Chapter Text
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, tucked between trade agreements and a complaint from the Earth King about border tariffs.
"If you don't pass this letter along to three different people, you will become pregnant with the next person you lie with — even if you are a man.
~ Fralie, the Ancient Spirit of Fertility"
Zuko stared at it for a short moment.
Then he threw it in the bin and went back to the trade agreements.
His first thought was Sokka. His second thought was also Sokka, with Aang as a close runner-up. Either way, it was clearly a prank, and beneath his dignity to acknowledge.
He forgot about it almost immediately.
He did not forget about it when he found himself hunched over a bowl at dawn, his long hair cascading into it in a deeply undignified curtain while his stomach tried to turn itself inside out.
He heard Katara's footsteps stop behind him.
A pause.
A very suspicious pause.
"You know," she said, her voice entirely too composed, "I vomited exactly like this when I was pregnant with Misuto. Exactly like this." Another pause. "Except my hair was always tied up."
Zuko lifted his head just enough to glare at her over his shoulder.
She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, and she was smiling.
"Don't," he said hoarsely.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're smiling."
"I'm supportive."
He would have argued, but his stomach had other plans.
He spent the better part of the morning in quiet, mounting dread, turning the pieces over in his head like shards of something he didn't want to touch. The letter. The— he couldn't even think the word without his brain skidding sideways.
It wasn't possible. Anatomically, biologically, by every law of nature he was aware of — it was not possible.
The physician told him otherwise.
"It's not possible," Zuko said anyway, sitting rigidly on the examination table. "I'm a man."
The physician had the look of someone who had rehearsed this conversation. "Fire Lord Zuko, men of the Fire Nation do carry a latent capacity for pregnancy — it's rare, and dormant in most, but certain spirits have the power to activate a temporary magical womb."
"That makes no sense."
"And yet."
"Furthermore," Zuko pressed on, his voice going slightly higher than he intended, "even if that were true — which I'm not accepting — I haven't— there was no— the relevant material was never—"
"A magical womb doesn't require conventional conception, my lord. Any intimate contact is sufficient."
Silence.
Zuko stared at the wall behind the physician's head.
"So what you're telling me," he said, very carefully, "is that my wife got me pregnant."
"Essentially, yes."
More silence.
"By accident."
"The spirit's letter did warn—"
"I thought it was a prank."
The physician had no answer for that.
He waited until evening.
Katara was in the garden, waterbending in the low golden light, the water arching over her head in ribbons that caught the last of the sun. She was beautiful in the irritating way she always was — effortless, unaware of it, completely absorbed in the movement.
Zuko stood at the garden's edge and hated how nervous he was.
"Katara."
"Mm?" She didn't look up, sending a spiral of water looping between her hands.
I'm pregnant. Just say it. Say it plainly and concisely, like the ruler of a nation. Say it with dignity.
"I'm pregnant," he said, like an idiot.
The water splashed to the ground.
She turned around slowly. "I'm sorry?"
"I— can we go inside?"
In their sleeping chambers, with the door firmly shut and a candle burning low on the table between them, he told her everything. The letter. The physician. All of it. He watched her face go through several expressions he didn't entirely have names for.
"Let me make sure I understand," Katara said, sitting very still on the edge of the bed. "A spirit cursed you. Because you didn't forward a letter."
"Yes."
"And now you're pregnant."
"Yes."
"With my child."
"...Yes."
She stared at him. He stared back. After years together, she knew he didn't lie — not about things that mattered, and not while looking at her like this, like he was bracing for the floor to fall out from under him.
"What the fuck," she said, with great feeling.
"I know."
"Zuko."
"I know."
She pressed her fingers to her mouth. He watched her carefully, trying to read her, the way he'd been learning to read her for years. She wasn't angry. She wasn't— he wasn't sure what she was. He pushed forward before the silence could swallow him.
"I want to keep it." He said it fast, then steadied himself and said it again, slower. "I want to keep the baby. I know that's— I know after Misuto you decided you didn't want to go through pregnancy and labour again, and I understood that, and we agreed. But this is different, isn't it? You wouldn't have to. I would. And we did say we wanted another eventually, so— this is just— the method is unusual—"
"Zuko."
He stopped.
"How does it work?" she asked quietly. "The— delivery."
He exhaled. "The physician says the womb is temporary. When the time comes, they'll find a way. They're already researching it." He paused. "I don't have the— the usual anatomy. Not yet. But they'll manage."
Katara was quiet for a long moment, looking at her hands in her lap.
Then she looked up at him, and there was something in her expression that was soft, and a little bewildered, and very, very her.
"We're going to have another baby," she said.
"It appears so."
"And you're going to be the one who's pregnant."
"I am."
A beat.
"Does it come with the morning sickness?"
"It started with the morning sickness, Katara, you watched it—"
She laughed — genuinely, the kind that crinkled her eyes — and something in his chest loosened by several degrees. He hadn't realized how tightly wound he'd been until just now.
"There's one more thing," he said, sobering. "People will talk. If they see me like this, they'll— you know how they are."
She did. Six years of navigating court politics and public perception had made them both fluent in the language of politic.
"So," he continued, gathering himself. "What if— and I acknowledge this sounds absurd—"
"We pretend I'm pregnant," she finished.
He blinked. "You got there fast."
"It's not that absurd." She tilted her head, considering. "I'm waterbender. I can manage the physical illusion for a while. And people already expect it of me, not you."
"It's a terrible plan," he said.
"It'll probably work."
He crossed the room and pulled her into a hug — a little clumsier than he meant to, his face pressing into her hair. She hugged him back without hesitation, solid and warm and certain in the way she always was.
"I love you," he murmured. "And thank you. For— understanding."
Her arms tightened around him.
She thought: if she could survive her husband being magically pregnant, she could survive anything.
She was probably right.