her finery is, she wears it like prisoner’s rags.
All of this Zuko registers in the time it takes him to reach the dais and bow. Every muscle aches with the remembrance of what happened the last time he knelt before Father. This time there is no begging, no roar of the crowd, no burning. Still—Zuko’s grateful to stand once more.
Slipping into soldier’s parade rest, he waits for what will come next, all too aware of the girl’s defiant body next to his.
“I am told that this is Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” Father says, cruel amusement oiling his words. The phrasing makes the girl sound like a thing. “The last waterbender of their pathetic tribe.” Flames conceal all but his shadow, yet Zuko knows from long experience the exacting blade of his father’s smirk. The smirk he must surely wear now. Because he has built up his insult and now he lets it fall. “Your bride.”