Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(More than anything, it begins out of convenience.)

The marketplace is an abrupt experience, a mass of shoving bodies and hastening feet, vendors grating out their prices with all they can muster. Deafened by the crowd, Zuko can only lean closer to the baker to hear her.

“Sorry, can you repeat that?”

The baker’s tone is demanding, as hurried as the atmosphere surrounding them. “Seven gold pieces for two egg tarts, yeah?”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, okay. Sure.”

The clanking of metal coins is drowned out by an ocean of chatter. Nevertheless, through the heavy, sweeping sound, the package dropped in his hand is firm, a transaction completed, and so Zuko turns away.

“What about you, miss? Is there anything you’d like?”

Pressed around them, the market is teeming, restless, full — but by his side, Katara is quiet, empty, erased. She is somewhere else, on a rain-splattered dirt path standing in front of the man who changed her life.

“Anything you’d like?” The baker repeats emphatically. Katara does not hear her.

“Excuse me?” A blank stare. “Miss?” A motionless mouth. Behind the counter, the baker crosses her arms and scowls at her unresponsive customer.

“Girls these days,” she bites out, low and cutting, “are always so stoic and cold. And for what? Just because you want to be a soldier, just because you want to kill men without a second thought—”

“Stop!” Zuko steps forward, but it’s too late. Turning to Katara, he witnesses the shock unfold itself on her face, her lips parting, so harrowingly vulnerable. He swivels back to the baker.

“—compassion, that’s what you young women are lacking these days. When you only think of yourself you forget how to take care of others—”

At that, Katara’s expression clenches, eyebrows pinching a defiant crease, pushing to the edge where it will tip over to raw truths, the ones that wrench themselves into your veins and force you to see the taint to your blood, sounding like — hurting like — I was the first person to trust you, remember, back in Ba Sing Se —

And nothing. Words die on her tongue. Fight collapses into surrender; shame pulls her chin low to her chest. And on the other side, the baker is victorious.

“You see it now, don’t you, girl?” Her tone is gentle, and that makes it so much worse. “Be kind, be respectful, be forgiving—”

“Don’t run your mouth when you don’t even know what you’re saying,” Zuko cuts her off. Slamming his hands onto the counter, plates of bright and colorful confectionery rattle around his tight knuckles, white against the wooden table.

Distantly, reason informs him that some matters — these matters — are best left alone. The woman in front of her is rooted in age and blind ideals, so arguing with her is pointless — but Zuko has never been good at listening to reason anyways, especially not when the baker’s words about soldiers and killing and compassion ring in his ears, so wrong, so bone-deep wrong, that he can’t contain himself even when he has no right to speak. 

“I see young men these days have no respect for their elders either,” the baker spits. “You and your girlfriend should both learn it before the spirits doom your future for your insolence.”

Zuko startles. The baker is wrong. Yet again, she is wrong, and he should not be surprised but this time it’s in a wholly different way. Helpless, he glances back to Katara, but she is looking at him strangely, thoughtfully.

“I’m not—” he starts. But he imagines the baker using his words against him, focusing on the details that do not matter and effacing the picture she refuses to see until there is nothing left. Zuko — Katara — still has something to hold onto though.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs into her ear, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, acting as a guard and sanctuary against the baker’s judgment. But while reaching for her was instinct, holding onto her is more.

Zuko is wary of it, of this more with its indeterminate potential. So he keeps his arms loose around her, light and fleeting. With a simple nudge, she can escape him.

Their surroundings become a blur of color and noise. Through it, he registers the feeling of his legs pumping ahead of him, earth meeting the sole of his boot, yet he’s barely conscious of it. The sights whirl by him like wisps of smoke blowing past his eyes and the surrealness to the air renders him into a wanderer. But then his fingers curl, bunching into black fabric and he remembers the slope of her shoulder; he remembers her.

How ironic, Zuko reflects, that at this moment, she is the one anchoring him even while he is the one tugging her forward.

With this knowledge, his steps find solidity once more.

He directs them away. The crowd thins to two; the air lightens when without a hundred breaths weighing it down.

Having only the presence of mind to contemplate the one layer of fabric separating his skin from hers, Zuko does not notice until it would be impossible not to. He could have stopped a long time ago — he probably should have — but by the time he pauses and looks back on the worn dirt road, all he can see are the stall banners, a sea of bright blots nearing the horizon.

He stares stupidly into the distance for far too long before remembering himself. Startled, he glances at Katara.

“I—”

Too late, he realizes he has nothing to say. Or nothing but an apology, because his hand is still on her shoulder. He commands himself to move, but only his mouth obeys.

“Sorry.” Then, a repeat. “I—”

Color is returning to Katara’s face, the ocean filling the vacancy in her eyes. Although her posture is still resigned, she is straightening; she is listening. She listened to the baker too, but the baker was full of assumptions and conclusions. Katara deserves to listen to the truth.

Zuko hesitates, weighed down by everything that needs to be said. That the baker is wrong. That she doesn’t know what she’s been through. That she doesn’t know her — she doesn’t know you, because you’ve recovered the unrecoverable and forgiven the unforgivable, giving and giving and giving while the world does nothing but take — and Zuko had stolen her from too when she offered him her all.

So, just this one time, she should be selfish. She can recede, if only for a moment, and exist solely for herself.

If he can say that, then the surety to her step and the strength in her stance may return, and he will have expressed a fraction of the meaning he held to the simple apology “I’m sorry” that he repeated out loud and in his mind, day and night.

But he doesn’t. After all, how can she accept the simplest sincerities when she cannot even accept him?

The significance is stuck in his throat. “Everything the baker said was wrong,” Zuko manages to say. “And um, I’m sorry—” for so much, “—for not correcting her. Like about how we’re not dating. I know you don’t want to be associated with me. At all. So sorry, again.”

It’s not enough.

With every phrase, he can see Katara’s eyebrows rising higher and higher, disbelief widening in her eyes and crawling up her throat. One part of him braces for her indignation, but another part of him cannot stand to have her force his guilt out into the open again, not after they stood together under pouring rain with shuddered expressions.

He retreats. Or at least he tries to. But before he can leave her, step back to establish the correct distance between them, Katara reaches an arm over and places her hand over his, halting him.

“Why are you apologizing?” Katara asked. Not hurt nor aggrieved, she is instead somewhere in between, like a shell breaking open.

He has so much to apologize for. He has so much to explain. But Katara’s fingers are slipping into his, interlacing them together, and he no longer has any capacity to speak; he can only shift his gaze to her face and try to understand.

Katara doesn’t say anything more. Not to press an unanswered question, not to clarify why she chose affirmation over rejection. But in the same way that he can only accept, she can only reach forward. Neither of them can break themselves open. Neither of them can confess the “why.”

Cautiously, he adjusts the weight of his arm over her shoulder to something more comfortable. She, inevitably, is tucked into his side. There will be others like the baker who will see them and assume a relationship where there is nothing.

Or maybe, a little more than nothing — something that feels like a beginning. Because neither of them can be more vulnerable than they already are. Neither of them can express why they do not want to let go of each other.

Zuko smiles.

At least, not yet.

Chapter Text

(If they took it into stride before, this time they act with far less elegance.)

As of today, Katara wants it to be known that Zuko is the most irritating and trifling creature she has ever come across.  

Initially, Katara had assumed that things would fall into place after confronting the man who killed her mother, that she’d be able to move forward despite the hurt threatening to overwhelm her. She’s finally had her time to mourn or grieve, but now, they have a war to fight.

Still, even with the closure she grasped, her wounds have been left open and festering for too long to not hurt.

So instead she finds herself taking it out on him, the one who's always reminding them of the tyrant Aang has to face, of the army they have to defeat. It's Zuko. It always has been.

When he pats Sokka on the back or offers Toph an extra helping of the stew she's made, she can't help but bristle in annoyance. She doesn't like the way he's wriggled his way into their lives, their routine. He's inescapable, and the other kids have all subconsciously decided that he would become her partner in all things chores or work-related, which makes avoiding him all the harder.

She doesn't even really know why his presence is so agitating to her.

He was the one who offered Yon Rha’s life to her when everyone else reprimanded her for stepping one foot outside her role as the responsible and compassionate one. He shelters her from the rude comments shot at them in the markets with an air of unassuming kindness instead of sweeping arrogance. He understands her in ways that none of the other kids in their group do.

Maybe that's what it is.

He understands her in ways no one else does.

That seems far too intimate of a relationship for a boy and a girl coming from opposite sides of the war. Although, she supposes they're on the same side now.

Still, Katara can't help but furrow her brow as she ladles a few servings of the stew she and Zuko made for supper.

“Katara?” There he is. “Katara, do you remember where we hid those milk cream buns we got at the market for tonight's dessert?”

He scratches the back of his neck with a sheepish grin, and for some reason, that just makes her blood boil even more.

Snapping her head up to look at him, Katara holds her ladle with one hand and places the other on her hip. “Really, Zuko? You can’t remember where we put them?” She grits her teeth. “Do you know how much I have on my plate right now?”

He does, actually. He helps her manage everything she has on her plate. That does take away some of the satisfaction she gets from yelling at him, she will admit.

“Really, Katara?” Zuko echoes back. He didn't dare do so before, but now he's comfortable enough to reply in kind. She doesn’t know if that incenses her or forces her to view him with grudging respect. “Do you remember that you were the one who hid them because I made a joke about stealing one?”

Grumbling, Katara puts the ladle to rest as she crosses the kitchen, beginning to climb onto the counter. “That's your fault,” she tries, even though the excuse sounds lame to even her own ears. “It's up on the top shelf.”

She orients herself, searching through the cupboards before retrieving the bag of treats. As she begins to climb back down, though, her foot catches, and she realizes too late that she lost her balance and is tipping back—

Only, Zuko’s there to steady her, bracing his hands against her hips, her back leaning against his chest as he breaks her fall. “Yeah… My fault.” His fingers ghost along the bare skin of her waist, courtesy of the cropped shirt she's wearing due to the Fire Nation’s unbearable heat.

Katara’s heart stutters in her chest as she freezes against the counter, barely managing to place the bag of milk cream buns before her. Forcing herself to recover, she twists around in his arms so that he can properly see her eyes narrow into a glare. But she doesn’t quite make it because the smile working its way onto his face is so small and awkward that it quiets the frustration she had been desperately clinging to just a second ago.

“Hi there.” He beats her to speaking, still holding her in with a disconcerting gentleness. Belatedly, she wonders why he hasn't pulled back from her, hasn't put some distance between them somehow. She wouldn't blame him if he did.

Suddenly very aware of the position they're in, Katara blinks as her breath gets caught at the back of her throat. “Hi.”

“Are you still angry at me?” Zuko asks, the question sounding more teasing than anything else.

She was angry at him? “What?” She can barely even remember her own name when he's looking at her like this: with such intensity in his gaze, with her image reflected in his golden eyes.

Leaning just the tiniest bit closer to her, so subtle that she almost didn't even register it, Zuko just laughs. “Oh, nothing. I’ll just make sure those milk cream buns are all nice and ready for after dinner.” He reaches for the bag behind her, his fingertips grazing her arm.

Katara shivers.

Even after successfully obtaining the milk cream buns that started it all, Zuko’s feet remain firmly rooted where they are, his gaze lingering on her despite the prize in his hands. It’s too much. Not sure of what to say but knowing she has to make sense of this somehow, Katara opens her mouth—

“Uh, guys?” Aang’s voice breaks through the tension, shattering it like glass. “Is dinner ready or what?”

Suki stands behind him, eyes shifting between the two of them as though searching for something. “Yeah… Need any help, Katara?”

Thousands of thoughts race through Katara’s mind as she realizes just what position both Suki and Aang have caught her and Zuko in. “Zuko, I told you those were for after dinner!”

Zuko just rolls his eyes at her poor attempt at brushing off the awkwardness of the situation. “Yeah, well, I bought them.” He digs around the bag before popping one into his mouth whole. “I’d like to think I can have my share a bit earlier than everyone else if I want to.”

“Milk cream buns?” Aang’s bouncing on his toes with excitement, already following Zuko out of the kitchen. “You guys bought milk cream buns?”

“For dessert, Aang,” Zuko shoots back cooly, and Katara finds herself shaking her head at his audacity.

Suki’s brow arches in amusement. “So… What was that all about, Katara?”

Already flying across the kitchen back to the stove, Katara forces her breath to steady as she returns to portioning out dinner. “Nothing.” She hates how her voice is trembling. “Nothing at all.”

“You two were rather cozy,” Suki comments anyway, almost conversationally. Her eyes narrow. “Are you guys dating?”

“What?” Katara snaps back, letting go of her ladle out of shock. “No!” She also hates how her heart picks up speed at the thought of dating Zuko, of all people.

Suki doesn't buy it. “Sure.” She rolls her eyes and picks up the ladle where it was dropped on the table, resuming Katara’s responsibility. “Keep telling yourself that. It might be the only way you'll be able to keep convincing yourself that you don't like him.”

Hundreds of excuses flood Katara’s mind, ready to refute Suki’s claims… But her tongue gets tied, and her fury dies down, and her cheeks grow hot, and all she can think of is how close she and Zuko were just a few moments ago.

Chapter Text

(Once is happenstance; twice is a coincidence. The third time though, unexpected as it may be, is all intention.)

Midday encompasses Ember Island with the placid heat of waking up in summer, swathed in smothering sheets and a light drowsiness not so easily shaken off from dreams of the night before. As the sun settles into its highest point, the light bathing the streets imbues the air with a languorous carelessness that reaches every corner. It’s evident in the people strolling about or lazing under tiled roofs. It’s evident in how effortless everything feels, if only for this hour.

Zuko oftentimes thinks that midday on Ember Island is beautiful.

Today is not one of those days.

Resisting the desire to drop dead where he’s standing, Zuko summons the last dregs of his energy to spare a glance at his travel companion. What he witnesses makes him wish he never looked in the first place.

Constituting a light yet substantial weight on her palm, Katara considers the moon peach before her with utmost care. She traces the blend of its pink and golden hues, grasps for its ripeness, balances it by switching it off between her two hands, and skims her fingers across the skin’s soft fuzz. As she holds the fruit up to yet another angle, face tautening in concentration, Zuko wonders what strength — or obstinancy — she must have to carry on like this.

“Do you need help?” He drones behind her.

“No,” Katara says, just as she said in response to all his previous attempts to engage with her. And then, rather predictably: “Just give me another minute.”

Zuko sighs. He’s had enough of this. 

He inserts himself by her side and peers at the source of her indecision. The moon peach, innocuously cradled in her hand, is round and plush. He pauses. Up close, the fruit’s golden, blush-like color feels much more delicate, almost mesmerizing in a way, and it tinges him with a shade of nostalgia he thought he had long since grown out of.

Because once, many years ago, he was a small child so easily lost in a crowd of towering giants, so his mother would take him by hand to the local Ember Island marketplace and she would buy him a peach, soft in his palms and bursting with sweetness on his tongue.

“Zuko?”

He shakes his head. “Oh, sorry, I just remembered something.” Katara’s gaze snaps from the moon peach to him, which reminds him that right , he is here on a mission. “Katara, just buy the Spirits-forsaken moon peach. It’s not some sort of test.”

“But how do I know if this is the one ?” Katara argues. She makes a sweeping gesture at the stacks of fruit behind her. “There’s so many! If I just chose the first few moon peaches I saw, they’d probably all be bad!” 

Upon seeing his unimpressed expression, she huffs, “Besides, I wasn’t taking that long anyways.”

Liar. She really is taking that long.

Zuko opts not to say that. “It’s a marketplace. I’m sure you’ve been to one before. And you also went shopping with me before, and I’m pretty sure we bought everything we needed within an hour every time.” Granted, that might have been due to her restless energy and impatient claims that she couldn’t tolerate him much longer, but still. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been here since the first vendor set up. Which was four hours ago.”

“You never brought me here before, though! I’ve never seen a marketplace as varied and busy as this one before. There are just so many things to see, you can’t blame me for wanting to stay a little longer.”

No, Zuko supposes he can’t. 

“It’ll be quicker if I show you around, though.”

“Fine,” Katara says. But she doesn’t make a move to go, as if to hold onto this moment. Surely she still isn’t going to continue with her never-ending peach evaluation, is she?

“Fine,” she repeats. After a pause, she speaks again, the words coming out careful, a touch reluctant, almost nervous. “But only if you tell me what you were remembering just now.”

Eyes widening, Zuko swivels around to her, not quite sure he heard right. “Uh, what was that?”

“No, nothing,” Katara waves it off, but the motions are half-hearted, an undertone of dejection in her voice. “Forget about it.”

If anything, that confirms it: Katara wanted to know more about him.

Their relationship upon arriving at Ember Island can be described as careful acquaintanceship at best and vapid bickering at worst. And Zuko is fine with that. He presented himself to Aang as a firebending teacher candidate knowing that he will take what he can get, and this — Katara’s forgiveness, her acceptance — is more than enough. If that came along with them dancing around each other and stepping over eggshell-like truths, then so be it. 

Once in a marketplace raining in gray, once in the kitchen capturing gold slivers of sunset, he reached out to her by instinct but held her because of something more. They both knew the implications of it but only acknowledged it in silence.

Still, some change can only take root in words. The more is here now, in his hands and waiting on his tongue, to confront Katara’s anticipation and disappointment, to commit to the apologies he still has to make.

Zuko has to put at least some effort into this relationship, as well as some faith in Katara.

“My mother used to take me here,” he finally says. Katara revolves back to him in gradations, pleasant surprise blooming in the gaze that returns to his. He doesn’t break away. “She was very fond of moon peaches, but she was even fonder of feeding them to me.”

She softens. “That’s not so surprising. She was your mother, after all.”

“Yeah.” His tongue is growing heavy, but he forces the words out anyway. “That was her form of affection, I guess.”

“My mother was the same,” Katara says. “Except for her, it was with sewing and knitting. She loved mittens, but she loved making them for me more.” She cracks a smile, sad yet hopeful. “I guess you can say that’s something we have in common?”

If that isn’t an opening, then Zuko may never have another chance to say his piece, to make his peace.

“Katara, I’m sorry,” he breathes out, releasing all his flimsy pretenses at normalcy in the same exhale. “I know I said it before, but I don’t think I said it well enough. You trusted me even though you had no reason to, but I still betrayed you. I was terrible.”

“Zuko. " She’s forlorn, yet the sorrowful detachment in her voice doesn’t seem to be directed at him. No, it was to somewhere else, toward herself. Katara laughs with a pitiful sort of irony. “You didn’t promise me anything. You couldn’t have betrayed me in the first place.”

He shakes his head. “I chose a legacy of subjugation and cruelty over a new beginning… a better beginning. But even then, I wronged you.”

Katara looks as if she wants to speak, but Zuko can’t compromise, not on this. “You shared something important with me.” He lifts a hand to rest over his heart, feeling, imploring. “And for me to turn my back on you despite that… I treated your grief like it meant nothing. Even though we both knew otherwise.”

He had kept his gaze steady on Katara this entire time, yet he's still stricken with shock when he sees the slight gleam in her eyes.

There’s still much more to say between them; he reckons they can spin a lifetime with their words. But for now, Katara says what matters most.

“Thank you.”

She is the moon, but her smile outshines the sun, and it’s like being unbound from the weight suffocating his lungs for too long; it’s like knowing lightness even when his feet can’t leave the ground. But at the same time, it’s grounding, rooting him to this moment, to the present of him and her and the memories they’re letting scatter between them.

His heart beats a little quicker from the shock of it — and only the shock, he tells himself emphatically.

“So, will you let me show you around now?” Zuko asks, resolutely ignoring the blush rising on his cheeks.

Fatigue all but forgotten, Zuko spends the next hour with Katara wandering from stall to stall, introducing her to the wonderful snacks and desserts of his childhood. At one point, Katara tries to eat a dango without accounting for the filling inside, so Zuko wipes the mess off the edge of her lips and tastes it for himself. Katara doesn’t look him in the eye for a while after that, but they eventually find their cadence again. That includes arguing along the way, as they are prone to do, but the essence of their words is no longer constrained by resigned roles or hollow walls anymore.

He’s never felt so free.

When they go home with a newfound contentment and surety in their friendship as well as a feast that could feed an entire village in hand, neither of them notice the extra moon peach that found its way into their bag.

Back at the fruit stand, an eldery man shares an adoring smile with his wife, one that speaks of secrets only they know. From breaking to mending, from trust to reconciliation, to move from hate to love — to clarify while stuck in the dark and murky liminal spaces — that requires courage. Courage and conviction. And even as inevitably as two people are pulled together, they’ll still have to draw upon quite a bit of strength to see themselves through to the end.

In that context, one moon peach is nothing — and yet it can be so much more.

Chapter Text

(Now, the meaning is a question of red string fluttering between them. They answer with a knot, because how else are they supposed to hold on to each other?)

It’s terrifying, really.

For Katara and the rest of her friends, it’s increasingly clear that existence itself has become a privilege, and the thought that tomorrow will bring Sozin’s Comet causes her stomach to churn.

She can’t sleep.

The thin sheet she’s been using as an extra layer during their trip to the White Lotus camp is soaked with sweat, and she kicks it off, letting it come to rest at the foot of her sleep mat. Sitting up, she presses her fingers to her temples and forces herself to breathe.

In and out. In and out. Push and pull.

Like the moon pulls and pushes the tide, she remembers to pull her breath in and out of her lungs, cherishing the sensation. Who knows how long she’ll be able to do this, the simple tasks that come with living. Her stomach rumbles lightly, and she picks herself up off her makeshift bed. Perhaps a walk and a snack can clear her mind.

Stepping out of the tent she’s sharing with Toph and Suki, she wanders through the rest of the camp before finally stumbling on someone — Zuko. He is a stark silhouette against a more lightly colored tent, but it’s still unmistakably him. He seems distraught, his head tucked between his knees as he sits, slumped on the ground.

“Zuko?” She crouches down beside him, placing a gentle hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

When he looks up to meet her gaze, he breathes in sharply, and she becomes keenly aware of the dark circles beneath his eyes. “My uncle hates me, I know it. I did awful things, Katara. And I abandoned him, despite the fact that all he’s ever done is stay with me.”

Reaching out to place a comforting hand on his arm, she tries to be as reassuring as she can be. She knows that Iroh loves him. “You’re sorry for what you did, right?

He nods wordlessly, the sorrow weighing in his eyes piercing. She can’t even begin to imagine the guilt plaguing his conscience: from Iroh to their own fateful encounter in the Crystal Catacombs, he’s made a lot of mistakes. But, so has she. She can understand.

“Then he’ll forgive you,” she knows Iroh will. “We’re human. We all make mistakes sometimes. Your uncle loves you, though, and he knows just how hard you’ve fought to come this far.” Then, her attention drops to an object he’s fiddling with in his hands. After a beat, she asks, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing.

“That,” she points to the object, and their fingers brush lightly.

Reorienting himself, he glances down at the object, turning it over in his hands. “Oh, this is an old comb.” He seems to consider for a moment before adding, “It was my mother’s.”

Without even any conscious thought about it, Katara’s hands rise to the hollow of her neck where her own mother’s betrothal necklace rests. “Wow… It’s beautiful.”

Then, before she knows it, he’s placed the comb in her hands, looking upon it with affectionate reverence. “It is, isn’t it?”

“It’s gorgeous,” she murmurs in agreement, running her thumb along the comb’s smooth surface. It’s beautiful, made of the finest mother of pearl. “I’m sure your mother was more than proud to wear it.”

“I went back for it,” he explains. “After I… returned home, I retrieved it before my sister or my father could discover it. They didn’t even know I had it to begin with.”

She’s just about to give the comb back to him when he shakes his head, pushing it back into her hands. “Zuko?”

“Keep it,” he replies simply, the sincerity in his golden eyes almost too much for her, “for good luck.”

Her breath catches at the back of her throat as her hands tremble nervously, “I can’t just keep it…”

He smiles, the corners of his lips turning upward. “Yes, you can.” He nudges her fingers so that they close around the comb. “It’s not permanent,” he adds, cheeks flushing hotly. “But wear it for this last fight, please? When the war’s finally over, you can return it to me.”

Her mind races as she nods, lifting the comb up so that she can place it amongst her tangled curls. “I might need a little help putting it in,” she finally admits, and his hands join hers, guiding the comb to the crown of her head. She smiles, “Thank you, Zuko. I’ll make sure nothing happens to it.” Then, her fingers drift to the hollow of her throat and then the back of her neck as she undoes the clasp of her mother’s necklace. “Here,” she offers.

With confusion in his gaze, Zuko accepts the necklace, “Your mother’s necklace?”

“Put it on your wrist,” she instructs easily, “for good luck.” Then, a teasing grin works its way onto her face. “Don’t look so surprised. It’s not like you haven’t done this with it before.”

And then, he’s clasping the necklace around his wrist, and the stone sits against his skin, the blue a sharp contrast to how light he is. “Okay… I’ll make sure it gets back to you, safe and sound.”

Then, she surprises him (and herself) by wrapping her arms around him briefly and resting her cheek against his shoulder. “Everything will be okay.” She’s really not sure who she’s trying to convince out of the two of them, but she smiles when he gingerly hugs her back. Then, she stands and adds, “Go see your uncle.”

As he enters his uncle’s tent, she stands still, lingering for just a moment. The stone on his wrist shimmers with the light of the stars above, and she reaches behind, fingers running across the smoothness of the mother of pearl. 

Both of them are wearing promises, and Katara knows both of them will do anything to keep them.

Just as she’s walking away, she overhears Jeong Jeong and Piandao talking amongst themselves and doesn’t quite know what to make of it.

“The Prince is gifting her with an engagement comb?”

“In this economy?!”

Her heart picks up in her chest and her cheeks grow hot, the implications of their gift exchange finally registering with a click in her mind. She returns to her tent, but there’s no way she’s going to be able to fall back asleep tonight… for more reasons than one.

Even so, as she slides the comb out of her hair and rests it beside her pillow, admiring the kaleidoscope colors sweeping across like carved waves, she can’t help but dream.

Chapter Text

(They happen together, even if the sky is bleeding in blood and ash, even if the weight of the world hanging in balance. That is the heart of the matter.)

At the end of it all, Zuko is silent.

Along with the wind whipping through his hair and cloak, he is weathering a storm of hopes and doubts and what-ifs — they wrangle him, wrack and wreck through his mind with a pendulum’s swing. Never has the crown felt so heavy before, and he isn’t even wearing it.

No, he may not have his crown anymore, but today he will earn it back, regardless of how real and suffocating its weight has become. This is his destiny.

If not for his future, then for hers.

Turning his cheek to the wind, Zuko searches for Katara, a billow of blue against the red, torn tapestry draped over skies and earth. She is so surreal in this storm, her dress blowing in waves and eyes obscured by a lidded, ponderous stare. If it isn’t for the reminder of a ribbon on his wrist, he would think her to be a mirage.

But then she turns to him, her expression set with the same kind of determination she gets when she finds a chore yet completed, and says, “I think Appa is hungry.”

Zuko blinks. “Oh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Should we make a stop then?”

“Yeah,” Katara glances at the sky as if to measure time by the position of the sun. Given the comet’s existence, that ends up being futile. “I think we have time?”

They both knew time has never been on their side, what with Aang’s firebending training being above average at best and every minute of the day just being one more minute of Ozai being drunk on power. But still, in Azula’s case, what harm could come from leaving her alone for an hour or so more? The Fire Nation palace is already familiar with tyrannical and cruel royals anyways.

Zuko immediately feels terrible for thinking this. That doesn’t stop this possibly world-changing detour from feeling like a quick grocery trip on Ember Island before a group dinner, however.

“We have time,” Zuko decides. Sky bison don’t feed themselves, after all.

They wind up landing in a terraced rice field, one that extends on and on with gentle mountain slopes and valleys. It is picturesque, almost in a horrifying way, this contrast between endless verdant life and all-consuming ruin above.

Fortunately, Appa doesn’t seem to be grappling with an existential crisis as all his attention was focused on the stalks of grains at his feet.

Well, good. That’s what they’re here for.

Zuko drops from the saddle, offering a hand to Katara on her way down. Returning to solid ground is always a nice feeling after a long flight on Appa, spacious as his saddle may be, and with this frenetic, fiery energy bounding within him, it felt good to be able to move again.

“How do you feel?” Katara asks. Leaning forward, she peers into his eyes, cautious concern written all over hers.

“Nervous.” He tries to smile, but it comes out strained. “I mean, how can I not be?”

The wind carries with it the weight of bleeding and burning, sweeping through the grass with a heavy hand. Zuko’s gaze follows the path it blows through, all the way to the infinite, blazing horizon. The comet looms, a sunshadow, over them all.

“It’s scary, right?” Katara’s voice has descended to a hush. “No — more like terrifying. There’s this power inside you of unimaginable extent and intensity, and all it would take is one flick of a wrist—” her eyes turn to him, “or one breath to unleash it all.”

He nods. He doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about. He knows, and she knows too.

“So,” she continues, “whenever there’s a full moon, I try to take in everything surrounding me. It’s a reminder that there’s more to the world than what I can do to it,” a regretful smile touches her face at that. “I don’t have to give in, and I know you don’t either, Zuko.”

The rush running through his veins is still there, darkly alluring and twisted, but it’s less loud now. Her words ring clear.

“Want to take a walk?”

The scenery shifts in minute slivers as they stroll around the terrace perimeter, but it’s breathtaking nonetheless. There’s life here, tucked away in the cracks of this oppressive heat and fear, hidden but hopeful. The koi-scaled butterfly still drifts from flower to flower in the wild fringes of the fields, and deeper in the forest, the clouded leopards dart swift and elusive through the shadows. There’s so much sound, a full symphony that follows its own rhythm outside his heartbeat, yet harmonious in tempo all the same.

And in the middle of their loop back to Appa, there’s also the distant chatter of muffled voices behind them.

Zuko and Katara freeze in place and exchange equal looks of horror and panic.

A dozen scenarios play out in his mind. They can sneak away. They can make a break for it. They can fight them off. They can sneakily make a break for it while being prepared to fight them off. All these options are fine enough, except he hasn’t accounted for Appa deciding to emit a contented rumble from the corner up ahead.

The voices stop for one deafening second and then continue with increased volume and hastiness. One armor boot steps into view, and that’s when Zuko knows he has to act.

Taking both of Katara’s hands in his own, he spins them around so that his back is facing the soldier and she is pressed against his chest, hiding both their faces from view. That itself isn’t such a bad plan, however impromptu it may be, but their new position — enveloped in each other, hands held like lovers between them — is too distracting, too reminiscent of the romance scrolls his mother used to read for him to think of anything else.

And now they’re here, breathing heavy, hearts thumping, inches apart.

Zuko risks a peek at Katara. She’s so close, with her blue eyes alight with heightened awareness and her lips parted so enticingly. No, now is not the time to think about that, but then again, wasn’t not thinking what caused him to wound up in these circumstances in the first place?

“Hey, you two there! What are you doing?”

He feels Katara stiffen beside him and gives her hand a squeeze. Wait .

There’s a drawn-out sigh behind them. “Didn’t you hear me? You shouldn’t be here right now! The Phoneix King has mandated that all civilians stay at home during Sozin’s Comet.” Then a mutter: “Stupid teenagers…”

The soldiers draw nearer. Zuko panics.

His lips crash into Katara’s. Zuko does stupid things when he panics.

Katara emits an “eep!” of surprise against his mouth, her eyes seeking his in equal parts question and shock, and he has no choice but to send a prayer that she will understand. Thankfully enough, she seems to do so a moment later, the tension in her set shoulders releasing as she melts into the kiss.

And that’s when the trouble begins, because that’s also when Zuko realizes that this is in fact a kiss. With Katara. With the space closed between them, with her head angled to receive him better, with her hands pulling out of his grip to slide up to the base of his neck and to cradle his cheek. And he swears to Agni — her lips are divine, so heavenly yet so grounding all the same. If her smile can render him both weightless and rooted, he should have expected the taste and feel of her lips this way too, except it’s so much more, almost indescribable. 

If he had trouble thinking before, he lost all capacity for thought by now, and he doesn’t mind it at all. Instead, his body begins to act of its own accord, pushing against her and pulling apart with this rhythm they’ve created, and his arms wrap around her, hands gripping onto her waist. The rest of the world falls away, and it’s just him, her, and the promise between them.

Except the rest of the world is still there, and it includes an increasingly frustrated soldier stalking toward them.

“I said to break it up, you two!”

Now that Zuko thinks about it, maybe he does recall some insistent shouting from the background before. Oops.

Either way, the spell is broken. They break apart hastily, even though the heat radiating off her cheeks and the flush crawling up his neck are dead giveaways of their previous engagement. That, and their faces are dead giveaways too. To the soldiers. About their identities.

Miraculously, that realization hits them before recognition can register in the soldiers. With one hand flying out to grab onto his wrist, Katara turns heel, tugging him forward with only one word of warning.

“Run!”

The rest of the scene seems to pass in a blur. One moment they’re standing still and the next they are climbing onto Appa and shooting off the ground in a cloud of dust, leaving the soldiers below them dumbfounded, uselessly waving their spears at them from where they are on the ground.

As they ascend higher, a gust of wind hits his flushed cheeks, the bracing coolness shaking him out of his adrenaline-induced rush. He remembers himself slowly: where he is, why he is there, and who he’s with. The worries that plagued his mind are still there, but they’re no longer clouding it.

The skies, though bleeding in ash and blood now, will clear tomorrow. And in that tomorrow, he can see himself returning the necklace tied to his wrist to Katara.

Still breathing shallowly from exertion, Zuko spares a glance at Katara, who doesn’t seem to be faring much better. Yet with her disheveled hair and heaving chest, she seems all the more present, a mirage turned real.

Their eyes meet, and he can see his hope and joy reflected in her own.

At the end of it all, they both laugh.