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The bed was empty when she woke up, unfettered sunlight streaming through the window and illuminating the swath of sheets where her husband had been sleeping. The sunlight made it warm, just like he did.
It wasn’t a mystery where he was. There were only so many places the man could be on an airship above the clouds. Considering they didn’t have Appa with them and unless he had become an airbender overnight, she knew he was up there flying the only way he could.
Instinctively, Katara reached for her nightgown that had been tossed to the floor the previous night. Outside was nothing but sky. She let it fall again and stood bare in front of the window where no prying eyes could see her.
She was used to waking up in the clouds, though she’d never quite had the same privacy curled up on Appa’s saddle amongst the rest of their friends. The endless sky reminded her of her home. The long horizons, the blue that stretched ever onwards.
The first time she set foot in Zuko’s airship, she expected it to feel cold and sterile like the other Fire Nation ships. Sokka had marveled at the improved mechanics, reminding an endlessly patient Suki that he was basically the so-called father of this invention. Aang had circled the hull on his glider in loops while Toph promised not to metalbend the dragon adorned to the front of the ship into a bust of her own face. Katara had expected to feel as though she had been swallowed by a great mechanical whale. And yet, Zuko had designed the ship to let in as much sunlight as possible. Maybe, she had thought, he also wanted to capture the feeling of being in the open air after all his time with Appa.
“I’m sorry it’s not a sky bison,” he had said, a little bashful still at that age. Everyone laughed as Zuko quietly reassured Appa he could never be replaced.
Even for his tinge of embarrassment, it was clear very quickly that Zuko loved flying his ship. He loved feeling the gentle lift off the ground, he loved soaring next to the sun, he loved the feeling of his hands gripping the wheel, captaining himself through the clouds, sensing the currents around him, reading the air. He had wondered if this is how Aang felt every day, even if he was only experiencing it in fractions.
While the rest went off to explore, Katara had lingered on the flight deck a little longer, just watching her friend so focused on the sky. She had admired his concentration, his comfort with all the dials and levers, his attuned monitoring. She softened watching him ease into it as if this was what he had been doing his whole life. His golden eyes drank in the matching sunshine, and she didn’t mind watching that either.
She still loved watching him. She still loved standing next to him watching the world glide by beneath them, all with his steady hand on the wheel. His hands, always firm, always pulsing with a gentle warmth flitting between handles like morning doves. Sometimes, it felt like he only left the job to his crew to let those same hands hold her for a while instead.
Who knows how long he had already been awake and at the helm. For all she knew it could have been hours.
She pressed her body to the glass and watched a small white cloud drift by. There was only this boundary between her and the open sky, only the cool touch of the glass and the warmth of the sun on her skin. She felt a bit silly, but she also felt free.
Below the clouds the rolling green of the Earth Kingdom flattened to strange geometries. Down there were villagers and people that Katara would never know the names of. There were mothers and children, friends, neighbors. Perhaps someone was pointing at the ship darting between the clouds. Perhaps somewhere below someone’s child was waving at the unseen passengers.
Katara thought about how the ship would dock at the vast wall of Ba Sing Se. How they would all meet to head inwards to the Avatar’s designated estate, and then further inwards to the palace. When she would one day have children, how would she keep them feeling just as ordinary as the children she imagined looking up at her from the ground.
During their courtship there hadn’t been so much talk of heirs. It had been over a year since their marriage and she felt the notions were cropping up like fruit flies. At first just one buzzing around, more or less imperceptible in the room, and then slowly more and more to continue to swat away.
“We’ll do this in our own time,” Zuko had reassured Katara. He recalled the days when Katara was the one to tie their whole group together. He didn’t want to force her to be anyone’s mother again.
Katara wanted children, she did. She wanted his children. Only, some days it was difficult to separate out her own desire to bear Zuko’s children versus everyone else’s desire for her to bear the Fire Lord’s.
She understood the deal. It didn’t escape her that her children would never have a so-called “normal” childhood. It would be a childhood of palaces and royal trappings. Great ships that forged through the world’s oceans and great ships that cut through the world’s skies.
Then again, had her childhood been normal? Marred by war and separation, shaped by the fight for redemption and victory. Only a few good years of penguin sledding, a few good years of games. Still all under the shadow of destruction, still under the weight of all they had lost.
She didn’t regret a moment of her life. She had gotten a chance to see the world at its ugliest and the world at its most beautiful. She had seen armies she thought invincible fall and enemies she had sworn to vanquish become as close to her as the breath from her lungs. And now she was seeing the world rebuilding itself, peace opening channels and binding strangers the world over just as had once happened to her. Maybe her children wouldn’t have normal lives, but at least they would be born into an era of hope.
They would be born into a world where their father, who presumably did not have to ever lift a finger, piloted his own royal ship.
Something warm and soft settled in the pit of her stomach, and she smiled to herself picturing her husband, baby perched on his hip, pointing tiny hands towards various gauges and gears teaching them to fly before they could even walk.
Katara closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. The soft beams caressing her eyelids orange. One day, maybe one day soon, it wouldn’t be so quiet onboard.
“Sleep well?”
Before recognizing her husband’s voice, Katara’s eyes shot open and she scrambled for the nightgown she had left on the floor.
“I’ve seen all that before,” he closed the door fully behind him as she unfurled her blushing body, “just in case you’re worried.”
“You could knock first,” she tried her best to look upset in the face of his little smirk, “I thought you were a crew member.”
“No,” he took off his outer cloak and wrapped it around his wife, “I’m the captain.”
“Alright captain,” she pulled him closer to her, “you’re lucky you’re cute.”
“Just ‘cute’?” He moved his face closer to hers, angling for a kiss.
Something flashed in his eyes that signaled to Katara the cloak he had so lovingly draped over her shoulders would soon also be on the floor.
She cupped his cheek and gave him a quick peck before returning to stretch out on their bed.
Before joining her, Zuko turned to look at his wife, a touch incredulous that she had left him with only the most chaste of kisses.
Even with his slight bewildered frown, there was a grinning twinkle in his eyes reflecting the soft light of their room in the sky. The edges of his skin glowed with a faint gold tinge up against the windows, as if all the warmth he carried inside couldn’t help but manifest around him like the rays of the sun. Katara wanted to cup the glow in her hands and press it into her heart like healing water. In the heavens and on earth he was hers. In the heavens and on earth she loved him.
“How long are you leaving the crew in charge?” she asked as he stretched out next to her, starting to run his fingers through her yet unbraided hair.
“However long you want,” he smiled and twisted a lock of her hair around his finger, “I honestly wasn’t sure you would even be awake yet.”
She propped herself up on her elbow as she turned to face him. His eyes were such soft gold like a drop of dew caught in a beam of the morning sun.
“What are your thoughts on babies?” Katara wasn’t exactly sure those were the words she wanted or expected to leave her mouth.
“Uh,” Zuko sat up and looked at her quizzically, “I… think they sometimes look like old men?”
Katara sat up and took his hand, his slender fingers still a touch rough, the warmth in his palm pulsing faintly like embers. She folded his fingers over hers and smiled up at him faintly. His eyes flickered from confusion to perfect understanding.
“Oh,” he scratched the back of his neck, “like that.”
“Yeah,” she squeezed his hand gently, “like that.”
She watched him think before he formulated any kind of response. The furrow in his brow, the slight turn of his lip - to anyone who didn’t know him, he might have looked angered, upset. But he was only thinking. Perhaps even thinking of something good.
“Only if you’re ready,” he didn’t want it any other way, “... are you?”
Katara thought for a moment. She looked around the room, the light of the late morning sun softening its trappings. Was it still surreal to be soaring above the clouds in the Fire Lord’s ship? Of course. She had traveled the world over, lived a thousand lifetimes in her young one, but deep down she was still just a village kid.
Only, like everything, it wasn’t just a royal possession, it was Zuko’s. It was theirs. Sokka had pinned his drawings up on the walls, the tea sets from Uncle Iroh rested snugly in the ship’s galley, a handcrafted pai sho table sat proudly in the middle of the common room - Zuko knew neither Aang nor his Uncle could never pass up a game. Not to mention all her things left about the place. Traveling coats and various water skins, a blue bead or two skittering across the floor every time the airship veered one way or another.
She pictured a fur lined cradle next to their bed and wondered how else their home in the sky would fill up.
“Well,” she toyed with the collar of his cloak that was still draped around her shoulders, “I don’t think it would hurt to start trying.”
A playful smirk flashed through Zuko’s eyes.
“Should we start trying now?” he watched Katara blush at his words, “Or… or we could wait. There’s no rush… I’m just -”
“How long until we reach Ba Sing Se?”
“Hours,” he grinned, eyes crinkling just enough, “if the Captain orders it.”
“Zuko,” she frowned slightly, “we can’t just fly around in circles because you want to -”
He cut her off with a kiss, the steady warmth coursing through her.
“Let’s just see what happens,” Zuko shrugged before pulling her into another kiss.
They giggled as she pushed him back against the headboard. She wrapped herself around him and kissed him again.
As Katara had predicted, the cloak ended up on the floor next to her other clothes from the day before. The clouds swept by beneath them and the day stretched out ahead towards a bright horizon. Would it be so supremely terrible if everyone had to wait? Duties could wait. Titles could wait. They too were just things that ended up on the floor. Love couldn’t wait, not under a dome of ice or a crimson canopy. Not on earth nor in the heavens.
Golden light enveloped her as her husband took her in his arms. In the heavens and on earth he was hers. In the heavens and on earth she loved him.