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The flowers in the Earth Kindgom differ from those of the Fire Nation. Not by much, but by just enough that their petals, silk and smooth but taught all the same wilt beneath his fingertips.
His home, born of reds and oranges and sunsets that dot the skies with a mixture of pinks look awfully similar to the flower he decidedly picks from the bushes outside of their temporary residence.
It’s funny, he thinks, how something so soft and delicately innocent can wrought his mind to the harshness of his homeland. But much like the flowers in the gardens of his palace, this one is a gentle reminder of everything that he has done, of everything that they have done. And as he studies it, perhaps a bit too adoringly and long for someone who had only been sent to fetch tea, he knows exactly who he wanted to share this little token with.
Stepping into the room with all of his friends— no — his family, now, Zuko’s heart warms more than any fire bender he thinks would ever dare to challenge. It was full of such melancholy, of love and a halcyon he has yet had the pleasure of leaning into. He knew that if it were at all possible, he would reach out and hold onto this moment right here, right now, and live in it forever.
As he makes his rounds, everyone grabbing their own respective cups and thank him him gratefully, he notices the one person missing that he’d really been looking for. And though it doesn’t take him very long to find her, when he peeks around the corner to get a view of the veranda, he doesn’t immediately approach. Instead, he finds his mind has gone completely numb in a way that leaves his feet immovable. The wind whips through her hair, the reds beyond the sunset bleeding into the horizon so beautifully similar to home juxtapose the warmth that he can see on her cheeks when she turns around and catches him staring.
“Zuko.” His name is but a breath upon her lips before they curl up, and she turns more fully to face him. “I thought you were inside with the others?”
His own mouth ticks up, and he takes a step out the door, still carrying the tray with two cups unattended. “I can only do so much damage control before it gets too tedious,” he chuckles, warm and deep and full of a mirth that easily matches the look inside her eyes.
“I suppose saving the world and babysitting its saviors comes at a cost,” she quips, her eyes flitting down to the tray in his hands as she approaches. Her own hand has just reached up to grasp at one of the cups when it’s trajectory turns to the flower that lies right next to it. “What’s this?”
Zuko swallows hard and his face pales, and suddenly all of the words he has had prepared die in his throat. Her eyes are so curious, so innocently paralyzing that it enraptures his entire being and riddles him speechless.
“Oh— um, I found it,” he blurts unceremoniously, watching the way she delicately plucks it from its spot and twists it between her fingers. Katara studies it, rolls the stem around, and then lifts it to her nose. “I just— I thought it was really pretty. And, I don’t know— it’s stupid. I saw it and it made me think of the gardens I have back at home and I thought you’d like it, but—“ he cuts himself off when she holds it out to him and he bristles, thinking she had thought it to be just as silly, until he catches her eyes above the petals and sees that same glow as before returning to her cheeks.
“You saw this and thought of me?”
Zuko sets down the tray onto a nearby table, the only thing separating himself from Katara, and leaves the teas to be all but forgotten. “Well, I just— I don’t know why I did, exactly, it’s just—“
“I love it.” This time, it is Katara who cuts him off, and he clamps his mouth shut at the same time that she holds the rose out for him to take. “Will you?” She gestures to the knot tied at the back of her head, spinning slowly so that her hair easily tumbles down her back as she turns away and again, he draws a blank. He thinks he stands there for several, long drawn out seconds, stuck in this moment of sheer solitude and disbelief, before she cranes her neck to peek up at him from beneath her lashes.
“Well? Are you gonna put it in my hair or what?”
The sound of her voice draws him back, and he is hyper aware of how close his face hovers to her own until she turns back around, and he is able to take a deep enough breath to cover the rabbiting of his heart within the confines of his chest. He thinks that that stirring, deep and insistent and painfully unaware of any prying eyes that may be upon them, is the driving force to the way his fingers so nimbly tuck the stem of the flower safely into her hair.
And when he is finished, when she turns back around to face him, he sees it in her eyes that destiny really could be a funny thing. It could be altered and woven and molded into anything that they wanted it to be and maybe, just maybe, he could grab it; he could hold onto it forever if he really tried.
Because there was a reason he saw this silly little flower and thought of her. There was a reason; but that reason wasn’t so silly now that he thinks about it.