Chapter Text
Katara frowned at the washbasin. Her hands were beneath the surface, blue-veined and thin now, the knuckles swollen with cold, age and years of work. The soft glow of the rippling water shivered like moonlight on the ceiling, and provided some small light to the room as she healed the slice on her finger.
The tremors had come on while she was cutting blubber for her morning meal. Her hand jerked. The knife clattered against the board, then bit into her finger. Katara hissed through her teeth, more annoyed than hurt. That was the cruelty of age. Not the pain, but the pettiness of it. A body that had survived war, childbirth, famine, and grief could still betray her over the simplest things.
The fatty smell of blubber rose beneath the metallic tang, thick enough to turn her stomach. Even after the wound sealed under the blue glow of her bending, her fingers kept trembling. She hated that most.
Outside, the South Pole wind knocked the shutters around like old bones with its harsh howls. The storm from last night refused to be silenced or to fade away quietly into the day. Snow pushed at the cracks of the doors, the chill trying to creep in. Somewhere beyond the walls, she knew the village would soon rise for the day. Her habit to rise with the sun was one she had never seemed to lose over the years. She knew that she needed to collect more firewood from the stores soon, if the storm planned to stay any longer.
Then, the water's soft glow stopped, and the ripples went still.
Only her reflection stared up at her: long white hair, braided loosely over her shoulder, tan skin dotted with sun spots, memory etched deep into the lines of her face. But her eyes had not changed, in all her years. Ocean blue; too bright for such an old face.
A gentle warmth spread through the water, like the fading heat of a hot bath. Steam didn’t rise, but her palm felt the soft sting of a not-there burn. Her fingers curled deeper beneath the surface as something strange moved in her chest. Not the ordinary stab of age. Not a sore muscle. Something lower. Older. It began as discomfort, as if one rib had shifted out of place. Then her heart skipped. Staggered. Then came the twang beneath her breastbone, like a tendon plucked too hard.
She knew this feeling. She had learned it the morning Aang died.
Katara froze as the realization crashed through her mind like a rogue wave, the water freezing with the thought. Starting from the bottom of the bowl, creeping up the sides, the crystals forming delicate patterns and dancing over her hands in sharp little icicles, seizing her hands, and locking her fingers into place. A tickle rose in her throat, dry and irritating, almost a cough. When she swallowed it down, her mouth filled with the horrible taste of ash. She cleared her throat once, softly, trying to be rid of the feeling. The sound seemed too loud in the little room.
She drew in a breath, slow and careful and willed the water to release her hands. The way healers told frightened patients to breathe when the body had mistaken sorrow for danger. But the water did not move. Instead, her lungs filled with cold morning air, and her heart seemed to slow down once again. The familiar sting brought a small, fleeting comfort for one suspended second.
She tried to call the ice back to water, but it remained solid.
In fact, everything remained still in that second, until she exhaled. And as the breath left her, the fire went out.
Not with a hiss. Not with smoke. Just in one moment, the small hearth that burned softly with the coals of blue-orange and stubborn against the cold, faded into darkness. The kettle above it stopped hissing, and the room lost all warmth.
And in her heart, she knew.
The knowledge moved through her, before grief did, old and terrible and intimate. Water knew. Fire knew. Somewhere across the world, in a palace built into the bones of a volcano, the last breath had left him, and for one impossible moment the elements had forgotten what they were without him.
“No,” she whispered. The word barely existed before the cold turned it into fog.
The water trembled beneath her hands.
She stood there for a long time, waiting for the warmth to return.
It did not.
By the time the Fire Nation messenger arrived, she was already dressed. Her hair was braided back into her normal bun, and wrapped in layers of fur and blue. Her usual clothes seemed to weigh down on her shoulders like a tiger-seal. She had hovered by the door in wait, despite the ache of her knees at the stillness, and the cold that stiffened her fingers. She refused to relight the fire, not until she received official word.
He came just after noon, though the sky was still pale with winter, the storm finally fading away. The village saw him before she did: a single figure in dark red travelling robes stepping carefully over the packed snow, escorted by two Southern guards. The usual sounds of the village fell away, the cue for Katara to open her door, the wood creaking in protest.
He was young, and his cheeks flushed red from the cold. He shivered despite the heavy woolen jacket, he wore a cloak of black silk. And beneath all that, around his arm was tied a strip of white mourning cloth.
From the softness of his face, she knew he was going to be too young to remember the war. Too young to remember Zuko as anything but the father of the current Fire Lord.
He finally reached Katara’s door, and removed his gloves to offer her a low bow, with the customary form of the Fire Nation court. His shoulders were rounded against the cold as he rose. His eyes were red-rimmed and he locked eyes with her. He looked frightened, not of her, but of what he carried, his fingers fiddling with the strap of the satchel. “Honoured Master Katara.” His voice was soft, and she hated him for it for half a heartbeat. Shouting would have been easier to bear.
He reached into the satchel and pulled out an object that she knew was coming. She looked down at the beautiful letter. Of course, it was stunning. The parchment was thick and cream-coloured, edged in a wash of pale gold. A red silk cord bound it closed. The royal seal had been pressed into dark wax: the flame crest, perfect and unbroken, with a thin brushstroke of black ink beneath it for mourning.
Katara did not reach for it.
Not at first.
The messenger swallowed. “I was instructed to place this directly into your hands,” he said. “By order of Fire Lord Izumi.”
Katara felt her heart lurch. Izumi.
Not Zuko. Never Zuko again.
The wind moved around them in a low white hush, bringing up snow to her face, which melted with the first tear that fell against her cheek. Katara lifted her hand and the messenger placed the letter into her palm with both of his.
For one terrible moment, the letter held the faintest warmth, the ghost of a fire that had warmed her heart.
The messenger bowed again. Lower this time. “I am sorry,” he said, rising and taking a step back in respect and possibly fear, at the grief that she knew was beginning to show across her face. That poor child. He was just a young man standing in the snow, grieving someone he had been raised to honour, who had no idea as to why she ached or wept.
Sniffling, she turned her gaze up to him in study. His mouth was pressed tight. His lashes glittered with melted snow or tears. Her fingers tightened around the letter. “Was he alone?” she blurted out, her words choked.
The messenger shook his head quickly.
“No. His daughter was with him. His grandchildren. The sages. The palace household.” He hesitated, then added, almost apologetically, “I was told to inform you that the turtleducks were outside his window. They would not leave the pond.”
Katara closed her eyes. There it was.
Not Fire Lord Zuko, Dragon of the West, Restorer of Honour.
Zuko.
The boy who pretended turtleducks annoyed him and always fed them anyway.
“Thank you,” she whispered, words likely lost to the wind.
The messenger bowed his head once more and mumbled, “I wish I had brought better news.”
Katara almost smiled. There was no better news left in the world.
She bid farewell to the messenger, and shut the door gently, because gentleness was the only thing keeping her upright.
Returning to the too quiet room, she stood by the hearth, and raised the letter to read it. But found herself caught up in the details: the seal, the gold edge, the careful fold. For the terrible news it carried it seemed decadent. A beautiful letter should have carried a wedding invitation. A birth announcement. A treaty signed in hope.
Not this.
Her thumb pressed into the wax seal and it broke cleanly. Katara unfolded the parchment.
The handwriting was elegant, brushed in formal Fire Nation script. The ink had dried to a deep brown-red, almost the colour of old flame. Every line was measured, words chosen by people who understood protocol better than emotion.
Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,
It is with deepest sorrow that the Royal Family of the Fire Nation informs you of the passing of His Majesty Fire Lord Zuko, Dragon of the West, Restorer of Honour, and Protector of the Peace.
Katara stopped reading.
Her eyes remained on the words, but they blurred.
His Majesty.
Fire Lord.
Dragon.
Restorer.
All those grand, heavy names.
None of them were the one that mattered.
Zuko.
She lowered the letter to her lap and stared at the coals, and then forced herself to continue:
The state funeral and royal burial will be held at the Caldera Palace. By personal request of Fire Lord Izumi, you are invited not as a foreign dignitary, but as a beloved friend of the family and honoured witness to the peace for which he gave his life.
You are also recognised as the sole surviving companion of Avatar Aang’s original fellowship.
The room changed shape. Or perhaps Katara did.
Sole surviving.
The words sat there, quiet and merciless. A quick blade to the back would have been a kinder and swifter blow. To be gone like the others. She listed them off in her head:
Aang, gone.
Sokka, gone.
Toph, gone.
Suki, gone.
Zuko, gone.
And Katara, still breathing, still alive. For a moment, she heard them all.
Aang laughing too loudly over some terrible joke. Sokka declaring a plan brilliant before anyone had heard it. Toph insulting the furniture. Suki’s dry, steady voice cutting through chaos. Zuko muttering that everyone was being ridiculous while doing exactly what they needed.
Then nothing.
Only the wind.
Only the sea beneath the ice.
Only the soft scrape of parchment beneath her shaking hand.
Katara pressed the letter to her chest. It was still warm. Or perhaps she only wanted it to be.
She bent forward slowly, as if the years had finally decided to collect their debt all at once. She did not cry loudly. There was no one left to hear it properly. No one left who would understand what had ended.
By the time Katara reached the Fire Nation, Zuko was already stone.
The ship had lost two days to black water and red clouds. A storm had risen off the eastern islands without warning, turning the sea white and furious, shoving the vessel back every time it tried to make speed. By the second day, everything tasted like salt: her lips, her sleeves, the tea she kept forgetting to drink.
The captain had apologised until Katara told him, very gently, that if he said he was sorry one more time, she would freeze his boots to the deck. After that, no one spoke of the funeral.
They all knew.
The drums had already sounded. The royal family had already walked behind the bier in white and gold. The ashes had cooled. The Fire Sages had already sung the long death-prayers of Agni. Incense had burned down to grey curls. Wax had pooled beneath the memorial candles. The official mourners had gone home with red eyes and straight backs.
Katara arrived at the palace after sunset. Heat rose from the courtyard stones through the soles of her boots. The palace lanterns blurred in her tired eyes. It was all so warm, and alive, and so wrong, knowing that Zuko would not be on the other side of those doors to greet her.
When she had left the ship, they had begged her to slow down. To wait for an escort and palanquin to carry her through the busy streets of the city to the palace. She had left their voices to the harbour, and pushed through the exhaustion and aching hips and clicking knees to get there. But it didn’t matter really.
It was too late.
Too late for the ceremony.
Too late for the burial.
Too late for him.
Too late to see him and say goodbye one last time.
An attendant met her at the gates and bowed so low his forehead nearly touched his knees. He was young. His hands disappeared into his sleeves, and when he spoke, his voice caught on her name. “Master Katara,” he said, “the Fire Lord’s family has prepared rooms for you.”
The Fire Lord.
For a moment, she did not understand who he meant.
Then she did.
Zuko.
Her hand tightened around the folded letter hidden in her sleeve.
“I don’t need rooms,” she said. “Take me to him.”
The attendant’s face changed. Only slightly. But Katara had healed too many dying soldiers not to recognise the look people wore when there was nothing left to offer but kindness.
“Of course,” he said and bowed again, his clothes rustling and nearly swallowing his frame whole. She almost smiled when he tripped on the too long robe.
He took her first to the grand courtyard.
The official memorial stood beneath a row of flame-shaped lanterns, their heat making the gold veins in the stone seem to move. Fresh flowers had been laid at his feet. In the Fire Nation warmth, their edges had already begun to curl.
Zuko stood taller than life, crowned and robed, one hand resting on the hilt of a ceremonial dao. His face had been made noble. Severe. Untouchable. The sculptor had remembered the scar and forgotten the boy.
The titles were cut into the stone at his feet; Peacebringer. Dragon of the West. Restorer of Honour. Fire Lord Zuko.
Katara stared up at him.
She knew that man. Everyone knew that man. The world needed that man.
But she had not crossed the sea for a monument.
Inside the hall, they showed her portraits. The gallery smelled of varnish and old incense. Her footsteps sounded too loud beneath all those painted versions of him.
Zuko at seventeen, newly crowned and too thin for his robes, his collar sitting crooked despite the artist’s effort.
Zuko at thirty, standing beside Earth Kingdom delegates, one hand clenched behind his back and a pained smile obvious to anyone who knew him.
Zuko at forty, holding Izumi with an expression so frightened and tender it almost made Katara smile.
Zuko as an old man, silver-haired, golden-eyed, his scar softened by age but never erased, the gold in his eyes dimmed but stubborn.
“He hated sitting for them,” a woman said behind her.
Katara turned.
Izumi stood at the entrance to the gallery, dressed in mourning white. She was older than Katara wanted her to be. There was too much Zuko in her face. It made the room tilt. Katara’s knees softened and the gallery seemed to move around Izumi instead of the other way around.
“He said every artist made him look like he was preparing to declare war on furniture,” Izumi said, gazing up at a portrait with soft eyes, and a tremble at the corner of her mouth.
A sound escaped Katara. It scraped her throat on the way out. Not quite a laugh. Not safely a sob. “That sounds like him.”
Izumi crossed the room and took her hands. Her palms were warm and shaking. No ceremony. No title. “I’m sorry,” Izumi said.
Katara looked away. “I tried to get here.”
“I know.”
“No.” Katara hated how old her voice sounded. “I tried.”
Izumi’s fingers tightened around hers, warm enough that Katara almost pulled away.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Izumi said, “There’s somewhere else.”
She led Katara through a narrow side door, away from the formal halls and polished floors. They passed sleeping corridors and servant paths where the floors changed from polished stone to worn tile. A small shrine waited in an alcove, one candle still burning, the air around it sweet with old incense.
It was quiet there. The air smelled of pond water, damp leaves, and warm stone cooling after sunset. Crickets sang somewhere in the dark. A pond lay silver beneath the moon. Lily pads floated on the surface. A crooked bridge crossed the water, and beneath the flowering trees, turtleducks slept with their heads tucked under their wings.
At the edge of the pond sat another statue.
Katara stopped breathing. Her fingers slipped from Izumi’s.
This Zuko was not crowned.
He sat with one knee raised, robes loose, sleeves pushed back. His hair was carved falling over one shoulder, not arranged for court. One hand rested on his knee. The other reached toward the pond, palm open, offering crumbs to a cluster of turtleducks gathered at his feet.
His mouth was not smiling. Not exactly. But there was warmth there. A reluctant softness. A private peace.
The sculptor had not made him powerful. They had made him loved.
Katara took one step forward. Then another.
The years fell away in cruel little pieces.
A young Fire Lord standing beside her after the war, silent because neither of them knew how to say they had survived. An old friend pressing tea into her hands with too much care. A man she had never chosen because the world had always been watching.
Katara reached the statue and sank slowly to her knees. The stone path was cold through her clothes. Her knees complained, but she ignored them. “Oh, Zuko,” she whispered.
The garden blurred.
She pressed her hand to the stone cheek.
The stone stole the warmth from her palm. It was colder than she expected, though she had no reason to expect anything else. The cheek was smooth beneath her fingers, too smooth. No scar texture. No warmth. No breath.
He was gone.
He had been gone before she arrived.
Her fingers shook as she drew a letter from her sleeve. The paper was soft from years of being unfolded and folded again, the creases worn thin as old skin. She had carried it across oceans. Across decades. Across every sensible reason not to. She opened it one last time beneath the moon.
Zuko,
There were so many years where choosing you would have hurt too many people.
I told myself that it was it right.
But in another life, I think I would have chosen you first.
Katara.
Her thumb brushed over his name. Then she folded the letter and placed it in the statue’s open hand. The paper did not want to stay at first. Her fingers had to press it into the curve of his palm. It looked small there. Fragile. Ridiculous, after so many years of carrying it.
The turtleducks stirred. One gave a sleepy, questioning chirp. One lifted its head. The pond rippled, though there was no wind. Izumi drew in a soft breath behind her.
Katara did not turn. She was looking at the stone hand. At the letter. At the place where moonlight had gathered around Zuko’s fingers, pale and trembling, as if the world had just touched a bruise.
For the first time since she arrived, Katara let herself cry.
Not loudly. Not grandly. There was no ceremony left for grief. Only an old woman kneeling in a private garden, beside the boy the world had turned into stone before she could say goodbye.
After that night, the garden changes.
No one says it openly at first.
No one in the palace says ghost. Not where the sages can hear. Not where Izumi can hear. But every year, on the anniversary of Zuko’s death, water gathers at the statue’s feet.
Not rainwater. Not pond water. Salt water.
It appears in a thin shining crescent around the stone hem of his robes, as if the sea has come all the way to the palace to kneel. By noon, the salt dries white on the stone. Servants wipe it away and it comes back before sunset.
The turtleducks never avoid it. They sleep beside it. Sometimes, servants swear they find the folded letter damp but unruined in Zuko’s stone hand, the ink still dark, the paper never rotting.
Katara visits every year after that.
At first, people escort her. Then they stop. Everyone knows where she is going.
She comes without ceremony. Without guards. Without the blue robes of the great Southern healer. She never brings flowers. Never incense. Only a travel cloak, a walking stick, and whatever she has been carrying too long to say to anyone living.
She sits beside the statue and tells him things:
“Sokka would have hated the big one,” she tells him in the first year. “Too much chin. He would have liked this one, though. He always did have terrible taste.”
In the next year she whispers, “Toph would say the sculptor got your stance wrong. Then she’d cry and deny it until we all died again.”
And after five years, she murmurs a soft confession, “Aang would have overfed the turtleducks and called it diplomacy.”
“They still don’t let us be people,” she says softly in what she feels might be her final year, if her joints are anything to go by. “Even now.”
But she makes it back another year, and continues to speak to him for hours. Or maybe not at all. She cannot tell, as the sorrow and memory of loss blends together. She is alone.
In the last year, she is very old. Triple digits, and so many grand-children and great-grandchildren fill her days and heart, she cannot keep count. But she is still lonely, and older than she thought she would ever grow to be.
Her hands ache. Her fingers no longer close properly around her walking stick. She has to pause halfway across the bridge and pretend she is looking at the pond. Her breath catches in a way she chooses to blame on the night air. Her knees make a sound when she shifts, and she glares at them. Her bending still comes, but not quickly. Not the way it used to leap to her hand before she finished wanting it.
She lowers herself beside the statue with a grimace. “You waited,” she says, placing her hand against the stone face, “until I was too old to be angry at you.”
The statue warms beneath her palm. Katara closes her eyes. There is no fear in her when she leans against him. Only exhaustion. Only relief.
The turtleducks gather at her feet. Above her, the flowering tree releases one pale blossom.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
By morning, the garden is covered in petals. A servant comes to sweep the petals from the bridge and drops the broom.
Katara is found beneath the tree. Not simply curled beside the statue, as if she had grown tired during a conversation.
No.
The statue has moved. Only slightly, but enough to turn every breath in the garden fragile.
Zuko’s stone arm, once resting still at his side, now curves around her shoulders, shielding her from the cold. His open hand covers her as though he had drawn her close in the night and refused to let the world touch her again. Katara lies in his lap, peaceful and small against the carved folds of his robes, her cheek resting near his knee as if she has only fallen asleep there after speaking with him too long.
One of her hands is still resting over his. The other is tucked against her heart.
Above her, the statue’s face has tilted down. The eyes are blank stone. Empty. Unseeing.
And yet something in the angle of his head feels unbearably gentle.
Almost affectionate. Almost alive.
As if, in the last hour of her life, something of Zuko had reached through the stone and gathered her in. As if he had known she was coming. As if he had waited at the edge of death with one hand extended, and when she finally reached him, he had closed it around her.
No one speaks for a long time.
Even the turtleducks are silent.
The letter is gone.
Only the petals remain.
Katara expects darkness.
Or perhaps the ocean.
Instead, there are blossoms.
She wakes beneath a tree she has never seen but somehow recognises. Petals cling to her sleeves. Its branches spread across a sky full of stars. The moon hangs enormous and low behind it, silver as breath on glass.
The grass beneath her is cool and damp. For a moment, she does not move.
Someone is holding her. An arm around her shoulders. A hand at her back. Warmth against her cheek. Beneath her ear, where there had been stone, there is a heartbeat.
Katara opens her eyes.
Zuko is there.
He is not seventeen. Not ninety. Not any version of him she can name. His hair is silver-threaded, but his eyes are bright. His scar is pale in the moonlight. His mouth is the same mouth that used to forget how to smile until it was already doing it.
His robes are pale. There is no crown. No armour. No throne.
Just Zuko. He looks at her like someone who has been holding his breath for a hundred years.
“You’re late,” he says softly, his voice rough with words, as if it’s gone unused for years. “Not that I was keeping track of time.” He tries to make it sound like a complaint. It almost works.
Katara touches his face because she can. Her thumb finds the edge of his scar, and his eyes close like the touch hurts.
Because no one is watching. Because there is no court. No council. No war room. No husband waiting in another life. No daughter, no nation, no history asking them to be better than they are.
“I had a life to finish,” she whispers.
His hand closes over hers, careful even now, as if he still thinks he has to ask permission. “And now?”
She looks up.
The moonlight catches in her tears before she can pretend they are not there. Katara smiles. “Now,” she says, “I choose you.”
For a moment, Zuko does not move. For one heartbeat, he looks like the boy he had been: startled, furious with hope, afraid to believe he is allowed to have this. All the years he had stood too far away. All the letters he had burned. All the times he had said her name only after she left the room.
He pulls her against him. His hand spreads across her back, warm and real. Katara lets herself be held.
And when he kisses her, it tastes not of goodbye, but of coming home.