Chapter Text
“I’m thinking of marrying outside the Fire Nation.”
He bit his own tongue as soon as the words left his mouth, echoing back at him in the silence that followed. He hadn’t meant to say it; it was barely a thought in his mind when her ship had pulled in two days ago from the Southern Water Tribe so she could assume her new role as her tribe’s ambassador to the Fire Nation. But now, sitting across from her as her hand stilled against his new dragon - his dragon! - that had been eagerly curled up in her lap for an hour, it felt imperative to get her opinion on the matter.
You rely on the waterbender too much. The chide from his sages passed through his mind, a chide he’d been getting long before Katara took up her new role, but he dismissed it, as he always had before. It wasn’t that Katara was smarter than him, exactly, more that she filled in the gaps in his own thinking, pointing out things he had missed.
So his country was all the better for her point of view, even if it wasn’t advisable to loop foreign agents into matters of state.
It hadn’t been advisable to place a teenager on the throne, but five years later here they were, so he felt they were even.
“Sorry,” said Katara, shaking her head. “I’m just - is this your way of telling me you’re engaged, and you’re planning a wedding in Ba Sing Se? Or do you mean you want to marry someone who isn’t a Fire Nation citizen?”
“The second thing,” said Zuko, with a frown. “That would be a weird way to tell you I was engaged.”
“For other people maybe,” said Katara, a grin tugging at her lips. “You, on the other hand…”
She trailed off with a chuckle, and Zuko rolled his eyes, his own lips tugging upward.
“Very funny.”
He licked his lips, waiting for Katara to say more, but the dragon turned restlessly in her lap, demanding her attention. As she resumed her soft caress of its scales, her brows drifted toward each other, her face pinched in thought.
“Are you thinking of someone specific?” she asked finally. Zuko shook his head.
“No,” he said, though oddly he had to force the answer past a yes stuck in his throat. “I just think…” He trailed off, gathering his thoughts. He should have considered his talking points before bringing this up to her, but the year between their last visit weighed heavy on his mind. His mouth kept rushing forward to tell her everything she’d missed since he’d last seen her and Aang off, as though she might disappear again tomorrow before he got to say what he really needed to.
Whatever that was. None of the words coming out of his mouth these past two days seemed like the right ones.
Katara quirked an eyebrow at him, lips still upturned, and Zuko cleared his throat.
“I think an alliance with another nation like that would help reinforce that the Fire Nation is serious about reparations and unity,” he explained, shockingly coherent about an idea that was mostly a passing thought. “My forefathers were obsessed with the…purity of Fire, and I want to remove myself from that as much as possible. Politically we’re getting there, but socially I think… I think it would be good to model it. For the Fire Nation citizens anyway.”
“And getting married is the way to do that?”
“It’s just one way,” admitted Zuko. “And since the Sages have been on my case to find a wife since I turned 21, it’s…been on my mind.”
Katara frowned. “You don’t get to marry for love?”
“Technically I can,” said Zuko with a grimace. “Given that there’s someone I’m in love with. But,” he sighed, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, “after Mai, I don’t know…”
The break up with Mai - the final break up, after a long series of break ups and reconciliations - had ended with a whimper, not a bang. After several weeks of near constant fighting, he’d woken one morning with a wave of peace washing over him, certain in his decision to end this back and forth once and for all. And the lack of despair over the loss only reinforced for him that this had been the right decision all along.
(Of course, it probably helped that Sokka and Katara had arrived in the Fire Nation the following week, conveniently there on “Water Tribe business” that he knew was just an excuse to get him drunk and help him lick his wounds.)
“If I can’t marry for love, I’d at least like to make the marriage mean something, help the country - all the nations - head in the right direction,” he finished finally.
Katara breathed in deeply, eyes flitting around the room as a small crease formed between her eyes. “It seems like a thankless task,” she said. “Helping fix a nation, being in the public eye, all those assassination attempts, being married to you.”
Zuko’s lips twitched upward. “You put up with me just fine.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t sleep with you every night,” she teased, a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how badly you snore.”
“I think you’re misremembering - it was Sokka that snored. And Toph, probably on purpose to terrorize everyone else.”
Katara’s laugh echoed in his chambers, a sound it had been distinctly missing for the better part of a year. The palace always felt brighter when one of his friends was around to buck Fire Nation custom.
“Besides,” he added, “the Firelady has her own rooms.”
Katara’s eyes lit up at that. “Really? Can I see?”
He took her there directly, lingering in the doorway as she traced the dusty chambers that had been left unoccupied for decades.
“Well, it’s big, I’ll give you that,” she said, “but it needs some decoration or something. It’s so…lifeless.”
Zuko chuckled. “I’ll be sure to fix that before anybody moves in,” he assured her. Licking his lips, he closed some of the distance between them to meet her in the middle of the room. “But you, uh - like it? The idea I mean.”
Her eyes flicked between his and then, briefly - so briefly that upon reflection, he surely he imagined it - down to his mouth before she turned to survey the room around her once more.
“You’ll need to find one hell of a woman, Zuko,” she said with a grin. “Maybe Toph would be up to the challenge?”
He snorted. “Well, she does have the benefit of terrifying the council, which is the main thing I look for in a wife, but I think I’ll pass.”
Katara pouted playfully. “Too bad,” she giggled. “I would pay good money to see anybody try to make Toph into a wife.”
—
Katara settled into her first week at the palace quickly - far more quickly than Zuko himself had settled into his first week as Fire Lord, a week that had been absolute havoc and, frankly, would have ended with him lighting something on fire if Katara herself hadn't been there as a sounding board. In that week after his coronation, he ranted to her about every snide comment from the ministers, every awful, ruinous thing his father had passed down to him that left the country in near shambles; and she'd taken it all, called in Sokka for advice when their brainstorming attempts fell short.
Her own first week here, five years later, went much smoother for her. The country, after all, was much more stable than it had been when he was seventeen, his shaky hands buried under the sleeves of his robe during every public address. And, well, Katara just did what she did best - she charmed her way into everyone's good graces immediately, with little more than a smile and her determination to buck custom when it didn't suit her. By day three, Zuko found her wiping away the tears of an attendant ("Boy trouble," she informed him later); by day five, his most stoic guard, Kenshin, even cracked a smile at her lighthearted ribbing of Zuko.
She was, as always, so much like her element, grabbing everyone around her and rushing them along wherever she wanted to go.
Being no exception to this rule, Zuko shouldn't have been particularly surprised when, the night before her formal introduction to the Council of Ministers, he entered his chambers after a long day of fruitless meetings to find her curled up in his window-side chair, gazing out towards the moon-shone palace gardens.
"It's generally frowned upon to break into the Fire Lord's chambers," he chided her breezily, squaring his face.
"Sure," she said, turning to face him with a grin, "but Kenshin didn't mind letting me in."
"He's fired," deadpanned Zuko without skipping a beat. Katara sucked in a quick, horrified breath, her eyes sparkling with a challenge.
"You wouldn't dare."
The grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Of course not," he said. "Kenshin's the only guard I have really worth a damn. Suki was the one who trained him, after all."
"She is good at what she does."
Zuko hummed softly, hovering half a room's length away from her. It had been a while since any of his friends had spent any length of time in the palace; Aang came the most frequently, but that was different. He was the Avatar. Katara was…
Well, Katara.
"Did you need something?" he asked finally, fidgeting with the tie around his waist. "I mean, uh, is something…wrong, or…?"
Her brows rushed to meet in the middle of her face. "No," she said. "Why would something be wrong? I - um, I mean, am I disturbing you? I just thought - "
"No! No, you're not disturbing. I was just worried - "
"I heard there's a tower," interrupted Katara, biting her lip. "Where you can get a really good look at the sea. Would you…I mean, I guess I was hoping you could...show me? You'll be paid handsomely." At this, she held up a bottle of sake that had been nestled against her side.
"Where did you get that?"
"…the kitchens."
"So really, I'm paying myself to escort you around the palace."
"Well, you'll also get the pleasure of my company," quipped Katara, standing gracefully from the chair and crossing towards him to smile up at him enticingly. "Whatever that's worth."
Zuko swallowed, taking a slow, shallow breath as her eyes raked his face hopefully for a response. He should rib her, he thought, dismiss her proposition with some tease about the payment being too low. But the words died before they reached his throat.
"All right," he said, infusing a playful grumble into his voice a beat too late. "Just give me a minute." He disappeared into the room next door, his bedroom, shedding his formal ware into a pile next to the bed, only to pop back out into the sitting room a few moments later dressed in dark, unremarkable clothes.
Katara quirked an eyebrow, giving him a once over. "I'll be honest, the outfit definitely spikes my adrenaline," she said, with a low smile. "Are we going on another life changing field trip then?"
Zuko shook his head. "I think Toph still needs to get hers first," he said. "I just, uh, don't want to draw attention to myself."
She nodded. "Shall we?" Confidently, she marched back towards the front door of his chambers, but Zuko stopped her with a hand on her forearm, guiding her back gently towards his bedroom. She stiffened, coming to a standstill.
"I wanted to go to the tower," she explained, frowning. Zuko dropped her arm.
"I know a better way."
He continued his trek through his bedroom door, this time leaving Katara to follow at her own pace. She scurried in after him, curious as ever, to watch him press his hands gently against the wall next to his bookshelf. He'd been tempted, when he took the throne, to rehome the Fire Lord's chambers - but this feature had persuaded him to keep the bedroom, even if it had once been his father's.
"What are you doing?" asked Katara, a smile in her voice. Zuko shushed her.
"Let me be impressive for once, okay?" he teased as his hand hit on the right spot. He pressed in against the wall, warming up his hand with his bending, and after a brief moment the wall gave way, the stone opening up to reveal a dark passageway.
Katara rushed forward with a gasp, nearly crashing into him in her excitement. "Is this - ?"
"It's a secret tunnel," confirmed Zuko. "It can get us to the tower you're talking about without tipping off the guards."
"Sneaky," she retorted. "Do all the rooms have them?"
"No," said Zuko, calling up a flame so they could see their journey into the passageway. "Only certain rooms. I haven't really explored all the passageways yet, but this one leads out to the kitchens, the library…and the Fire Lady's rooms."
Katara huddled close to him as they started off down the tunnel, her shoulder bumping his lightly every few steps. "Why…?" She cut herself off with a cough. "Oh. Right."
"Anyway," said Zuko, covering her embarrassment. "You couldn't really use them, even if it was in your room."
"And why not?"
"You need to use firebending to make it work," he explained simply.
"Oh," said Katara. "Well, that's - "
"That's…?"
"Bending…ist!" she finished. If they hadn't been walking, she might have stamped her foot, based on her tone. Zuko chuckled.
"Well, it is the Fire Nation palace."
Katara hummed, then fell quiet, a quiet that endured for the rest of their journey to the tower. The passageway couldn't get them all the way there, but the tower Katara was referencing sat around the corner from the library, and this late Zuko knew they were unlikely to run into anyone in that wing of the palace. Sure enough, they stumbled out of the tunnel into an empty library and made quick work of the rest of the journey up the winding steps of the watch tower. As they stepped inside of the dusty room, Katara crossed the length of it to quickly take in the view from a large open window that faced out towards the ocean, far in the distance. Zuko closed the distance more slowly, leaving heavy footprints in the dust that gathered on the tower floor. This tower hadn't been used for much in recent years - with foreign relations as steady as they were these days, they did far less watching than they once had.
"Wow," sighed Katara, "I didn't realize you could see the ocean from here."
Zuko leaned forward on his elbows, glancing over at her. "Is it going to be hard?" he asked. "Being so far from the sea?"
She shrugged, but her grin turned a little wistful. "I'll manage. I'll have to make trips home anyway. I'll get it in when I can."
"Well, you can come up here anytime," offered Zuko.
Her smile softened into something more genuine. "And you'll have to join me."
Zuko paused, words failing him as they so often did. He'd forgotten, in the years that spanned between them now, that Katara was simply like this, always holding out some metaphorical hand for him to take, if he wanted - even when he was her enemy, she'd faced him that way many times.
He cleared his throat. "If you'd like."
Silence settled over them, the usual nighttime chill of the Fire Nation blowing a breeze through Katara's hair. Zuko interlocked his fingers before him, searching for something to say, which was…new. When they were teenagers - the last time she'd really been around with any regularity - he never felt compelled to say anything at all in her presence. Words weren't expected between them; he'd liked that about her - though they came, nonetheless, especially in that week they'd be stranded alone in the Fire Nation palace, huddled in his room as she nursed him back to health.
Back then, he'd considered Katara one of the people he knew best in the world. But their teenage years were ages past. Did he really know her well enough for companionable silence anymore?
"What about heirs?" she asked suddenly. Zuko blinked at her, grasping at the trail of her question.
“Uh, what about them?” he asked dumbly. She bit her lip, turning to face him.
“They might not be firebenders, if you marry outside the Fire Nation,” she clarified, fidding with the ends of her hair. “Wouldn’t that be a problem?”
He sighed, finally catching up to her train of thought.
“Not necessarily,” he said slowly, though of course she had voiced the exact reasoning his Sages would have if, and when, he ever presented the idea to them. “It’s highly likely one of them would be, and besides, the way I see it, it’s more important that the ruler is a Fire Nation citizen than a firebender.” Staring out over the peace of the palace below, he added softly, “For a while they thought I couldn’t bend at all.”
Katara raised her eyebrows at that. “Really? That’s surprising.”
“It is?”
“Well, yes. I mean, you’re such a powerful bender now.”
Zuko grinned a little. “I got a lot better once I joined up with you and the others. I learned from you as much as Aang did, honestly.” He frowned, pushing himself upright. “But that’s what I mean. I think it might be time we stop dividing ourselves by elements. So what if the Firelady is a waterbender?”
The silence in the wake of his statement was punctuated by Katara’s mouth falling slightly open as she blinked at him. Hearing his own words echoed back at him, Zuko’s face burned. He cleared his throat, hastily adding, “Or an earth bender. Or someone who isn’t a bender at all!”
She nodded. “Right.” She cleared her throat, turning to face the open window once more as Zuko searched for some way to escape the tension that filled the air between them.
“Do you, uh, know when Aang plans on visiting next?” he asked a little breathlessly. “I, uh, I found something he might be interested in, about the air nomads.”
Katara blanched at the question, and she bit her bottom lip. “Oh, well…” she said, not quite meeting his eye. “The thing is…Aang and I broke up.”
Zuko’s stomach lurched in an entirely unfamiliar manner. “What?”
“Yeah. A…few months ago,” she explained. “I kept trying to tell you about it in a letter but I - it just felt like something I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Oh,” said Zuko. He reached out a hand toward her - that was something people did when their friend was sad, right? - before letting it fall back to his side. “Are you - are you alright?”
Her eyes flicked to his, the corner of her mouth curling wistfully. “I’m fine,” she murmured. “Really it was a long time coming. And Aang - Aang took it better than I expected. We just…don’t want the same things. So it’s good, overall.”
“Still,” said Zuko, his hand fidgeting at his side. “I’m sorry.”
Finally Katara caught his eye. “Don’t be,” she insisted. “I’m not.”
When Sokka had first suggested it - on the tail end of the first year of Zuko’s reign, a year of turmoil and assassination attempts and all his friends making frequent trips to the Fire Nation just to keep him alive - he’d readily agreed to the idea of hosting biannual town halls with Aang in various cities across the Fire Nation. A way to really connect directly with his citizens, Sokka had suggested, to hear the complaints the higher ups in his regime would dismiss.
He hadn’t anticipated how quickly they would devolve into celebrity meet and greets with the Avatar.
Like clockwork, it happened every time: a group of starstruck teens reached the front of the line, and suddenly one of them was stuttering, one of them was babbling incoherently, and one of them wanted Aang to sign something - and this time around in the capital was no different. Zuko sighed as it played out just so before him, shifting in his seat to catch Katara’s eye across the long hall. She’d posted up in a corner off to the side, watching the whole affair with an amused smirk, one that only deepened as Zuko rolled his eyes.
“You know -“ A high pitched voice dragged his attention from Katara to the girl in front of him. Her grin spelt mischief, and the sharp angle of her jaw stirred a flash of an old memory: Mai, younger than this girl here, tossing him a glance over her shoulder on the deck of a ship as waves crashed behind her.
When this girl spoke, her voice dripped of honey, nothing like Mai’s rasp.
“My friend would make a pretty good Fire Lady, don’t you think?” she giggled, holding up an arm to ward off any blush-ridden attack from said friend. “If you’re in the market.”
“Oh, uh -“ he stuttered. He would have blushed if he could get past the absurdity of the scenario he found himself in. This was supposed to be a time for citizens’ most pressing questions, not - whatever this was.
But the girls looked at him with unwavering expectation, so he cleared his throat. “Uh, I’m not,” he said lamely. They scurried away giggling anyway, like he’d just said something clever, and he rolled his eyes, seeking out Katara in the crowd once again for anyone to share his ire with. But as he glanced back towards her, he was struck by the transformation on her face: brow furrowed, top lip curled up ever so menacingly as she followed the girls trajectory with her eyes, like an owl wolf on the hunt.
“Avatar Aang, Firelord Zuko,” said a new, low voice, pulling Zuko’s attention back to the task at hand as a family stepped forward to bow low before them. “I’m so pleased we were able to come meet you.”
This isn’t a meet and greet, Zuko wanted to snap, but before he could bend the words into something that wouldn’t get him a chastising take down in the flashy new Caldera gossip columns, the youngest boy of the family launched himself high into the air, landing with gentle precision on the tail of a wind stream.
Zuko blinked. Once, twice. Had he just - ?
Aang, quicker on the uptake, leapt from his seat to crowd near the boy, demanding in an incoherent babble, “How - what - I - I - where did you learn that?”
“What’s going on?” asked Katara sharply, appearing just off to the side. She hovered close enough that a few strands of her hair brushed against Zuko’s arm as the Avatar called up the air around them, lifting himself into the air. “Aang?”
“You can do it, can’t you?” he asked, eyes boring down into the face of the young boy; he couldn’t be any older than Aang himself had been when they ended the war.
The boy glanced over his shoulder at his father, who sighed, passing a hand over the barely concealed smile of amusement on his face. “We did agree we’d ease into it, remember, Rin? But now that you’ve started…” He gave a permissive wave, and the boy mirrored Aang’s movements, bending himself up into the sky until they hung there like twin moons, staring at each other.
Katara gasped, her hands flying over her mouth, and Zuko shared her disbelief. “He’s - is he…?”
“Yes, Ambassador,” said the man. “Rin can airbend.”
Ending the town hall abruptly, Zuko ushered Rin and his family to the palace, immediately calling for tea to be served in a quiet meeting room, where he, Aang, and Katara settled themselves across the from Maru, Rin’s father, and his wife, Umeko, along with their three children, of whom Rin was the youngest. Though the tea was served promptly, no one in the room touched it, all eyes glued to Maru as he told his story.
“We come from Osaru, which is, well, it’s situated on one of the tiny islands on the outskirts of the Fire Nation,” he clarified, glancing between Katara and Aang. They’d taken seats on either side of Zuko as if it had always been a wholly natural order for them to assume. “During the war, Osaru was not as…involved as other, bigger cities. To be frank, there are children is Osaru who hardly know a war even went on.” Maru chuckled. “I’m not sure the crown remembers we really exist.”
“To be frank myself, I think all I’ve ever heard of Osaru is from a map,” admitted Zuko.
“And we like it that way,” said Maru. “Because it allows us to keep our secrets.”
“Like how Rin is an Airbender?” supplied Aang, leaning forward eagerly in his seat. He hadn’t stopped fidgeting since they arrived back at the palace, and his tea, like everyone’s, sat before him, untouched and growing cold.
“Yes,” Maru nodded. “But also -“ He glanced over at his wife, her shoulders hunched with tension. Now, she remained silent, but a flick of her wrist sent her own tea clumsily up out of its cup then back down again.
Katara lurched forward, her mouth falling agape. “You - you’re a waterbender! But -“
“My grandmother was born six years after the war began,” explained Umeko. “To a couple out at sea. We don’t know who they were or what their intended destination was because a storm destroyed their ship, and my grandmother washed up on the shore of Osaru to be adopted by a woman there who could not have children of her own.
“Of course, later on when it became clear she was a waterbender, my great grandmother taught her to hide her ability.”
“So she never learned to bend?” asked Katara mournfully.
Umeko chuckled. “No, she did,” she said. “She had a rebellious spirit, so she was going to learn to bend one way or another. Without a teacher, she never became an expert, but she figured out enough on her own to guide me when I turned out to be a waterbender too.”
“Wait, so,” interjected Aang, playing with the stem of his tea cup. “If you’re a waterbender then you’re -“
“I cannot bend, Avatar Aang,” explained Maru, bowing his head reverently before chuckling. “The only one in my family who cannot actually - we’ve got a Firebender, two waterbenders, and an Airbender. We always joke we should adopt a child from the Earth Kingdom to finish out the set.”
Katara laughed, a slightly wet sound that Zuko confirmed with a glance meant that her eyes had welled up with tears. “That’s amazing,” she murmured.
“But how exactly is Rin an Airbender?” asked Aang. “After Sozin…”
“We think that secret died with my mother,” explained Maru, taking a sip of his tea. “She was a very secretive woman, and she died before Rin was born. But I do know that her family did not always live in Osaru, though they would never name where they’d come from.”
“So you think, what, some airbenders escaped when Sozin attacked?” clarified Zuko, leaning forward.
Maru nodded. “It’s mostly speculation,” he admitted. “That and a few items we found in my mother’s things after her death. Old, old heirlooms that…don’t seem to be related to the Fire Nation.”
He glanced over at Rin seated next to him. “And, well, something must have happened, right? For him to be able to airbend?”
As the tea grew colder and the tale wound down, Zuko invited the entire family to stay in Caldera as his guests for as long as they liked, but Maru graciously declined.
“I am very glad to have met you thought, my lord,” he said as they said their farewells.
“Me? Didn’t you come here to meet the Avatar?” asked Zuko.
“When Rin revealed himself to be an Airbender, I worried. It was the tail end of your father’s rule, and I worried Rin would never have anyone who could teach him…” Maru frowned, glancing over towards the corner where Rin chatted with Aang and Katara. “After you took the throne, it still took this long to convince Umeko that Rin needed to meet the Avatar - but I was also eager to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Because you seem like a Firelord who could appreciate a family like mine,” said Maru with a tired smile. “From the tales, your own family is not so different.”
He nodded back towards Zuko’s friends. “Personally I think we need a Firelord like that.”
As the family departed - with Aang in tow, eager to begin training Rin in airbending - he invited Zuko and Katara to visit Osaru whenever they could to see a town that managed, mostly, to stay out of the war.
“It’s a very diverse town,” he explained. “In small seaside towns like ours, you get a lot more travelers, and some of them…stay and mix with the locals. Our family is…not so strange there, you’ll find.”
“I’ll be sure to plan a visit as soon as I can,” Zuko promised. Aang hugged both him and Katara fiercely and then they were off, heading up the lane that lead out of the palace walls and into the city proper.
Katara crossed toward the window to watch them go, leaning her forearms against the railing to heave a sigh as Zuko settled in beside her.
“You didn’t want to go with them?” he asked. “I mean, two waterbenders…”
“I will,” she assured him. “In my own time. But I’ve got work to finish here and…I think Aang needs this time alone to bond with Rin.”
Leaning even further forward on the railing, she murmured, “I can’t imagine what it’s been like, to be the only one left. I mean, I was the last waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe, and that itself was…challenging, but I always knew there were other waterbenders out there, if I could get to them. But Aang…” She wiped a tear from her eye. “I think he’s felt very…alone.”
“Well,” said Zuko, gesturing to where Aang was correcting Rin’s form in the courtyard below. “He’s not alone anymore.”
Katara’s grin spread further across her face, and she bumped her shoulder against his.
“You’re right, Zuko,” she said, lingering so their arms brushed against each other at the slightest movement. “About the Fire Lady. I mean, all the good you could do - and she could do - just by being an example of what unity really looks like.”
She nodded down at Maru and his family once more. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
The late afternoon sunlight glowing against her tan skin, her eyes bright with hope, briefly Zuko imagined - though it was less a deliberate figment of his imagination and more a jarring flash of a thought he immediately dismissed - gold eyes on Katara’s round face. Abruptly he jerked away from her, covering his sudden movement by turning to face her, leaning his right elbow against the window frame.
She raised an eyebrow at this. “You okay?”
Zuko cleared his throat. “Never better.”
Her brow stayed perched in disbelief - he knew her well enough by now, catalogued all her expressions at this point, to recognize that. But she said nothing, instead turning to mirror his position, offering him a shy smile.
“You know honestly, I’m a little resentful that somebody new is gonna be joining our little gang,” she said. “I mean, whoever you end up marrying. Just - don’t get all wrapped up in her and forget about us, okay?”
Zuko frowned, hand moving of its own accord to reach out and squeeze her shoulder.
“I could never forget about you, Katara,” he assured her seriously. She placed her hand over his and squeezed back.
"You're putting it off," said Katara, exactly three months into her appointment as ambassador. They sat on the roof - specifically, the ledge that ran around the tower he'd shown her during her first week. Quickly after that she'd begun asking - no, demanding - that he join her for the occasional nightly stargaze, and from there they'd developed a daily routine: sometime after sunrise (when he’d already been up for an hour reading over his daily briefings) she burst into his chambers, complaining about some advisor who’d gotten in her way or some injustice that needed to be fixed, or sometimes she'd simply throw herself into the seat across from him and scarf down the breakfast he had prepped for her arrival. Graciously, she allowed him to attend to his meetings and duties for the day - sometimes she attended them herself, when there was water tribe business to deal with - but as soon as dinner time rolled around, she attempted to divert him again, bullying him into teaching her pai sho or exploring a part of the palace she’d never seen.
After two months of this, his advisors warily accepted that when the Ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe was here, the Fire Lord did not work after dinner time, and frankly, Zuko thought the palace morale was better for it.
At least, his morale was.
Zuko didn’t really have friends growing up. He had a manipulative sister and the two girls she treated as her cronies; he had an older cousin who he idolized; and he had his mom, however briefly. Only now in adulthood did he get to know the joy of attaching himself to another person who simply enjoyed his company, who snuck onto the roof of the palace with him to watch the sunset, then stayed up late into the night until their speech started to slur with exhaustion. He should have done this during his teenage years, probably, but he was more than happy to do it now with Katara - and Aang and Sokka and Toph and Suki when they made their welcomed, sporadic appearances.
But the horrifying ordeal of being known meant Katara actually began to know him, and that meant he couldn't get away with much.
"Putting what off?" asked Zuko as innocently as possible - which wasn't much, considering what a terrible liar he'd always been. Katara snorted.
"You have to tell the Ministers about your plans," she insisted, her eyebrows raised in that disapproving way that never failed to work on anyone. "If you don't get them on board, there's no point."
Zuko sighed. "I know. I - I will. I'm just…waiting for the right time."
At this, she laughed sharply. "Come on, Zuko. You know there's no 'right time.' You're being a coward."
He sputtered at this, turning to face her with an affronted expression, the glass of plum wine in his hand halted halfway to his mouth. "I'm not a coward!" he insisted, surprised at how rough his voice was with genuine emotion.
Katara leaned forward to invade his space. "Prove it," she said, her eyebrows raised in a challenge.
Zuko swallowed, hesitating. He couldn't very well tell her the truth - it was too embarrassing to admit that he wasn't ready to give this up, these late night excursions where he snuck out of his room to sit on the roof and drink wine with her. He wanted to hold onto this feeling - the intimacy of an honest-to-Agni close friend - for as long as he could before he got married and the palace staff stopped turning a blind eye at his perceived impropriety.
He couldn't tell her that. It weighed too heavy on his tongue. Or maybe that was the wine.
Instead he said, "I will. When you get back from your trip, I will."
Katara nodded, smirking around a sip of her wine. "You better."
Katara's departure just barely preceded the arrival of the other Water Tribe sibling, as a week after her ship set sail for Osaru, Sokka's ship arrived from the Earth Kingdom. His was a social call, and he offered a different though no less welcome kind of camaraderie than his sister. When Sokka was here, they spent most of their time sparring and talking about swords because that was what men were supposed to talk about, Zuko was quickly learning, and he devoted a little more time to Fire Lord business in the evenings than he would if Katara were around.
This time Sokka came bearing news, which he somehow held on to for several days into his visit. "Suki and I are engaged!" he said, his grin taking up his whole face. "Don't tell anybody, though, honestly you're like the first to know besides Toph, and that's because she was there. I just can't keep it to myself anymore."
Zuko chuckled, leaning back in his chair. "Congratulations, buddy," he said."You know Katara's gonna be furious that you told me first, right?"
"Exactly, that's why you're gonna say nothing."
"Honestly, if she asks, I don't know if I can lie to her."
"What's she gonna ask, 'How was Sokka? Did he and Suki get engaged?'"
"Maybe! She's brought it up before!"
Sokka sank down in his chair, letting out a big belly laugh. "All right, fine. I preemptively forgive you for outing me to Katara, bud. Maybe I should just stay until she gets back, avoid some of that fallout."
Zuko grinned. "I'd like that," he said, staring down at his half eaten meal because, as he was learning, men weren't really allowed to say emotionally vulnerable things directly. But when he glanced back up, Sokka was grinning back at him.
"So…what about you?" he asked, digging back into his meal. "Any prospects for Mrs. Fire Lord?"
Zuko sighed, pushing the fish around on his plate. "No, not yet," he said. "I, uh, I think it might be best for the country if I marry someone who…isn't Fire Nation. Strengthen political ties with another nation."
Sokka's eyebrows flew up to the top of his forehead. "Really? Well that's…definitely a big decision," he said. "Do you, uh…have anybody in mind?"
For as hyper vigilant as Zuko had been during his teenage years, his ability to read people in casual social situations had always lacked some finesse - so while he could hear a question hidden under Sokka's question, he couldn't for the life of him discern what the question might be.
"Uh, no, I haven't gotten that far yet," he admitted. "I'm sure my Ministers will have opinions."
"I bet," said Sokka. "Well -"
But whatever more Sokka had to say about that was lost in the commotion of the Ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe's sudden, unexpected arrival. She burst into the room, full of excitement, and both Sokka and Zuko leapt to their feet to greet her, Sokka pulling her into a crushing hug as she tried to wriggle away.
"I get it, you're stronger than me!" she whined, struggling out of her brother's grasp. Sokka laughed and squeezed her tighter as he asked, "What are you doing here, sis? I thought you were travelling."
"I was," huffed Katara, still valiantly fighting against her brother's hold. They looked like children this way, like their younger selves, the ones Zuko had gotten to know on Ember Island. "And I'm starting to wish - I - still - was!"
On her final word, Katara tugged hard against her brother's hold, and he released her with a bark of a laugh, inadvertently hurtling her directly into Zuko, who caught her and himself before they both collapsed back onto the food-laden table. Katara tilted her head up to look at him, her face inches from his as she smiled.
"Thanks," she said. "And…hi."
"No problem," returned Zuko, breath a little shallow. "And…hi."
She didn't move from his hold - and it was a hold, Zuko belatedly realized, his hands encircling her waist - until Sokka coughed, drawing their attention back to him and his unimpressed expression. Katara glared at her brother, pressing her hands firmly against Zuko's shoulders to push herself away, leaving a chill where her body used to be. As she begrudgingly admitted that her sudden appearance was due to a longing to see her brother, Zuko called for an attendant to cancel his after dinner meetings. Sokka frowned as the attendant disappeared from the room to follow his instructions.
"Oh so you can just cancel meetings if you want to?" he said pointedly. Zuko smirked.
"Well, I am the Fire Lord," he teased.
“Well Fire Lord, I feel neglected,” complained Sokka. “All week you’ve had meetings, meetings, meetings - then she shows up and apparently the meetings aren’t that important!”
Zuko’s face grew hot. “I wanted to spend time with both of you -“
“You spend time with her constantly!” chided Sokka. “I know how often she’s here.”
The accusatory tone fanned the flames of the flush crawling up Zuko’s neck, but Katara just smirked at her brother, settling into the chair beside him. “Well I guess we know which Water Tribe sibling he likes better,” she said triumphantly, digging into the meal that had been brought for her. She was so fixated on the food that she missed the wolfish grin on Sokka's face, his narrowed eyes as he glanced between her and Zuko.
“Yeah, I think we do,” he said knowingly. And there it was again, that meaning under Sokka's words. Whatever it was he was trying to imply, Zuko knew enough to know he didn't want Katara finding out.
So he did what he had to.
"Sokka and Suki are engaged!"
"Dude!"
"You're engaged and you told the jerkbender before me?!"
A week after Katara's return to the palace - just a scant few days after Sokka's departure - Zuko made good on his word to inform his Ministers of his marriage plans. By some stroke of luck, Aang arrived that very morning, which Zuko took as a sign that the spirit world, anyway, would back him in his decision, even if the Council had issues with the idea.
And, boy, did they have issues.
"This is a ridiculous idea!" cried the Minister of Finance. "Have we not already given enough to the other nations?"
"A foreign Fire Lady? It's never been done!" argued the Minister of Education.
Zuko gave no response as the Ministers began to argue amongst themselves, tearing the proposal to shreds; he simply perched his chin upon his hand as he leaned further back into his throne to observe the room, eyes landing on the corner where Aang, Katara, and Ambassador Qiang of the Earth Kingdom stood watching the action. Aang's face gave away nothing - no surprise, no judgment. He'd been getting better at that, at keeping his emotions close to the chest, taking in proposals and information without a reaction, something Zuko was sure the Air Nomads had been masters at.
It was Katara who noticed his gaze, catching his eye to give him a reassuring nod.
“Well it’s obvious that he just wants to make it official with the waterbender,” sneered Kanji, the Minister of Foreign Affairs who had fought Zuko on nearly every proposal in the last year. “Do us all a favor and just take a mistress like your forefathers did, instead of upending our entire nation for that woman.”
The room flew into an uproar at his words, Katara leaping forward with clear intent to get in Kanji's face. Qiang, a friendly fellow with a good heart, let out a scoff of protest; and Aang, usually such a peacekeeper, piled onto Kanji too, along with half the Council.
They all fell silent as Zuko began speaking.
“Councilor," he said, standing up from the throne, "you would be lucky to have Master Katara as your Fire Lady if she deigned to ever accept such a thankless position.” He crossed the room slowly, steps deliberate, his voice a low growl as he glared at the man across the room. “But whoever the Fire Lady is, you will serve her as a citizen and nothing more. That kind of disgusting talk will not be tolerated about anyone in this chamber, but especially not about someone who has nearly laid down her life countless times to help heal this ungrateful nation. So your position on this council is rescinded, effective immediately.”
Kanji whimpered out a protest, but Zuko turned away to address the rest of the room, Ministers, Sages, and Ambassadors alike.
“My decision is final. My forefathers were obsessed with the purity and might of Fire, and you all know how ruinous that obsession was for our nation and for the world. We need the other elements - the other nations - and partnering with another nation this way not only reinforces our alliances and commitments, but it also stands as an example to our citizens, who by the day look less and less like my father’s idea of a perfect countryman. We are stronger when we can learn from each other, and I’d prefer my legacy to be one built on the diversity that is already occurring in the Fire Nation. Whoever I choose as Fire Lady will represent that.” Slowly, he looked each Minister and Sage in the eye. "Does anyone have a problem with that?"
Silence echoed back at him, tension thick in the air, broken only - finally - by Shion, the oldest and most senior Sage, croaking out, "So it will be, My Lord."
The Council's submission followed hers swiftly, the Ministers and Sages bowing their heads one by one, then dropping to their knees, offering him the most formal of bows, a sign they would be with him entirely.
Zuko glanced over towards Aang, Qiang, and Katara, all who remained standing with various expressions of awe on their faces. Aang gave him a quick nod, but Katara's expression was impossible to read. She could have been a painting, standing there with the sunlight spilling over half her face. It blinked off her already shiny hair, looking, for half a second, like the glint from a crown.