Work Text:
Zuko has a surprise waiting for Katara during her coronation.
He didn’t think it was right, you see, that she’d wear the sigil of the sun. Yes, she’s marrying into the Fire Nation Royal Family. Yes, one of her titles as his consort will be Keeper of the Flame, because that’s considered a discreet allusion to her need to bear children. But she’s the last waterbender of the Southern Tribe, the first female waterbender to be trained in the North Pole, and frankly, though she’d look delicious wearing gold, he wants to make the point that their marriage is one of equals.
So when he unwraps her crown, it isn’t simply something representing fire. No. Its centrepiece is a glinting silver crescent moon inlaid on the disc of a hammered golden sun. Gold and silver knot work adorn the rest of the coronet, a symbol for the world to see that she’s so much more than just his wife.
She stares at it, and up at him, and her eyes are shining, just a little, with tears.
“You rise with the moon,” he says, a deviation of the traditional coronation words, “you are ascending to the sun.”
Let his corrupt and gossiping court note the honour done to a waterbending commoner – centuries of rote shaken up for a bright new world.
He likes her better in silver, anyway.