Archive of Our Own

Katara is headed back to Caldera City to spend the harvest festival with Zuko when the storm hits. The fishing vessel she made passage on is a narrow wooden thing, and as the sea heaves, the boat thrashes, and it’s all the crew can do to keep from capsizing or losing their heading completely. They lower the sails and tie down everything they can - including themselves - but the wind is howling strong. Raindrops sting Katara’s face and arms, fat and cold and whipping sideways in the gusts. The deck tilts under her feet, and sailors lose their footing and go sliding towards the railings while she frantically clings to the wheel, helping the helmsman fight to hold their course steady. They’re losing the struggle, and in a fit of desperation, she lets go with one hand and sweeps water from the deck up to freeze it in place.

The captain is frantic, staggering and slipping across the slick planks, holding tight to the back of his son’s shirt. It looks like the fabric is bunched uncomfortably tight across the boy’s shoulders and neck, but he’s holding onto his father’s wrist too. Lightning streaks across the sky and lights up the world, and in the shadowed seconds between the flash and the rumble of thunder, Katara is transported. Suddenly, the sails are not the plain canvas of the Earth Kingdom fishing vessel, but the deep blue of the Water Tribe ship her father and Bato built, and these almost strangers are Hakoda and Sokka. In her head, Gran-Gran’s voice begins the story of The Great Storm - Hush, child, this struggle will not end you. Because long ago, three ships set sail from the North Pole to build their lives anew, to live free of the old ways.

Scared faces are lit up by the next lightning strike, and Katara feels the odd peace of knowing she must be the one to take control. She draws herself up with a deep breath, and shouts above the wind,

“Everybody below deck! Now!” She expects the captain to resist having himself and his crew ordered around by the travelling waterbender they’d picked up, but he does not question her, instead hauling his son towards the stairs and echoing her order.

“You heard her - get below!” The deck clears, sailors giving her glances that vary from relieved to suspicious, but they all heed her and the captain’s urging.

Rather than risk running on the deck, she bends the rainwater to propel herself to the stern. She glances down and sees the rudder, holding steady but shaking and groaning from the pressure of the waves trying to force it one way or another. With a strong push downward, she freezes a column of ice down the hull, encasing the mechanism. They have no manual steering now, but it is preferable to finding themselves adrift after the storm passes and the winds are rarer.

The world was newer then, and without knowing a destination, without knowing anything but the way things had always been, they could only follow the brightest star south and trust the spirits. It is now a battle between her and the storm for control of the sea.

Her bending carries her back to mid-ship and she freezes herself in place again, almost to her knees this time, settling in for the long haul. Breathing deep and closing her eyes, she tries to loosen her muscles against the adrenaline and bitter cold, to feel the shifting of the seas around them.

For many days, they sailed, their hearts and oars beating to the call “away, away, away.” Then, one day the spirits came to test them. The sky grew dark, thick with black clouds, as though night had come early, though Tui refused to shine her light. La set the waves writhing and thrashing against them.

The water churns like the blood racing in her veins, and for an instant, her confidence falters in the face of so much raw power. Then, Katara remembers calling a storm surge in the middle of still waters and washing entire crews of Fire Nation soldiers overboard. She remembers throwing out her arms and holding the rain at bay, then calling it back to her in deadly shards of ice. Katara opens her eyes and thinks that this might be the first fair fight she’s had in years.

It was a test of our people’s strength, to see if we could endure without the goodwill of the spirits, to see if we understood the gifts they have given us and could use them to survive.

A wave rears up, about to break right over her, and she reaches for it, crouching low. Rising, she arcs her arm high over her head, her other arm coming up to join as she pulls the wave higher, higher, and over, until it has leapt the ship entirely. With both hands, she shoves the water outwards, pushing back the wave that had been coming from the other side. The bow starts to tip up sharply, a wave rising just beneath the hull. The ship crests the top of the wave and starts to slip steeply down the other side. Palms down, she sweeps her arms up from her hips to lay level with the horizon before her, and the sea behind the wave rises up to level the course and keeps the prow form plunging under the water. There is only time for a breath before the next wave.

Art by RideBoldlyRide

The storm lasted for what felt like days, cold and dark as the endless winter nights. After a time, the first ship decided to turn back, afraid of what hardship lay ahead. But in its wavering, the crew lost control, and the waves tossed it over, swallowing the ship and its passengers in a great gulp.

The moon continues its path through the sky, but Katara can only feel its pull, not see its light. It is so dark with the lanterns blown out in the wind, the flashes of lightning her only guide. Jagged streaks cut across the clouds, but all they serve to do is illuminate the angry, boiling sky and the towering sea. She isn’t sure if she is unable to distinguish cold from terror, or the storm from memories of Azula. Mostly, the world is shrouded in darkness. Only her connection to the water gives her guidance as the storm rages, and Katara understands suddenly why Toph feels so powerful seeing through her element. The ocean is vast, endlessly powerful, and she is a part of the ebb and flow of it, the shaper of currents even the most experienced sailor cannot perceive.

Seeing this, the second ship faltered as well, and attempted to chart a new course in search of calmer waters. It disappeared into the fog and was never seen again.

She holds the ship steady for hours. She is soaked through and shivering, her clothes heavy as they hang on her. Her bones ache from the chill of the wind, and she feels brittle. The cold is not like this in the South Pole. At home, the cold is dryer, something that can be warded off with a hot bowl of five-flavor soup and enough coats and blankets. This feels like the storm she'd once gotten lost in with Aang and Sokka. She'd spent days afterward huddled in her sleeping bag, hot with fever and surrounded by supplies from home, but still unable to get warm. It was the kind of cold that reminded her of her mother’s chilling ghost story, fleetingly wondering if she would become a little blue ghost too. It makes her think of the water in her blood, and wonder if this frigid downpour is inside her now, freezing her from the inside out.

But the last ship did not give up. Its sailors persisted, trusting that the spirits would not set them to an impossible task. They knew that the storm was a puzzle to solve, a dance to learn, and so they learned to read the sky, and they danced with the ocean. And when the clouds dispersed and the waves calmed, they found the glittering ice of the South Pole.

Either the storm passes over them, or they pass through the storm, but eventually the waves begin to calm. The ship is still rolling, but the rain stops and the wind slows to a speed that is more blustery than buffeting. Slowly, crew members begin to creep back onto the deck with her, looking around with awe, as though they have to confirm that they are in fact still alive and sailing. The men regard Katara with a mix of reverence and fear as they take in the ice holding the wheel and rudder, realizing that despite the general sturdiness of the vessel, they had been but a toy adrift, cradled by her hands alone. Katara does not have the energy to revel in their respect for her skill or to return their thanks. She merely thaws the ice that has been holding her and the steering in place, handing command back over to the captain as she staggers past him on the stairs to her small berth. Just as the first sliver of sunrise creeps over the horizon, Katara collapses on her bunk, too exhausted to even dry her clothes.

That’s why you never count the Southern Water Tribe out, especially when we’re down.

She is unbearably, familiarly hot when she awakes. Sweat plasters her dress to her back and soaks the sheets around her. Blankets are heaped on her, weighing her down. For a confused moment, it is winter and she is back in the hut she was raised in, a child being smothered by her grandmother’s concern. Her throat is dry, and with a voice like crumpling parchment, she mutters,

“Gran-Gran?” Someone shouts her name, and she knows their voice, but it’s definitely not her Gran-Gran. If she could open her eyes, she would probably be able to figure it out, but her eyes are even dryer than her throat, and when she tries to blink, her eyelids scrape painfully and she squeezes them shut tighter.

“No, dear,” another voice says, right beside her. It’s low and feminine, suffused with care, and the hand that comes to rest on her forehead is cool and smooth.

“Mom?” she chokes out, though it feels wrong as it leaves her throat. Katara thinks it must have been a very long time since she’s called out for her mother. The first voice speaks again, closer. She almost thinks it might be Sokka, but she knows it too well to be entirely confused. It is male, and sounds young, but a little raspy. It also sounds terrified.

“What’s wrong with her?” the voice demands. Something in her chest tightens in panic, and she wants to open her eyes and promise she’s fine, but she can’t open her eyes, and her body feels too heavy to move, so she just scrunches up her face and manages to shake her head a little, and say,

“No.”

“Shh,” the woman soothes, fingers gently peeling away the curls of hair that have stuck to her forehead, smoothing them back. The hands leave, and then she hears the sound of water swishing in a basin, a cloth being wrung out, and then a cool wet towel drapes across her eyes. She sighs in relief, the burning starting to be pushed back, at least for the moment. Water seeps from the cloth to the corners of her eyes, and slowly she is able to move her eyes beneath her lids more comfortably. She blinks beneath the darkness of the towel. The furrow of her brow must indicate that the water has done its job, and it peels back to reveal a dim, red-walled room and two people staring down at her.

They are not her family, but their faces - Zuko’s drawn and anxious, Ursa’s gently pleased - put her at ease nonetheless. A weak smile curls across her lips.

“It’s you,” she murmurs. Katara tries to lift her terribly heavy hand to reach for Zuko, to hold his dear face and smooth out the creases in his forehead, but she finds she vastly underestimates the force she needs to get her hand all the way there.

He understands what she wants though, and takes her hand in his, leaning down to kiss the back of it before helping her press her clammy palm to his cheek. The touch hurts a little, because even her skin is aching, but she doesn't mind it too much. Not for this. She wiggles her thumb, and it brushes at the corner of his lips, trying to pull his mouth into a less severe expression.

“I’m here,” he says softly, expression gentle and searching. His fingers press down on hers a little harder. The pain gives way, and she wishes he would lay down here and press all of the aches out of her. “You scared me.” Katara’s thumb strokes his cheek again.

“I’m okay.”

“You have a fever.”

“It’ll break.”

“Katara -” Ursa interrupts her son by clearing her throat delicately, and both Katara and Zuko seem to realize that she is still in the room, just feet away from their very tender display. Zuko blushes bright red, and removes their hands from his face to hold Katara’s hand on top of the pile of blankets.

“Oh don’t mind me,” Ursa tells them, smiling knowingly. “Katara, I’m very pleased to see you awake, but I think I’ll leave you in my son’s very capable care now.”

“Thank you,” Katara says sincerely, wanting her to know that she is truly grateful that Ursa had been here, watching over her and likely keeping Zuko from flying into hysterics.

“Of course, dear. Feel better.” She leans down and kisses Katara’s burning forehead, then Zuko’s, giving his topknot a little tweak as she withdraws from the bed and the room altogether.

After they are left alone, Katara tugs weakly on Zuko’s hand until he gets the message and lies down beside her. She’s still too warm, feeling waves of heat wash over her, the lulls filled only with an awareness of her sweatiness, but she hasn’t seen him in months and her whole body feels disgusting and sore. She wants him close, and he doesn’t seem perturbed by the fact that she’s sticky and probably smells bad, he just curls himself up against her side, lips by her ear, and whispers, “I was so afraid when the captain told me you were sick. I—” She shushes him, and he stops speaking. When she turns her head to face him, their noses slide against each other, and they close their eyes, too close to really see anyway.

“I’ve been sick before, Zuko,” she reminds him, and he nods minutely.

“I know.”

“And I was passing through random villages or sleeping in caves when that happened.” By now he’s heard the story of why Aang had been alone when “The Blue Spirit” broke him out of prison, and he remembers all too well the terrifying month of no letters or news, broken by a short note written in her still unsteady hand, explaining that she’d caught something that was going around the region and had been taken in by a local healer’s family but was recovering. Bringing this incident up does not comfort him, but still he says,

“I know.”

“And I’m awake now.”

“I know.” There is a long pause, and Katara can tell Zuko is fighting to keep from spilling all his worries to her. He doesn’t usually hold back anymore - not in letters, and certainly not when she could hear him try to fumble through a lie - but he seems to think it’s necessary now. The last time she was sick had been the only time he had broken their unspoken agreement to not chase after her, and he’d been so relieved to see her standing that he didn’t even mind that she immediately cursed him out and demanded he leave before nightfall.

“If I promise not to keel over under the weight of your feelings, will you tell me what’s eating you over there?” she asks bluntly. He rears back just a little, blinking rapidly. Zuko doesn’t seem to want to meet her eyes, so she rolls her head back to stare at the ceiling again.

“It doesn’t really matter now,” he says. “Mostly boils down to ‘I was scared’ and ‘I missed you’.”

“I missed you too,” she says. Then, because it’s true, and he was honest, she says, “And I was scared too.”

Of course, because he’s Zuko and she’s Katara and they know each other, he understands that she had not been scared of the same thing.

“My guards heard the story from the sailors. They told me some of it. Said you fought a storm for hours.”

“I had no choice,” is her instinctive response, gearing up for him to say she shouldn’t have pushed or endangered herself like that. Instead, he just says,

“I know.” Relief washes through her like an ebb in her fever. For the hundredth - thousandth - time, she remembers that she does not have to defend herself to Zuko. No matter how grouchy or anxious he may be, Zuko has always trusted her judgement, believed she is capable. He is still on his side, eyes watching her profile, and the silence settles easily over them.

A soft knock at the door draws him away for just a moment. It must be a servant, because she hears him quietly thank them and shoo them away, and when he turns around, he has a tray in his hands. There are two steaming bowls of soup and she struggles to drag herself into a seated position so that he can place the tray on her lap. Zuko hurriedly sets the tray on the bedside table and adjusts the pillows behind her as she settles, and she wants to protest his fussing but she doesn’t think she can really arrange them herself. When he sets the food in front of her, he gives her an encouraging smile before picking up his own bowl and spoon.

This soup is one of the Fire Nation dishes she prefers most - the broth smooth and salty, pieces of tofu and green onion floating through it. She notes that her bowl is heavy on the seaweed, and wonders if Zuko had made the request or if the cook simply remembered her particular taste for it. His eyes watch her carefully as she eats one slow spoonful at a time, careful not to unsettle her stomach even though she wants to lift the porcelain to her lips and drink it all down in one go. Their reunions have never been so quiet before. Usually the first several days are filled with incessant chatter as they rush to fill each other in on every story they forgot to put in letters that has suddenly come back to them (not to mention the other frantic greetings their lips make). This peaceful togetherness always comes in time, but she can’t help but be a little sad to have missed out on that passion. Her aching head and joints wouldn’t appreciate any extra noise or motion though, so she just tries to soak in the comfort.

When they are both done eating, Zuko slides the tray off of Katara’s lap and leaves the bed. She wants to call after him to stay, concerned that he is being called away from her and back to work, but she makes herself stay quiet.

“If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?” he asks, stacking their dishes back with the servant’s tray on the sideboard. It slips out suddenly, a game she’s heard him use with Azula, trying to hone in on her moods. He’s never tried to play it with her, and it feels odd to have the question out there.

“Death?” she asks, flatly. He turns to stare at her, unimpressed. Then Zuko cocks his head, contemplating his words before asking,

“What would make you happy right now?” This question feels right. For a moment, she is quiet, taking the time to weigh her answer. She is thinking, just as he must be, of months of letters back and forth, of how close he’d come to saying outright he thought that if he could be with her he would finally be happy.

“A bath,” she sighs, at length, shifting uncomfortably on the sheets.

“I’ll call someone to help you,” he says. “Do you want my mother to come back?” She shakes her head.

“I’ll manage -”

“You are in no condition to do anything by yourself,” he cuts her off, briefly slipping into his stern Fire Lord voice, and Katara uses some of her waning energy to shoot him a look that states clearly her displeasure at the tone. To his credit, he realizes he’s messed up as soon as he sees her face, and starts to backpedal. “I just - I mean…” He gapes helplessly for a moment, as she stares frostily from where she lies. Bedridden though she is, it’s obvious he doesn’t put it past her to freeze him to the wall with her own fever sweat. She’s sincerely considering it, when he finally points an accusing finger at her and says, voice a bit strained “After the Agni Kai with Azula,”—Katara sobers at the mention of Zuko’s near death—“you wouldn’t let me out of bed by myself for a week.” She softens then, recalling her own overwhelming fear and how aggressively protective she’d been of him. That had been years ago, when they had only just gotten close. She feels a rush of sympathy for her boyfriend, and notices now that he looks rather tired and sickly himself.

“I was going to say I’ll manage with the staff,” she says gently. It’s true. Really, she feels like a rag doll full of sweat, and her father always says a true warrior knows their limits. The regret on Zuko’s face says he believes her. He takes his seat on the edge of her bed again, reaching out to smooth her frizzing hair away from her forehead.

“Are you saying that because you’d rather have a stranger help you, or because you don’t want to bother my Mom?” he asks. Instantly, Katara thinks of Ursa’s soft voice and small steady hands, and how she had momentarily thought her own mother was with her. There is no trace of pity in Zuko’s gentle gaze as he watches her expression, but she closes her eyes to it anyway. Katara’s eyes sting, and she wants to tell herself it’s the fever, but the tightness in her throat is hard to ignore. She sounds choked even to her own ears as she says,

“If she’s not busy…” she has trouble getting through the words, but Zuko doesn’t finish the sentence for her. Not for this. “It would be nice if your mother could help me,” she says, voice watery but clear. Zuko bends down to kiss her forehead.

“I’ll send someone to ask her.” As he walks to the door and exchanges a few hushed words with one of the guards outside, a tear slips out of the corner of her eye. By the time he shuts the door again, it has disappeared into her hairline. Still, as soon as Zuko returns, he sees the trail it left and traces it with a finger. “She’s gonna come take care of you,” he tells her, and doesn’t mention anything when a couple more tears fall. Instead, he just says, “There’s a bench in the bathroom. Why don’t you let me help you get that far?” Katara nods.

It takes longer than it should for her to get into the bathroom, but the room is big and Zuko doesn’t pick her up to speed it along. He just cups her elbows while she grabs his and leans on his forearms as they shuffle across the room together.

“I feel like I’m a hundred years old,” she complains, frustrated that the body she relies on is failing her so utterly.

“Well you don’t look a day over eighty,” he says, and Katara groans. Uncle Iroh taught Zuko many wonderful things, but his sense of humor she could live without. Zuko laughs at her, just a little bit, and then says, “I promise that when we’re actually a hundred years old I won’t make that joke.”

The idea of being a hundred years old with Zuko is an appealing one. Of course he’d definitely be even grouchier, but as they continue shuffling along, Katara thinks of Gran-Gran and Pakku, so happily, snippily in love. It would be nice, she thinks, to love someone like that - so long that time has worn down all your jagged edges and they don’t cut anymore. “I’ll hold you to that,” she tells him, her voice sincere. He understands. He blushes. He smiles.

“Good.”

After he sits her down on the bench in the bathroom, Zuko starts bustling around to start running the bath, grab her towels and a bathrobe and extra towels. Ursa lets herself in just as Katara is insisting that she absolutely has all of the soaps she could possibly need and then some. They fall silent at her arrival, and Zuko looks at the soaps in his hands for a moment before he sets them down on the edge of the bathtub and leaves, turning in the doorway to say, “I’m just gonna go get some more soup? And get someone to change the sheets.” Ursa catches her son’s arm before he can whirl away and says,

“I think you could probably persuade someone to go get the soup for you, and you could go lie down for a while.”

“They’re gonna change the—” Zuko gestures over his shoulder with his thumb.

“You have a room too, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And I will come get you once Katara is done with her bath.” Zuko looks like he wants to argue, but Ursa just steamrolls right past and says, “Have a good nap, pumpkin,” and shuts the door in his face. Katara covers a laugh that turns into a cough.

Despite Zuko’s concern that Katara would be uncomfortable having Ursa help her bathe, she isn’t bothered in the slightest, and if Ursa is, she doesn’t show it. She is grateful for the patience on her face when Katara’s sore joints and unsteady balance make her take far too long to lower herself into the water, and for the gentleness with which she combs the plethora of tangles from Katara’s sweat-matted hair. While the maids that have helped her prepare for formal events before have never been rough with her, they are professionals, efficient in their movements. Ursa is a mother, so when Katara shies away or gets choked up with frustrated tears, she is soothing but uncompromising.

“Almost done,” she promises the tenth time Katara instinctively jerks out of reach of the comb after it hits a tangle. “And after we dry you off we can braid it so it doesn’t get so bad again.” The promise of having her hair done is enough to convince her to lean back in the water again, letting her hair float while Ursa’s free hand supports her back. Her ears dip below the water line, and all she can hear is her heartbeat in her ears and the soft splashes of Ursa working the knots out of her hair again.

With her hair pronounced satisfactory, Ursa twists it up and swiftly pins it out of the way on top of Katara’s head. She soaks a washcloth and rubs it on one of Zuko’s many bars of soap. She gives it a sniff and tells Katara, “this one’s definitely vanilla,” before starting to rub behind her ears. Katara knows she’s grimacing, but the thin skin aches even though the towels here are much softer than she’s used to having around. “I know,” Ursa responds to her silent complaints. “But we have to, otherwise you’ll start growing potatoes back there.” It’s the kind of silly thing you say to a squirmy little kid, and the practiced ease with which Ursa says it tells her it was the same voice she used to convince Zuko and Azula to sit still too. It reminds her painfully of her own mother’s admonishments that she and Sokka would start smelling of fish and bring all the scavenging birds to their hut.

The fever has left her feeling just as raw in her emotions as in her skin, and she is irritated with herself to find her already watery eyes spilling over and dripping down her cheeks. Ursa finishes washing Katara’s back and presses the cloth into her clenched fist.

“Why don’t you take a moment to finish up while I grab you a nightgown,” she suggests. Katara appreciates the attempt to give her some privacy.

“I don’t know where my things are,” she realizes. “This isn’t my room.”

“Zuko had your luggage brought here. If there’s anything else you want brought over, I can ask someone to retrieve it.”

“Where are we?”

“The Fire Lady’s suite,” Ursa tells her, and then leaves. Katara can vaguely hear Ursa rummaging around in drawers searching for where the maids had unpacked her clothes. Her ears are ringing, and she can’t force herself to move as she mulls it over. It is one thing to admit that they want to grow old together, and of course they have discussed over the years what marriage would mean. It would mean Katara giving up most of her travelling to spend that time governing alongside Zuko. It would mean making a home in the Fire Nation, and although she has not lived at the South Pole since she was a child, she has not lived anywhere else either. With a sudden rush of fear, Katara becomes aware of the bare skin of her neck, realizing that she has not been wearing her mother’s necklace this whole time. The last place she knew she had it was when she went out into the storm. Her throat tightens, and her tears return, falling quicker, her breaths broken and rough as she sobs, terrified.

The sounds from the other room cease, and Katara is already heaving herself out of the water when Ursa appears, just in time to catch her from slipping as she tries to climb out of the tub.

“Katara!” she exclaims, shocked, and catches her elbow. Katara staggers, but rights herself.

“My necklace,” she says, and Ursa’s face turns sympathetic, but she just shakes out the robe in her hands and starts threading Katara’s arms through the sleeves.

“We’ll ask the maids if they unpacked it with your things,” Ursa promises, tying the sash shut, and wrapping an arm around Katara to guide her back into the room. A young woman is gathering a heap of dirty linens into her arms when they return, but she hastily drops them to bow to the women.

“Lady Ursa, Master Katara.”

“Do you know if there was a necklace in Master Katara’s things?” She nods quickly.

“I saw one on the vanity.” Weakness forgotten, Katara rushes to the piece of furniture indicated, sinking onto the plush bench in relief when she sees the familiar blue ribbon and stone resting on the lacquered wood. Her mother’s necklace looks plain compared to the rest of the elegant glass bottles and sparkling baubles that dot the vanity, but Katara has never seen anything more beautiful. “Would you like help putting it on?” She is startled by the maid’s sudden appearance at her side, but accepts quickly. Sure and gentle hands brush her hair aside and then fasten the necklace.

“Thank you…” Katara meets the young woman’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before. What’s your name?”

She blinks in brief surprise. “Hiri, Master Katara.”

“Thank you, Hiri.”

“Would you like me to braid your hair?” Katara realizes she has been playing absently with her damp hair, and thinks at first to tell her that Ursa had already offered to do her hair, but Hiri is smiling, so she nods.

“Yes please.”

Now that the fear of losing her necklace has subsided, Katara finds that between the soup and the bath, she is actually starting to feel a little better. The strength she finds is almost certain to be short-lived, but it is nice to be clean and sitting properly, and as Hiri starts to section Katara’s hair with an ornately carved comb, she finds herself relaxing. The bottles on the vanity clink, and then she smells something floral that Hiri starts to rub into her hair. Ursa steps out for a moment and later, another maid enters to deposit a tray of tea and takes the laundry away. A steaming cup is placed on the vanity for her, and as she takes a sip, she feels the hot liquid and sweet honey soothe her scratchy throat. Folding her hands around the warm porcelain and closing her eyes, Katara feels the familiar tug of her hair being twisted into a braid that Hiri directs to drape over her shoulder.

It is just as Hiri is tying the braid off with a ribbon that Zuko returns, slipping in through a door that Katara had mistakenly assumed was a closet, but must adjoin the Fire Lady’s rooms to the Fire Lord’s. She feels her cheeks warm, even though her fever is less apparent for the moment.

“You’re still up,” he says, smiling, though the way he glances at his mother implies that he privately thinks she should be resting. Ursa rolls her eyes at her son, not lowering her teacup, and Katara thinks Hiri might be fighting a laugh.

“The bath helped,” Katara tells him, and Hiri bows and steps away to start tidying up as Zuko comes to stand behind Katara, his hands resting on her shoulders.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he says, and bends to kiss her brow. “A lot of people are going to be happy to hear it.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, leaning back. His clothes are a simple tunic and pants rather than the more formal attire he usually wears when working, and she can easily feel the warmth of his body where her back presses into his stomach.

“Apparently word got around that you’re sick - either from the docks or people that work at the palace - and we’ve been flooded with letters asking after your health ever since. Herbs and teas, too.” Katara’s heart clenches at the thought of acquaintances she had met years ago or even complete strangers writing to Zuko because she caught a cold. She has devoted the last years of her life to helping people wherever she is needed and as her reputation precedes her, she is used to being welcomed warmly all over the world. It is a different thing, though, to feel the love and care she has poured into these people returned to her. Zuko perches himself on the edge of the bench, hip to hip with her, and wraps an arm around her waist. “If you feel up to it in a few days, maybe you can come to the festival’s closing ceremony with me? Make a quick appearance?”

“Did I miss the opening?”

“I had to go kick it off at noon today,” Zuko says apologetically, rubbing between her shoulders. “You look a lot better already.” Katara contemplates her reflection in the mirror. With her dark hair smooth and shining in its braid, and her mother’s necklace settled proudly in the hollow of her throat, the glassiness of her eyes from the fever looks more like sparkling. The robe Ursa had brought her is one that Zuko had gifted her a couple of years ago, a light summer garment of blue silk embroidered with silver waves, and the simple cut of it manages to make her look elegant and relaxed.

“She looks like a queen,” Ursa corrects her son. Katara considers her reflection. She supposes she does.

Katara’s illness seems to rise and set with the sun, each day a surge of energy coming to her when she wakes, only to be depleted by afternoon, leaving her exhausted and shivering. The rhythms of sickness are not entirely unfamiliar to her, but she is impatient and accustomed to being healthy, so each day she allows herself the naive hope that her sickness has vanished in her sleep. She hurls herself into what tasks she can - primarily going through the correspondence that has arrived at the palace for her in the months since her previous visit. Zuko attempts unsuccessfully to get her to accept the help of an assistant to read to her or take dictation while she rests.

However, on the morning of the harvest festival’s final day, she takes him up on his offer as they take breakfast in the shared antechamber to their bedrooms. It feels good to leave bed, even if she is only making the journey to the next room and sitting on a plush sofa. It also feels good to share such an intimate space with Zuko. The initial feeling of being a trespasser in the Fire Lady’s chambers has dissipated over the past few days, replaced instead by an incandescent warmth at the idea of her days starting and ending with his smiles, his kisses, his furrowed brow, his frustrated ramblings. He has always sought her advice, but there is something about him doing so while they are sequestered away in this space meant for husband and wife, both of them still in dressing gowns, sifting through Zuko’s morning briefings.

“If Kuei’s ambassador decides to keep being a pain about the fruit exports, tell him the Southern Water Tribe expressed interest in buying more berries this year. The upper ring would throw a fit if prices rose.” She takes a sip of tea, sweetened heavily with honey to soothe her scratchy throat.

“You mean lie?” He raises his eyebrow, looking up from the notes he is hopelessly reviewing before attending a meeting he has had in several iterations that week.

“It’s not a lie - last time I went to visit everybody had gotten completely obsessed with jam. It’s on everything now!”

“So because the South Pole is jam crazy, I can finally get this guy to stop trying to haggle with me on very fair terms that everyone else has already agreed to?” She nods, serious.

“Pretty sure Sokka’s appetite alone would cause some market fluctuation.”

Zuko laughs. “Fair point. I’ll do that then. Thanks.” The smile he turns on her is adoring.

“Do you think you can spare a scribe for the rest of the morning?” She asks. He blinks rapidly, trying to keep the shock off his face.

“Uh, yeah. Yes, of course. Anything you need,” he stammers, and reaches across the small table to hold her hand.

“I need you to come over here,” she tells him, and he obeys without hesitation, rising from his chair and sitting beside her on the sofa. Her head falls on his shoulder, and one of his arms wraps around her waist. She reaches over his lap to hold his other hand.

“Are you feeling okay?” He asks her, lips at the crown of her head. Katara nods. The running of her nose down her throat and the hovering ache in her bones is not so bad, and she thinks it might not be wishful thinking this time that it feels less even than the previous morning.

“I feel much better than I did earlier this week,” she tells him, which is undeniably true - the fact that she walked here from her bed on steady feet is proof enough of that. In another couple of weeks she should hardly be able to remember what this feels like. “I just want to be close to you for a little while.” He squeezes her just a little closer to his side at that.

“Well, I’m never going to turn that down.” She fiddles with his fingers just as she would her own, and she closes her eyes, the sting from the heat of her fever not quite so pronounced anymore. They both know he can’t linger as long as he would like to, but they let the moment stretch anyway, slowly shifting until they are more comfortably curled together. Katara feels herself almost drifting off to sleep, his presence relaxing her easily as always. It would be nice, she thinks, to have that - to have him beside her, warm and real, instead of letters folded under her pillow as she hopes to dream of him. Even as she is nearly asleep, and Zuko’s body is relaxed, soft and welcoming her, she can feel his heart fluttering like a bird trying to escape his chest. She keeps a firm hold on his hand until he speaks.

“Katara, I need to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“And it’s alright if the answer is ‘not yet’ or even just outright ‘no’ but I - I’m sorry, I’m too selfish to stop myself from asking any longer.” Katara’s heart is in her throat. Suddenly she is very awake. She knows what is coming, can tell by the emotion already choking his voice, and the way his hand has started to tremble but just keeps holding hers tighter.

They’ve had the conversation before - the we don’t want to break up but I don’t know if I can stay here forever conversation - and mutually decided to put off any talk of deadlines or ultimatums because they’re happy. The Fire Sages can get their robes in a twist over the line of succession and Pakku can drop hints about Katara being on the older side for single Water Tribe women, but that doesn’t mean that either of them have to care. According to Fire Nation law, nobody can really force Zuko to do anything, and Hakoda has made it clear that Katara will marry when and if she chooses. The last time they talked about it was a year ago though. A lot can change in a year. They perhaps know that better than anyone.

Even as the moment is arriving, even as she has been thinking about building a life with Zuko for years now, even as she has been sleeping in the Fire Lady’s rooms without a word or strange look for days, Katara still wonders if she has changed enough to let herself have this. She finds that she needs to know her answer as desperately as Zuko does.

It isn’t something she can make herself ponder though. Each time she has before, she winds up spinning in circles, because of course she wants to marry Zuko, so sharp-witted and tender-hearted. It is only the crown he wears and her uncertainty about the prospect of donning one of her own that has stopped her from marrying him years ago. This decision is an impossible one - weighing whether she loves him more than she fears the Fire Lady’s crown. Katara decides to do away with the scales, and just go in blind instead.

“Ask me then,” she says, barely above a whisper. Her eyes are still closed. His hand cups her cheek and tilts her face up. His nose brushes along her cheek. Katara squeezes his fingers, trying to comfort herself as much as him. Lips brush her ear, and hot breath skimming down her neck has her shivering.

“Will you marry me?” he whispers, small and scared, pleading. The moment the words are out, fear leaves her. For years now, she has turned over the anxiety of all the things she would have to give up for this, but at last confronted with the reality that she can truly have him, have a life with him, her answer comes readily.

“Yes,” she says, letting her voice ring clearly, leaving no room for argument. Still, because it is Zuko, he asks,

“Are you sure? Because...I mean I would never keep you here if you didn’t want to be. We could go visit your family - or you can go visit them yourself - and there will be plenty of diplomatic trips. Not to mention all the things I could...honestly use a lot of help with here -”

“Zuko -” she tries to cut off his anxious ramblings as he sits up and starts wringing his hands. He isn’t deterred by her fingers wrestling his into submission, no matter how tightly she squeezes.

“But your involvement would have different political implications you’d have to think about, and I understand -”

“Zuko -”

“- if you don’t want that to get in the way of you being fulfilled, and you should -”

“Zuko!” She grabs his chin, and he finally shuts up. “Listen to me. I know all of that. I’ve considered it, and I’m okay with it. Do you think I would’ve let us go on like this for years with no intention of staying?” His face relaxes, a gently embarrassed smile spreading over his lips.

“I just didn’t want you to have to choose.”

“I’m not choosing, I’m changing.” She kisses him and smiles. “I hear it’s good for you.” The force of his kiss topples her back against the arm of the sofa, but she just holds him ever closer as his tears smudge across her cheeks and he whispers gratitude into her skin until he’s late for his meeting.

Katara tries to take it easy, conserving her energy during the day in hopes that she’ll be able to stay awake long enough to attend the festival’s closing ceremony, which promises to be quite the spectacle. She finds that she is grateful for the scribe Zuko sent for this purpose, as well as the fact that she can’t keep her mind from drifting back to that morning, and if she didn’t have someone reading to her and prompting her responses, she wouldn’t have gotten through the first letter by midday. A permanent smile seems to have taken up residence on her lips, and when Zuko returns to share lunch with her, she sees it mirrored in his own expression. He looks a bit harassed, but no more so than he usually does after speaking with his council.

“How was it? Did you get things settled?” she asked him, reaching out a hand to welcome him and pull him onto the sofa beside her again.

“Wouldn’t you know, people got a lot less fussy about fruit when I announced our engagement?”

“Zuko!” He looks cowed immediately, anxiety creeping into his expression.

“Oh. Sorry, was I not supposed to - Did you -” she squeezes his hand.

“I had kind of figured we’d tell our family first,” she reminds him. Realization dawns, and though he still looks nervous, she can feel it shift from being anxious about them to being anxious about the eternal teasing he’ll receive from both of their relatives.

“We should probably send some messenger hawks then.”

“Fast ones,” she agrees. “And go find your mother.”

“Right. My mother.” Zuko remains frozen beside her, gripping her hand.

“Now, Zuko?” she prompts, and he shoots to his feet.

“Yes. Okay. I’ll go find Mom. Now.”

“I’ll start writing to Dad and Sokka.”

“I’ll deal with Uncle when I get back.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Zuko turns to leave, but she tugs him back at the last second, pressing a quick kiss to his lips, and then shoves him, still stunned, towards the door.

Ursa, when she bursts through the door to the shared antechamber, is tearfully thrilled, pulling Katara into a warm hug. Zuko is a moment behind, appearing winded as he leans against the doorframe and takes in the sight of his mother rocking Katara back and forth.

“Mother, please,” sighs a familiar voice, startling all of them out of the moment. Azula sashays into the room, unconcerned about an invitation. She takes a seat in an armchair, managing to make it look like a throne with her easy grace. “You’re going to make her come to her senses and run straight back to the iceberg she came from.”

“Azula -” Zuko starts, but Katara waves off his unnecessary defense.

“If you think this is dramatic, just wait until my family gets the news. The Southern Water Tribe loves a party.”

“Oh I remember our last visit well. But your people have nothing on the Fire Nation when it comes to dramatics. Believe me, sister.”

Even after all these years, Katara can’t quite tell if Azula’s use of the endearment is meant to be a chilling threat, or a sincere attempt at affection. She moved back into the palace with Zuko and Ursa a long time ago, and from what was said in letters, it seemed that the antagonism in their relationship isn’t far off from normal sibling squabbling these days. That doesn’t give her a very clear idea of where the two of them stand. She doesn’t visit the palace often, and when she does, she tends to be pretty wrapped up in Zuko. Or Azula tries to dodge her. Whatever the case, she certainly hasn’t sought Katara out. Whatever Azula tries, she succeeds in. Recovering from her nervous breakdown and repairing her relationships with family haven’t tempered her razor sharp intellect in the slightest. Katara is no more eager to be on the wrong side of it than she had been as a teenager.

Sitting as tall as she can at her writing desk in an attempt to cover up the encroaching exhaustion of the afternoon, Katara smiles warmly at Azula and tells her honestly, “As always, the Fire Nation can bring it on and I’ll handle it.”

And bring it the Fire Nation does, Katara realizes as she steps onto the palace’s balcony on Zuko’s arm that night, to deafening applause. She is dressed in a fine gown, but wears no makeup, and aside from going through the effort of putting some of her hair into a topknot, her curly hair tumbles loose over her shoulders and back. Nobody can see them very clearly, so she had forgone the more formal preparations Ursa and Azula went through in favor of catching a longer nap. It is evident that she will need every last bit of energy to absorb the crowd.

News travels fast in Caldera, even faster when the news is also gossip, so it is evident even before Zuko begins his speech that word of their engagement has started spreading through the city. In addition to the usual flags and dragon puppets and torches, many people are leaving flowers, coins, and small rough carvings on the palace steps.

“They’re gifts,” Zuko explains.

“For the royal family?” Katara wonders, uncomfortable with the thought. The opulence of the palace and the poverty she sees in her work grate against each other in her mind. A tradition of peasants giving to the richest people in the country just feels wrong. As if sensing her change in mood, Zuko shakes his head.

“This isn’t part of the harvest festival. It’s tradition to give flowers, coins, and carvings of spirits to an engaged couple.” His hand squeezes her waist where she’s leaned against his side. “They’re welcoming you.”

His other hand lifts in a wave, and she is the only one who can see the sheepish smile that flashes over his face. It leaves her a little awestruck to watch the transformation as Zuko steps forward as the nervous young man that holds her hand too tightly sometimes, and arrives at the edge of the balcony as the confident Fire Lord. A gong rings out, silencing the crowd. The hushed anticipation of thousands has gravity the same way their loud celebration had mass just moments ago. It calls to her like the phantom pull of a steep cliff, except when she reaches Zuko’s side and looks down, instead of seeing striated rock framing the river that carved it away, she sees a city of tiled roofs and lantern light, the streets flooded with the people that built it.

Zuko greets his people and leads them in thanking the spirits for their harvest, and asking them to bless the next year’s crops. A glance out of the corner of his eye is all the warning she has before he also announces, “Master Katara has recovered and come to join us in our final night of celebration -” anything else he plans to say is drowned out by the crowd’s cheers. It’s different from the letters, she thinks. Those were all intimate inquiries, individual villagers who had known Katara for a time or had come to feel as though they knew her by her work, and they had left her with a tight throat and misty eyes. This is the collective consciousness of the nation screaming, rejoicing at an official announcement that she is alive and well, and it thrills her, the contagious energy bolstering her, kicking up her heart rate.

When she and Zuko had discussed marriage in the past, part of their hesitance had come from Katara’s questions about if, after so much change, the Fire Nation was ready for a foriegn queen. It was a worthwhile question. So much of the tradition his people know is rooted in the war and the past Fire Lords’ emphasis on fire as the superior element, the rich culture Aang described in memories of his childhood adventures with Kuzon dampened by the war. It was one of the things that made Katara feel for the villagers she met - the way despair was so quick at hand because the community and spirituality that had kept hope alive for her people had been crushed by industrialization and authoritarian rule. The very harvest festival they were at now was actually a revival of a practice that had been abandoned sometime in the days of Azulon when the Fire Nation stopped having large harvests because the men who worked the fields were sent to fight and most of their food came from colonies.

The Fire Nation has welcomed back the harvest festival, the solstice and equinox celebrations, and dancing. As Zuko turns to Katara, a question in his expression, she gives him a small smile and takes his hand. If ever there is going to be a time that his people are ready for them, this feels like the moment. He raises a hand again, and the silence returns, though it takes longer this time, and is less complete, bursts of chatter still audible in a low hum. “She has also consented to be my wife.” As he finishes speaking, he turns to face her, and Katara tears her eyes away from the crowd, drawn inescapably by the pull of his gaze. The crowd below them is roaring again. If any of the sounds are boos, they are drowned out by whoops, firecrackers, and cheers of Long live the Fire Lord, her ears catching the gradual merge and shift as the refrain becomes Long live the Fire Lady. Katara’s heart rate kicks up, nerves and excitement surging at the chorus of voices shouting her future title. She reaches up to cup Zuko’s face and pulls him into a kiss that leaves them both smiling against each other’s lips as the crowd goes ballistic behind them.

Despite having stayed up much later than she has since before she left the Earth Kingdom, Katara wakes up in the (barely) morning feeling good. She stretches like an owlcat, muscles burning and joints popping, body sliding over the sun-warmed sheets. A pleased sigh and hum comes from deep in her chest, and she relaxes back against the mattress.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” a voice warns, and Katara bolts upright, clutching a blanket over herself despite her nightgown. Azula leans against the bedroom door, and Katara wonders how she didn’t hear the heavy wood opening and closing, until she remembers: it’s Azula.

“What are you doing in my room?” she demands, cutting her eyes quickly to the door that adjoins Zuko's room, wondering if she could reach it before Azula reached her.

“Zuzu still thinks you’ll keel over if anybody disturbs your beauty sleep,” she says, studying her sharp manicure. “I think of it more like, if you’re going to last more than a month in this palace, you’d better get to work.”

“So you’ve taken it upon yourself to be my wake-up call?” Katara lets the blanket go to cross her arms, growing annoyed as she realizes that Azula is, as usual, primarily concerned with her own amusement.

“Yes, well.” She glances up at Katara, then away to stare at a blandly beautiful landscape painting on the far wall. “It didn’t seem very sisterly to leave you in here offending your future subjects more by the minute.”

“What?” Katara’s heart squeezes with anxiety, a sharp pull beneath her ribs that hunches her shoulders inward and expels the breath from her lungs. “What did I do?” She wracks her brain for anything from the previous night, but comes up with nothing. Instead of answering, the second Katara’s feet hit the floor, Azula sweeps out of the bedroom, the door shutting behind her with hardly a whisper. Katara wants to chase after her, but chasing after the princess in her nightgown doesn’t seem like a good idea if she’s somehow already managed to offend people, so she yanks open the wardrobe, only to be met with a collection of lavish red dresses and the scent of old wood and heavy perfume instead of her things.

“Master Katara?” a voice asks, and Katara turns around in surprise, only to find Hiri letting herself in. “I’m sorry,” the maid apologizes with a deep bow at the sight of her expression. “Princess Azula said that you were awake and wanted to be dressed for the day.”

“It’s okay, I just didn’t hear you,” Katara reassures. “Do you know where my clothes went? I think everything in here is Lady Ursa’s.” It feels wrong, even as she says it. There is something about the air that wafted out, and the extravagance of the gowns that does not seem like Zuko’s mother.

“Those would be Fire Lady Ilah’s,” Hiri corrects gently. “Lady Ursa…” she clears her throat delicately, eyes dropping to the floor briefly, “never took ownership of these rooms.” Katara remembers, suddenly, Zuko’s account of his mother’s disappearance, whispered to the ceiling of his bedroom years ago, after receiving a letter from his mother asking if he could ever forgive her for leaving and would it be alright if she came to visit him. Katara clears her throat and shuts the wardrobe.

“Right.”

“Your things are in the closet,” Hiri tells her, pulling open one of the dark wood doors, and stepping into a small room. Katara follows her, wondering at the size of it. How could any one person own enough clothing to fill a space large enough to stand in? For now, it is almost entirely empty. Even though Katara has left her formal gowns and winter clothes at the palace, when combined with the meagre belongings she travels with, her possessions hardly filled the steamer trunk she was allotted on the ship, much less a queen’s room.

Hiri reaches for one of Katara’s gowns, the only autumn weight one besides what she’d worn to the festival the night before. Katara holds a pair of loose red pants in one hand.

“Oh, I think that’s probably a bit much for just a regular day,” she says gently, and Hiri bites her lip nervously.

“Well it’s...not really just any day, Master Katara.” She gives the maid a curious look. “It’s just that...there are quite a lot of gifts requiring your attention, and people who want to come congratulate you.” Katara thinks back to what Zuko said when she woke from her fever, about people writing letters and sending medicine, considers the flowers and such left at the palace steps for her last night. Perhaps she had been foolish to think that would be all. Her stomach churns with nerves. So that’s what Azula had meant by her offending people. She thinks of the cheers from last night, and recalls that the people of the Fire Nation believe that the royal family is descended from Agni, the sun spirit. She forgets sometimes, because her tribe’s leaders earn their positions, and Zuko says the divine right to rule is just an excuse for tyrants, but reverence for one’s rulers is deeply important here. And if one thing is true, Katara never turns her back on people who need her.

“Okay, then.” She puts the pants away and takes a deep breath before fixing Hiri with a determined look. “Let’s give the people what they need then.”

Katara leaves her room later than she would’ve liked, though Hiri had worked swiftly at the ties of Katara’s dress and acquiesced to Katara’s insistence upon doing her own hair while Hiri applied light makeup and dabbed perfume. She slams out of the bedroom as fast as she can walk, calling her thanks behind, only to be pulled up short by Azula’s voice again.

“Well, that was speedy,” the princess says, uncurling from where she was lounging in an armchair, her movements not quite fluid, but feline. Her eyes trace over Katara. She knows Azula is picking up every stray hair and speck of lint, but Katara doesn’t have time to be toyed with, so she jerks away from the princess and yanks open the door to the hallway, startling the two guards posted outside. She turns to one of them and attempts to strike some balance of dignified and warm as she asks,

“Would you be able to show me where I am to greet people?” In the beat of stunned silence before the man is able to answer, Azula follows her, the door slamming this time, demanding attention.

“You know, I happen to have lived in this palace all my life,” Azula says. “You could ask me.”

“I don’t have time to play owlcat and sparrowkeet with you, Azula,” she says brusquely. “As you so kindly informed me, there are people waiting for me.”

“Not everything is a game to me, you know. I’m just as interested in getting these peasants off my doorstep as you are -” Katara spins on her heel, forgoing directions in favor of getting away from Azula before the princess succeeds in riling her up. She doesn’t know the small intricacies of the palace’s halls, but she knows enough to get from the royal family’s chambers to the main entrance. She hears the guards clanking hurriedly after her, and she knows Azula better than to think not hearing her footsteps means that she’s given up the chase. She draws the stares of a few of Zuko’s ministers as she breezes through the halls, the blue silk of her skirts rippling like the ocean. Someone tries to flag her down, but the final turn into the grand entryway is right there, and she practically skids around the corner, sandals squeaking loudly as she pivots to march straight towards the doors. The guards minding them go wide-eyed.

“Master Katara, you-” She cuts the guard off, and points behind them, where she can already hear the bustle of a crowd through the thick, gilded wood.

“Are they waiting for me out there?” The guards exchange a nervous glance.

“Fire Lord Zuko is receiving important guests in-”

“And the ‘unimportant’ guests are out in the sun?” She demands, hands on her hips. Neither guard knows how to answer that, so instead she commands, “Open the door please. I would like to receive my guests.” They glance behind her, where she can now feel Azula’s sharp eyes on her, probably hoping that the princess will say something to overrule her, but the princess says nothing. After one last nervous glance at each other and then at Katara’s stony expression, they open the doors. The sunlight that spills through the doors is blinding at first, and Katara lifts a hand to shield her eyes.

“Are you coming?” she asks Azula, even as she steps forward. The princess scoffs in reply, and with the guards following dazedly behind her, Katara steps out into the light.

The roar that rises from the crowd is deafening, like waves crashing on rocks, relentless, forcing the stones to give bit by bit. Blinking the glare out of her eyes, Katara lifts her hand away from her brow into a wave. Just like when Zuko began his speech, the crowd falls silent and sinks into bows almost as one, the wave receding, depositing soft sand. It takes her breath away, and she just stares at them in awe for a moment, these people she was not born into, who she had grown up afraid of, and yet spent years of her life helping. When she does not slow down at the gates, the guards are forced to open them for her, although the two who have followed her from her bedroom stay close behind as she slips into the crowd.

She heads right for a little girl who keeps looking up from her bow to steal glances at Katara while her mother isn’t looking. The girl’s eyes go wide when she realizes Katara is approaching her, and she hurriedly looks back to the ground.

“Hello,” she says, stopping in front of the mother and daughter. “You must be the guests I was informed about.” All around her, Katara can feel a kind of tension - maybe excitement - stirring in the air at her words. When the girl glances up curiously, Katara smiles at her, and she straightens, drawing her mother’s attention up. “I’m very sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I can’t believe you really came out!” the girl squeals, grabbing for her mother’s arm and shaking the woman out of her shock. “Mom, it’s Master Katara!”

“I know, I know, honey,” the woman says, pulling her daughter closer and patting her shoulders before she manages to address Katara. “I’m sorry I’m a little flustered, Master Katara. We never expected we’d be able to meet you, we just-”

“These are for you!” the girl says, shoving a pair of blooming fire lilies at Katara.

“Oh! They’re lovely. Thank you.” She considers them for a moment, unsure if her next question will be appropriate or some grievous slight she doesn’t understand, so in a low voice, she asks, “Would it be alright if I put one of these in my hair?” The girl nods so excitedly it seems like her head might pop off.

“I can help you!” Katara thanks her, and tries not to notice the faint gasps and murmurings when she kneels before the child and bows her head so that small clumsy fingers can tuck the stem through her bun. She looks at the guards that had been behind her, trying to read from their faces whether she is about to be engulfed in an angry mob, but their shocked faces don’t give any specifics. “There! It looks so pretty!” Katara holds up the remaining Fire Lily.

“If it’s okay for me to share, I’ll put one in your hair,” she offers. The girl’s mother opens her mouth, almost certainly to protest, but the girl is already sitting down on the ground with her legs crossed, heedless of the dust on what is probably her best outfit. Katara laughs and turns, reaching for her dark hair and searching for a pin she can use to secure the flower. On impulse, she works a lock of hair free from the girl’s neat topknot and braids it before looping it back around the red ribbon holding her hair up and pinning it and the flower down. “There you go,” Katara says, patting the girl’s shoulder.

“Thank you!”

Before Katara thinks to get up again, another little girl emerges from the crowd, evidently having given her parent the slip to deliver her own little bundle of flowers, a spray of something small and white with a cheery yellow center. She smiles hopefully as she bows and offers the flowers, and Katara waves her forward. It goes on for ages as seemingly every young girl in the crowd pushes her way forward to her and the flowers accumulate as more people lay bouquets before her and prostrate themselves to wish her good fortune. Katara tucks a blossom in every girl’s hair, and when her own braids have become a blooming crown, they twist the flowers into chains to drape over her.

At last even those become too numerous, and she charges the girls with helping her distribute the flower chains among the crowd, wading through. Adults come forward to offer blessings and tokens, and Katara finds herself overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and the genuine happiness she sees in their faces as they welcome her. The guards follow her, though as they become tasked with carrying gifts and their helmets become containers for lucky coins and small figurines, they become fairly ineffective for their intended purpose. It is good, she thinks, for the people to see a softer side of not just the royal family, but the royal guards as well. The people have not feared them since Zuko’s reign began, but there is a difference between that and seeing the guards’ mussed helmet hair and hearing them chat up strangers and holler at people they know.

She wanders the crowd until the sun starts to set, and she knows Zuko will be looking for her. Her feet ache and her stomach growls, but even though her body is exhausted, she feels better than she has in weeks. This is what she tells him when she leads the guards back into the palace, and he bursts out of the throne room to meet her, eyes searching for injury, hands cupping her face.

“It was good,” she insists. “They were happy.” Katara wraps her fingers around his wrists, but leans into the warmth of his palms instead of pulling them away.

“You were out there all day though.” He rests the back of one hand over her forehead, and frowns. “You feel warm.”

“That would be the sun, Zuko. It happens when you go outside.” The way her eyes drift back to the torch-lit throne room is not lost on him, his imposing figure withering at the judgement in her expression.

“I wish I could’ve,” he says, the remorse in his voice genuine. His fingers drift up to the petals in her hair, and now that he is reassured of her safety, he finally seems to notice the chains of flowers around her neck. Then, his eyes go wide as they catch the similarly-bedecked guards and the gifts they are handing off to maids. “It seems like I missed quite the event.”

“You did,” she tells him, knowing that he will understand the slight chastisement in it.

“Next time we’re celebrating,” he promises, “we’ll go meet people together.”

Zuko doesn’t quite make it the next time either, though in fairness to him, neither of them had been expecting that the following day would prove to be more of the same, as boats and carts arrived carrying people from nearby towns journeying to bring gifts to the future Fire Lady. Katara is caught off guard by it when she leaves the house, dressed in normal clothes by her own hands, having planned to work at the capital’s hospital where she usually spent part of her visits to the Fire Nation. Instead, she finds herself putting flowers in children’s hair yet again, and thanking people for travelling to see her.

Azula finds her just after her return, Katara’s feet soaking in the cool water of the turtleduck pond, her back in the grass.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into,” the princess says, settling into a lotus pose, and summoning a servant with an elegant wave of her hand. “We’ll be taking tea here,” she says, and the servant vanishes. “They’ll rub those for you if you tell them to,” Azula tells Katara, indicating her aching feet. Katara takes a deep breath, and concentrates on the water around her feet until she sees the faint blue glow against her eyelids and feels her blisters healing over. The princess scoffs.

When kitchen maids arrive with plush cushions, a tea service, and plates of food, Azula does not acknowledge their presence as they work silently. Katara pointedly thanks the staff as they withdraw to give them privacy, and it does not sound like a compliment when Azula says, “Well I suppose you’re a perfect match for my brother. He would have some kind of romantic notions about the idea of a peasant queen.”

“There’s nothing wrong with thanking people for their work.”

“Just like there’s nothing wrong with playing in the dirt with children, hm?” Katara frowns at the princess.

“I’m not better than them, and neither are you.”

“We are better. We were born powerful, and we fought to hone it. I gave my entire childhood to train under the best masters in the world. And don’t think I haven’t heard the stories about you challenging that old man. From the sound of it, you’d gotten halfway to mastery on intuition and determination. Only fools like my brother would cheapen that by professing to be equal.”

“Wow, Azula, it almost sounded like you respect me for a second there,” Katara said, rolling her eyes. Azula raised a razor sharp brow.

“You think I would bother with this conversation if I didn’t? I’m offering you this advice because positions like ours are deceptively precarious. If you let them think you owe them your time instead of graciously bestowing it, nothing you have to offer will ever be enough. What’s happening here is beyond recognition of your work - it’s worship. That painted lady stunt you pulled all those years ago? They think you’re a spirit come to earth to save them.”

“That’s ridiculous, I’m just a person. I’ve been working as just myself ever since, no spirit-y magic or anything.”

“Almost nobody has ever seen a waterbender, much less an exceptionally good one. It might as well be spirit magic to them. My brother and I may be cynics, but our people are not - they buy into all that woo-woo spirit stuff, especially about the royal family. That’s why you have to be careful about becoming touchable. Right now it makes them all feel special, but have you considered what happens when you mess up? Because you will. Zuzu has - probably ten times today. You should learn that it never ends well when the idols they worship become too real. That’s what happened to the dragons anyway.” She shrugs and takes another sip of her tea.

“What do you mean ‘that’s what happened to the dragons’?” Katara knows she’s playing into Azula’s game, and she hates it, but her fingers are starting to tremble on the cup. The princess heaves a sigh and rolls her eyes, as though she hadn’t been baiting Katara into asking.

“Oh it’s some boring old legend. Stupid superstition really, but people will believe anything.” Katara grits her teeth and waits for Azula to get to the point. She draws out the silence dramatically, making a show of delicately biting into a teacake and daintily patting the sugar from her mouth. The pleasure she draws from Katara’s obvious anticipation is maddening. “Basically, dragons used to be worshipped. People thought they were the physical forms Agni’s messengers used to wander the Earth. They were the first firebenders, and then when they taught humanity, they became the first firebending masters. The first Fire Lord was chosen by the dragons’ favor, and for ages, powerful firebenders attracted dragon companions. Fire Lord Sozin was the first to challenge the order of things by killing Avatar Roku. Roku’s dragon died with him.”

Azula pauses, and stares deeply into Katara’s eyes. “The next part is a royal family secret.” Katara understands that whatever Azula is about to tell her is something horrible, and that she will likely wish she hadn’t learned. She also understands that it is a test of strength and loyalty, and Katara has never allowed herself to fail in those. She stares unflinchingly into Azula’s eyes, the gold irises almost serpentine themselves. “When Sozin’s own dragon realized what happened, it turned on the Fire Lord. The battle was fierce; the greatest Agni Kai the world has never known, and it raged for hours. In the end, Sozin prevailed. But, he knew he had angered the spirits, and that the dragons’ favor of the royal family had been lost forever. To cover it up, he claimed he had received a dream vision from Agni himself promising to grant unimaginable power and glory to any firebender who could defeat his servants in a duel. And so began the tradition of dragon hunting.”

Katara feels the familiar swell of anger in her chest, and if she were younger, she would probably yell at Azula for telling her something so awful, accuse her of trying to scare her away from Zuko. Now though, Katara understands that while maybe Azula is trying to scare her off just a little, it’s not necessarily with bad intentions. Zuko’s family secrets are just as bloody and awful as the public history would suggest, and if she’s going to marry him, Katara can’t decide later that she can’t deal with that. As she breathes deeply, Katara lets go of the anger at long dead men, feeling it give way to sadness - for the dragons wiped out by the ambition of humans, as well as for the people who now lack that connection to their element and culture.

“That’s awful,” Katara says. “I’m so sorry your people lost that.” Azula would never allow herself to show true surprise, but the half beat pause before she speaks gives it away.

“I never liked pets anyway,” she says, turning up her nose at the rest of the meal and standing without excusing herself.

Katara abandons the tea and pulls the plate of sweet cakes into her lap. With the princess gone, she spitefully dispenses with manners, popping the treats into her mouth one after the other, sucking powdered sugar from her fingertips. Eventually, the turtleducks emerge from the pond reeds where they had been avoiding the argument, lured by the remnants of the picnic. The smallest of the ducklings approaches her directly and quacks insistently until she feeds him a berry. As the others descend and she starts gently passing out the fruit piece by piece, Katara thinks on the significance of this garden. For Ursa and Zuko, it was a shared refuge, a place where they could be happy, too insignificant and frivolous for Ozai to care. Before Katara and Zuko had felt comfortable stealing away to more private places, this garden had been where they would meet up to be away from prying eyes.

She does not want this tiny piece of the world to lose its sweetness and become her prison. As she mulls over Azula’s words, she thinks that there may not be as much difference between being loved or hated as she would like to think - at least when the source of it is believing that she is beyond humanity. To Katara, everything she does is because she feels her own humanity so deeply, the pain and joy of living a shared thing that compels her to do as much good as possible. It is how she purges her own sorrow when it wells up, how she had spotted her twin flame inside Zuko’s heart so long ago. The idea of becoming separate from people because of something as artificial as a crown leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

Through dinner with Zuko and his family, she tries to burn it out with spicy sauce, sweeten it with grilled mango, dampen it beneath Iroh’s lovingly brewed tea. Every time she manages it for a few bites though, Azula will speak and bring it back. The princess doesn’t make oblique reference to their conversation or even address Katara directly at all, but when the family rises from the table and their eyes meet, she knows the matter has not been dropped.

Later that night, Katara recounts her day - including Azula’s advice - to Zuko, who scowls and tries to get out of bed to wake up his sister and scold her for making Katara uncomfortable. She tightens her hold around his waist to keep him there, and he allows himself to be wrestled back onto the mattress easily.

“Don’t go picking a fight with your sister, Zuko,” she tells him. “She was actually a little bit right, even if the way she said it was pretty...Azula.” He turns onto his side so that they can be eye to eye, their heads resting on the same pillow.

Art by Favlie

“What was she right about?” he asks, squeezing her hip. Katara closes her eyes.

“I don’t have boundaries with these people.”

“Katara, I don’t want to make you give up the connection you have with people.”

“I can’t. I won’t play the cold, aloof ruler - that’s not what I was raised to believe a leader looks like.”

“But?” he prompts. Katara sighs.

“But I can’t deal with all of this...worship...either.” Even just saying the word makes her stomach squirm. It feels arrogant to acknowledge it. “I can’t lead people if I think they’re only doing it because they think the spirits sent me to save the Fire Nation or whatever.”

“I mean you might be bringing the end times; it depends which newsletters you’re following.” Katara shoves her perpetually-cold toes against Zuko’s leg and giggles at the very undignified squawk the Fire Lord lets out.

“Someone’s going to think I’m being assassinated in here,” he says, catching her in the shoulder with one of the many decorative pillows they’d had to shove aside. She grabs it and hurls it where it lands somewhere with a muffled fwump. Pushing herself up to lean against the headboard, Katara crosses her arms over her chest and scowls into the shadows.

“It really has been all downhill since you developed a sense of humor.” The blankets rustle, and then Zuko is flicking the candles on the bedside tables back to life. When he sits up beside her, he presses his warm arm against hers, and she knows it means I’m sorry. She tips her head onto his shoulder and clings onto his arm. I forgive you.

“We’ll come up with a plan, okay?” He drops a kiss on the top of her head. “First thing tomorrow, we can sit down and figure out what to do.” She nods, her cheek rubbing against the soft skin of his arm, but the squirming in her stomach doesn’t calm down. Zuko picks up on her continued unease, kissing her hair again before disentangling them and starting to get out of bed. “Or we could just do it now since you clearly won’t be able to sleep until it’s done.”

“You don’t have to -” Zuko leans over the foot of the bed to squeeze her ankle.

“They’re my people, and you’re -” he swallows, and his cheeks color a little, at odds with his determined expression. “You’re my wife.” Katara’s heart lurches in her chest.

“Not yet,” she says, a little breathless.

“Technicality,” he shrugs, and lets go of her to hastily tie his robe. She follows him.

When they wake in the morning, it is to Zuko’s secretary clearing her throat pointedly, scowling at them. It’s unclear to Katara whether it’s because Zuko already sleeps in his office far too often, or because of their state of dress. With a roll of her eyes, she yanks open a supply closet and produces clothes for Zuko, which she shoves at him with far less deference than most people show the Fire Lord. Eyeing Katara, she muses, “I suppose I should suggest that Master Katara’s future secretary keep the Fire Lady’s office similarly stocked?” Katara and Zuko both smile sheepishly, and the secretary sweeps out, muttering something under her breath that sounds like workaholics and early grave.

It’s worth it though, Katara thinks as she steps into the dusty Fire Lady’s office to change. The plan they’ve come up with seems a fair compromise, and she’s glad that she’d talked to Zuko about it. He’d pushed her insistently away from making concessions she didn’t really want to, and given her some harsh reality checks about what she could and couldn’t manage. For one, her aversion to palanquins and carriages was going to have to take a backseat if she wanted to continue her work at the central hospital. If she left after lunch, she could slip out in the crowd of bureaucrats and diplomats coming and going from meetings at the palace and embassies, but only if she did so in the same formal, anonymous fashion as other officials.

Her mornings will start earlier than she prefers too, but Zuko’s suggestion that she hold audiences (one at a time, first come first serve) felt more orderly and sustainable than letting herself be mobbed all day. As much as she hates the notion that she will inevitably have to turn some people away each day, he reminds her that this is not one of her travelling projects where she can throw her whole self into it for days or weeks and find the end. This is going to be her life - their life - now, and after the wedding, she’ll have to juggle policy meetings and diplomatic niceties on top of it. Things that are built to last, things like nations and marriages, require balance.

She is hopeful as she strides through the halls to the parlor by the front doors where she will be greeting people. Each audience is to be only a minute or two, as her visitors are likely to be well-wishers rather than the airing of grievances to be expected after she is crowned. Seated in a comfortable armchair, a jar of sweets quick at hand, Katara asks the guard at the door to send in the first guest.

An effusive man in fine robes kisses her hand and gifts her a necklace that may be worth as much as the house her father lives in.

An elegant woman invites Katara to tea with her and some of her friends, the surnames of which she vaguely recalls as members of the former nobility. She makes some noises about having to check with her secretary, which seems not to appease the woman entirely, but at least prevents her from pushing the issue.

With her next visitor, it becomes clear to her that somehow the wealthy citizens are making their way to the front of the line. Given the crowd that she had greeted the past couple of days, she is certain that it is only the more formal reception and her sudden popularity that have driven them to appear at all.

As another ousted noble takes his leave of her, Katara ensures her voice is loud and clear as she instructs the guards, “I think from now on you ought to prioritize parties with children or elderly. It’s getting rather hot.” She requests pitchers of water and as many cups as the kitchen can spare as well, and offers her guests a drink as she greets them. Chilling the water with a flick of her hand, elders hold misty glasses to overheated necks or foreheads, and parents drink gratefully. She blows flurries of snow over children’s heads, much to their delight. As the people in her parlor start to resemble the streets of Caldera City, she finds herself enjoying the company more, but the gifts make her anxious coming from people that she knows have little to spare and are not attempting to purchase her compliance.

Still, she is disappointed when midday arrives and it is time for her to slip away. She knows, however, that her afternoon spent in the hospital will do much more tangible good for these people than allowing them to fawn over her. Zuko meets her in the center of the grand atrium outside the throne room, his open hand easily extended to her. Smiling as she takes his arm, Katara follows him as he merges easily into the flow of bureaucrats shuffling between meetings. He nods to a few people, and they nod back before bustling onward, arms laden with scrolls. She smiles at him, seeing his pleased little grin. It’s been years in the making and has taken a pretty significant shakeup in the government, but there is no more obsequious bowing or people endlessly badgering him about their personal agendas.

“How was your morning?” she asks him. It feels like such a novelty to be able to ask what has happened in the past few hours, rather than a deluge of months’ worth of information or picking out the highlights of the past weeks. The soft smile he turns on her seems to indicate that he feels the same.

“Not bad,” he says. “The transportation minister just got back from vacation in Ba Sing Se and got obsessed with the public trams, talking about how they’ve been instrumental since Aang and Kuei took down the rings. Breaking down barriers doesn’t help unless people can actually move, you know?” Her heart goes pitter-patter in her chest as he rambles about visions of trains criss-crossing Caldera City, expanding ferry service, maybe even using trains to connect some of the islands that are closer together. It’s so nerdy, but he cares so much about making the world a better place that he gets invested in all these little details. She prods for more information and urges him to write to Sokka and the Mechanist to find out if either of them has some sketches lying around because she’s almost positive that they’ve tinkered around with their old schematics for war machines. He promises to put them in touch with the transit minister, and starts to ask her how her morning went, but they find themselves at the administrative entrance.

“I guess I’ll just have to catch up on your day over dinner,” he says, glancing at the waiting carriage and back to her. He sounds apologetic, and maybe Katara should be a little disappointed, but can only think of how much more she’ll have to tell him by then, and the excitement of knowing that he will be waiting for her - at home, because this is their home now.

“It’s okay,” she reassures him. “I’ll see you later.” The kiss she gives him, her hands pressed to his chest, may not be quite appropriate for the workplace, but as she pulls the carriage curtains shut between his dazed smile and her blushing cheeks, she doesn’t particularly care.

The carriage glides over the stone streets, rattling a bit more as they descend into the harborside neighborhood where the large central hospital lies. The royal family and the fabulously wealthy of Caldera City pay physicians to make house calls, but almost everyone else relies on a series of neighborhood healers and the hospital. Because of this, the arrival of her carriage draws some amount of attention, though not nearly as much as if she had walked down from the palace like she usually did on her visits. As she steps out onto the street, murmurings start up from some of the patients lingering outside waiting to be seen. With her more formal outer robe left behind in the carriage, she should appear no more interesting than a visiting inspector. At the first outburst of, “Master Katara!” she startles.

While her reputation has long preceded her, she has been able to travel largely unknown because unlike Aang and Zuko, whose likenesses are immortalized in statues and portraits the world over, her face is unknown. Her name can be found engraved in commemorative plates on wells, fountains, and clinics. Even a few bridges and local ordinances bear her name, but she has declined to have her image circulated only partly out of modesty. Mostly, the reason is that Aang and Zuko going out in public usually causes quite a bit of hullabaloo, which Katara can’t really have in order for her to do her work. This is borne out when she can’t reach the front door of the hospital because too many people have rushed to meet her, scrambling for something to offer her.

“What are you doing here?” a boy asks her, his eyes wide with awe despite the fact that his mother is trying to keep pressure on a freely bleeding wound on his head. It reminds her of Aang’s owlish eyes blinking up at her when she and Sokka found him in an iceberg. Katara glances at him and the patients surrounding her, and decides that if she’s ever going to get inside to meet with Dr. Yosin and tend to the more urgent cases they usually ask her to see, she can’t neglect these people. She smiles at the boy and calls water to her hands from the courtyard fountain.

“Well it looks like I’m going to be your doctor today,” she tells him, and starts to settle into her familiar rhythm of work. The mother removes the rag she’d been holding over the cut, and Katara bends water around the wound before it can leak down his face where she can see faint red trails from where it had been wiped at. A moment of glowing, and the cut seals. To conserve her energy, she doesn’t heal it completely, but it won’t open or get infected as long as he doesn’t pick at it, which she informs him in the serious tone she reserves for boys and young men who tend to think themselves invincible. He and his mother both nod, and thank her, but Katara has to move on before they can finish pouring out gratitude.

As she makes slow progress towards the doors, she heals gashes and burns, cures a baby’s ear infection and an old man’s pneumonia. Following her is the buzz of It’s Master Katara, It’s Master Katara, occasional shouts of Long live the Fire Lady! It is a little unnerving to be so closely watched, but she still relishes the hum of her power skillfully plucking at the inner workings of her patients and the intimacy of holding a person in her hands. It is something she hadn’t appreciated when she’d first learned healing, after being told that it was for those too soft and breakable to be warriors. In the intervening years, Katara has come to understand that it asks more to repair than to destroy - that it requires far more courage to feel an innocent life slip through her fingers and keep trying with the next patient than it ever did to cut down enemy soldiers.

By the time she has edged her way to the doors, she is definitely late, and there are many patients she hasn’t been able to tend to. Still, she knows that the most dire cases, the ones that may not make it without more intensive interventions, are already inside, and that is where she is called to be. Luckily, Dr. Yosin must’ve been waiting for her in the lobby, because she sees her and with a frantic wave is able to catch her eye. She bustles out of the front archway and kindly but firmly extracts her, making apologies about needing Master Katara for an urgent matter.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Katara starts as soon as she is safely inside, surrounded by the familiar faces of the hospital staff. As she matches Dr. Yosin’s brusque pace headed towards the urgent wing, the doctor shoots her a sympathetic smile.

“Still getting used to the royal treatment?”

“That’s what the carriage was supposed to be for,” she laments. “We thought that if I got away from the palace, people wouldn’t recognize me. I don’t know how people are suddenly recognizing my face.” The doctor looks like she is going to say something, but a nurse sticks her head out from behind a curtain at the sound of their voices, calling for Katara to come quickly.

From there, her evening blurs as she is pulled from room to room, reining in sickness and injury to where it can be managed by the doctors. As she is brought to heal a man with a mangled leg, she feels the rising moon start to prop up her weary body. Pouring her renewed energy into forcing veins and arteries to knit back together and feeling out shards of bone, Katara knows that this will be her last patient of the day. She is weary, not usually a problem for her, but she also remembers her promise to see Zuko at dinner, certainly an impossible one now. After the man’s leg is repaired enough to be properly bandaged and splinted, she looks to her patient’s face to reassure him that he will recover, only to find his drooping eyes struggling to focus on her.

“The Painted Lady,” he whispers, astonished, and Katara is momentarily speechless. In that moment of hesitation, the man falls asleep, exhausted by his earlier agony. As she backs away from the cot, Katara catches a glimpse of her reflection in the basin of water she has been working from. Her work has left her smeared with sweat and blood. The smudges do look rather like a macabre rendition of the swirls of paint she had worn in her spirit disguise long ago. It’s an unsettling image, stirring up too many old memories, and she hurriedly cups some of the clean water in her hands and splashes her face to wipe the marks away. Then she dunks one end of her dress’s sash in the basin and scrubs at her arms and hands until her brown skin looks flushed and irritated. As she bids the doctors goodbye and climbs back into her carriage, she tries not to wonder about the rooms she does not have time to visit.

Zuko does not remark on her lateness. Not that night, nor any other night for the next few weeks as she continues to promise dinners that creep later and later. Even when she at last arrives so egregiously past dinnertime that she bursts into the dining room with her outer robe pulled on over the dirty shirt and trousers she had worked in all afternoon and finds the royal family’s dining room empty except for a servant polishing the candlesticks.

And Azula.

Katara is in no mood to face her future sister-in-law, and pivots to stride off towards her and Zuko’s chambers. A sharp snap of fingers cuts the air, and the guard manning the door shuts it firmly in her face, though she thinks she sees him mouth sorry as the gap closes. Whirling back to the princess, Katara levels her with a glare that would settle a frost over anyone less blazing.

“What do you want?” she demands, pretending to be far less exhausted than she truly is. Her stomach rumbles, and she could swear Azula hears it from across the room. A practiced wave of the hand sends the maid away with a bow.

When they are finally alone, Azula gestures for Katara to take the seat across from her at the table. It is small and simple compared to most furniture in the palace. Other nights, when Zuko and Ursa are seated around it with them, their hopeful smiles softening the atmosphere, the seating feels intimate in a way that reminds Katara of meals at Gran-Gran’s house. Now, she finds herself wishing that there was more space between her and Azula’s unnervingly keen gaze.

“I see you elected to ignore my advice,” the princess says. Katara straightens her spine.

“I took it under consideration and I compromised.”

“You took it to Zuzu and let him soften the blow.” She bristles at the insinuation that she is hiding behind her fiance, and just like last time, she wants to unleash a defensive adolescent rant about not needing a man’s permission for anything. She curls her fingernails into her palm and says, “Zuko and I are going to be ruling together. If I didn’t trust him to be my partner, I wouldn’t be marrying him.”

“Romantic,” Azula drawls. She sets an object on the table between them. The statue is beautiful, obviously crafted with care, and stands about as tall as the fresh tapers in the candlesticks. It depicts a slender woman, the tone of her brown skin and the dynamic shape of her skirts given by the driftwood bough from which she is carved. The rich red paint that colors her dress and swirls over her arms is accented by gold leaf. This is not the first statue of The Painted Lady to have made its way to the palace since Katara and Zuko’s engagement was announced. It takes a moment for her to realize what is so special about this particular statue, but as she focuses on blue sea glass eyes staring back at her, it is clear: this statue is of her. Azula must read the moment of realization on her face. At that, the princess’s face adopts a dismissive expression and she shrugs. “Clearly you have everything under control. My bad.”

Katara wants to have a witty retort, but her tongue feels stuck to the roof of her suddenly dry mouth. As Azula strolls past, the solid heels of her boots click on the polished floor. The moment the door shuts behind her, Katara snatches the statue and pushes up from her chair so quickly that it falls back and hits the floor with a loud crash. Then she strides off to find Zuko for real.

The next room she crashes into, she does find him, reviewing paperwork on the sofa in their antechamber, a tray of food long gone cold on the table. He startles at her entrance, but is on alert the second he registers her stormy expression.

“What’s happening?”

She holds up the statue. “This is happening now.”

“It’s...a nice statue?” he says, intensity fading into confusion.

“It’s me.” She slumps onto the sofa beside him and places the statue in his lap as she reaches for the plate of dumplings and grabs one bare-handed, eschewing any sense of formal manners. “Azula noticed it in the gifts - which are still coming, by the way,” she says, pointing the dumpling at him accusingly. “The audiences aren’t enough, and I get recognized every time I go to the hospital, and I keep you waiting all the time, but I just feel so bad that I can’t see as many people as I used to,” she tells him, settling herself tucked against his side. He sets aside the paperwork he has probably taken to bringing in anticipation of her lateness, and wraps an arm around her waist. A younger Zuko, more insecure and self-centered, might have lost his patience with her, but not this one. The man he has become loves her like believing in the moon; it is constant even when he can not see her. So he holds her and the statue of her, and she can see him struggling to keep from blurting out something impulsive.

As she waits for him to finish searching for the right words, she dunks the dumpling in a liberal bath of sauce, and shoves the whole thing in her mouth, still ravenous. “Ish jus thah I wanna hel,” she continues. Zuko catches her sleeve from trailing into a bowl of soup as she reaches for another.

“I know you do,” he finally speaks, and she can hear the but coming. Instead, he picks up his chopsticks and plucks a piece of fish, chewing thoughtfully.

Not in the mood for him to tiptoe around his opinion, she prompts, “Buh?”

Zuko swallows and says, “But you’re going to have to help people in different ways now. If you still want to -”

“I’m not changing my mind about marrying you.” She is adamant about this. Even though her sticky fingers and aching muscles feel far from regal, now that she has allowed herself to envision a lifetime with Zuko, her heart is fixed on having it.

“I know it might not feel like it at first,” he says, rubbing her back, “but I promise you’ll be able to impact even more lives.” The heat from his hand soothes the tight ache between her shoulder blades. “And I’m not just saying this to make you feel better, okay? I know how intimidating this is, and how weird it feels to go from that direct action to,” he waves a hand at his abandoned scroll, “legislative bullshit.” Katara’s shoulders creep back up towards her ears again, and she shrugs his hands away, turning her body to face him. He has to take a step away from her, and then another when she stands rather than craning her neck to meet his eyes.

“You were a prince, Zuko,” she reminds him, her voice sharpening. “You were born to do this.”

“Nobody’s born to do this,” he counters. “Some people are raised to do it, but I certainly wasn’t. I think we both know that no part of royal education in the past century has included relief or reform of any sort.” Hesitant, he lifts his hands to rest them lightly on top of her shoulders, his thumbs pressing gently against tight tendons until her stance loosens a little. “I know I don’t talk about it much, but when I first took the throne, I really did feel like a kid playing dress-up. And then I sort of just felt like an ineffectual parchment-pusher. But then,” She can sense where this is going, having gotten more than a fair share of pep-talks both in letters and in person over the years. When Zuko puts on his inspirational speech voice, there is only one place this can go: “You inspired me to keep trying. No matter how much I wanted to slip back behind a mask and swords and pick fights with every crooked merchant and nobleman, you reminded me that I could do more; that when I was raging at the unfairness of the world, I could rewrite the rules.” For once, she finds his faith in her exhausting.

“You want me to rewrite the rules?” she asks, disbelieving.

“You have before.” He leans in carefully, waiting to be rejected, but Katara lets him kiss her cheek. “You brought back the Avatar.” He kisses her ear. “You learned how to fight.” Her neck. “You proved that compassion has no borders.” His fingers start to nudge aside the collar of her dress, but she shrugs it out of his grasp even as she finds herself leaning closer to the familiar warmth of his chest.

“I still have my dirty work clothes on under here,” she protests tiredly. He is still and silent for a moment, his face tucked into the crook of her neck.

“I’ll run a bath then,” he decides. He withdraws, and she lets him. After years mostly apart, it is strange to want space from Zuko. Over the years, she has been angry at him plenty, has refused his help when it was unneeded, but always found solace in his unwavering belief in her strength. Now though, she relaxes a little at being out from under his hopeful eyes. The shock of fear that chases at the heels of this small relief sends her to follow him. She takes a seat on the tub beside him, and he looks up in surprise at her sudden appearance.

“I didn’t realize running my bath is one of the Fire Lord’s official duties,” she says, trying to break the tension. His eyes are earnest and hungry looking back at her.

“It’s one of the perks, really.” She draws him close, her eyes falling shut as their lips meet. Zuko still holds himself carefully, unsure of his welcome, so she presses her thumb into the hinge of his jaw until he opens his mouth to her.

Like he said, they are people who prefer direct action. Words, when they are not written in letters that can be pondered over and edited, are tricky for them. Hot tempers and outsized emotions tend to get the better of the both of them, and tonight feels dangerous. She doesn’t have the words to name the desperate feeling in her chest. If she tries to fumble through it now, she fears falling back on the familiar language of restlessness, and Zuko would tell her to chase her own heart around the world forever.

Maybe, hopefully, she can fill that nameless wanting with the ever-present desire she feels for him. No talking, she thinks, hoping he will understand as her lips withdraw from his to trace the sharp cut of is jaw, the slope of his neck. Blunt nails dig into her soft curves, giving the impression of him begging Please, please let me have you. It is a request he has made in so many ways now, Katara each time finding herself unwilling to deny him any piece of her. I want to belong with you, she thinks, hands pulling and shoving at their clothes. I just don’t know how to.

Warm water welcomes them, and Zuko’s presence is overwhelming felt through her skin, her bending, her soul. The storm that has been swirling in her chest pours out in the lightning flashes of teeth, the crash of waves against the sides of the tub, the howling wind in her lungs. Even when the maelstrom itself passes, much like on her journey back to Caldera, the ocean does not settle.

When Katara leaves the bathroom, she can tell that Zuko doesn’t quite know if he is supposed to keep pace with her or let her go on alone. He is cautious, drifting on her mood in case the storm is not quite finished. It would make her feel guilty if she knew the answer herself. Instead, she goes about getting ready for bed mechanically, and he follows a beat behind. He will wear pajamas because she is. He will extinguish the candles because she blew out the first one. He will stay silent because she has yet to speak.

When they lie down, his hand is hesitant as it settles on her waist, as though he does not know if his touch is welcome anymore, as though what she feels for him is the sort of fire that is capable of burning out. She guides him back to her with a dance of small shuffles across the sheets, until at last she can feel the steady beat of his heart against her spine, fingers sliding down the curve of her hip. Warm lips find her heart, lodged in her throat. Her eyes fly open, and catch on the balcony, doors open to let in the bright moonlight. The swaying masts of ships at the harbor lull her body into the slow roll of a nighttime sea, cradled between her lover and her element.

That night, she is restless despite her exhaustion. Zuko stays awake longer than he usually does, fiddling with the hem of her nightgown, worrying locks of hair between his fingers, memorizing the lines of muscles and the precise location of her bellybutton. He still finds sleep before Katara though. After frustrated hours, she rolls away from Zuko onto her back, but finds she misses him almost immediately. Her fingers walk back across the sheets to tangle with the ones reaching unconsciously towards her. On her other side, the nearly full moon and distant sea call her attention, and she turns her head to gaze out the window. Katara strains to feel the serenity Yue had radiated soaking into her through the moonlight, to channel the gentle tides of the harbor, but it is no use. Inside of her, she still feels familiar sprays of frozen brine and thrashing currents.

Zuko stirs when she throws off the covers and gets out of bed. The stone of the floor feels almost like ice on her bare feet as she steps onto the balcony. From here, the sea spreads endlessly across the horizon. It calls to her, and she imagines that when she reaches out to it, she can feel where it brushes the jagged shores of her childhood.

He finds her staring out at the ocean, his voice low as he asks, “Katara?” In her heart, she hears it as Are you Katara? For a moment she hesitates, unsure. Katara does not back down from any challenge - cuts through hatred, crosses miles, breaks stone to reshape herself and the world.

She wants to still be Katara, so she says, “Yes.”

“Are you coming back to bed?” Are you coming back to me?

This is a much easier question, an answer that has remained constant. “Always.” At that, he settles against the railing beside her, the bare skin of their upper arms just shy of touching, warmth flowing between them. He looks out at the sea as well, trying to see what she sees.

“Where are you right now?” Can I come with you?

“The South Pole,” she tells him, and Katara can taste snow.

The journey is somewhat hastily arranged, but nobody protests the couple visiting Katara’s family to celebrate their engagement. Ursa has almost entirely taken over planning the wedding itself anyway, so it seems they will hardly be missed. Uncle Iroh returns to Caldera City to take over some of Zuko’s meetings, and Azula has been deputized to help him. Katara is even confident that most of the threats she made were jokes, because Zuko had only laughed and told her that enemies of the state would be reassigned to flower arrangement.

It was at first comical, and now anxiety-inducing, the level of importance placed on royal weddings - formal rites with a week-long festival preceding. The whole thing had sounded like fun when Zuko had explained it, but her stomach tightens at the thought of an entire week to fan the flames of the public’s obsession. The Southern Water Tribe has traditions for when a couple is deciding to move in together, but they don’t have marriage ceremonies in the same way the Fire Nation does. There’s a celebratory feast for the community to wish them well, and family members often give the couple gifts for their home. But the one that Katara thinks is the most romantic, and which is the part of this visit she’s most anticipating, is the blanket.

A young couple weaves a blanket together that will go on the bed they plan to share. It is partly a symbol of their choice to be together, and partly a trial of their relationship because spending so long working together on a really mundane task is like marriage - it isn’t all about passion; it’s also about working hard, and working together for the sake of something beautiful that keeps you safe and warm. Katara has bittersweet memories of Gran-Gran tucking her and Sokka beneath their parents’ blanket when she told them stories by firelight, and fantasies of rainy days in the Fire Nation huddled under her and Zuko’s blanket with their own children. As she settles into bed beside him, she thinks to herself that the next time they sleep in this bed, it will be beneath that blanket in her dreams.

It is barely dawn when she hears the scrape of ice chunks gliding past the wooden hull of the ship. In a heartbeat, she is out of bed, feet thumping on the steps to the deck. The sunlight is blindingly bright when she emerges, making her eyes sting and water, forcing them closed again. Blinking away spots, she holds up a hand to shield her eyes as she searches for a commotion, panic over a crew member fallen overboard, but instead pulls up short. When her vision adjusts, as far as her eyes can see, there is ice and snow, the source of the bright light. As panic recedes, she becomes aware of the freezing air. The ship has dropped anchor at the South Pole. They have been wearing coats for days now, but in her haste, hers is still hanging on the back of her bedroom door.

Going back for it isn’t an option though. Katara finds herself drawn to the rail, her hands holding tight to the wood. She closes her eyes and tips her face up to feel the bright arctic sun on her skin, breathes in the brine of the ocean. It is different from any of the shores she has visited around the world, something sharp and clean about it that can only come from the cold. The bustling harbor and distant buildings of her former village are nothing like the home she sees in dreams of her childhood, but the ice welcomes her. She likes to think that they both remember a time when they were speaking only to each other. Katara reaches out to her old friend and the currents beneath the ship welcome her, coiling around her senses and swirling faster, hastening her return.

Warmth at her side prompts her to open her eyes. Zuko holds himself a half-step away, as he has since the strange non-argument where she had confessed her insecurity about becoming Fire Lady. He removes the thickly lined cape that trails from his formal cold weather regalia and drapes it around her shoulders. Surrounded by soft fur and the lingering heat from his body, she finds she can now only think of how much her freezing toes ache. Katara closes the distance between them to steal more of his body heat and reassure him that his presence is wanted. His arm settles around her shoulders, and a gentle kiss falls on the top of her head as they watch the harbor grow closer.

When they disembark after breakfast, Katara is wearing her own parka and boots, her hair braided to guard against the biting wind. Usually, Sokka is the one to pick Katara up when she visits, and the two of them shove and tease all the way to Gran-Gran’s house where the rest of their family is waiting with a hot meal. When Zuko visits, her father and a couple council members serve as the welcoming party. The reception they receive at the end of the dock is at once more and less formal than usual - Katara’s entire family assembled, Sokka letting out an enthusiastic whoop at the sight of them.

“Look who finally grew a pair!” he shouts, drawing a few snorts from locals wandering the docks, and horrified looks from the pair of royal guards behind them. Their expressions only grow more comical as Sokka ignores Katara entirely in favor of catching his best buddy in a headlock and hug-wrestling him into the snow.

“You’re one to talk!” she hears Zuko shoot back, but his words are muffled by Sokka’s hood and the snowball that is hurriedly shoved in his face to silence him. Katara laughs at their display and flicks a spray of snow at her brother’s face in defense of her fiance, even as she turns her attention to her father, who is also watching the young men in amusement.

“Dad,” she says, and finds that her voice cracks a little over the word. Despite the fact that they write and she tells stories of him frequently, she finds that there is nothing that prepares her for the sight of him. His hair, like always, is a little grayer than the visit before, the smile lines around his mouth carved a little deeper, and when he first looks at her, there is a half-second of sadness in his eyes where she knows that he is thinking of her mother. She never faults him for it though, knowing that she glances at the empty space beside him with the same wistfulness.

“Katara.” The rumble of her father’s voice so close to her ear as he embraces her brings tears to her eyes. As much as she tries to hold them back, a couple slip out into snow white hair as she is pried from her father into her grandmother’s arms. She hurriedly wipes them away with her mittens as she accepts a more cautiously affectionate hug from Pakku, grateful now for his mannered stoicism.

“Boys!” Gran-Gran snaps at the still tussling mess of Sokka and Zuko, who freeze at her tone. “Is this any way to treat family? Ignoring your sister? Disrespecting your elders?”

“Causing a public nuisance,” Pakku mutters.

“Sorry Gran-Gran,” both men say, getting to their feet and brushing snow from their clothes and hair. Zuko follows his apology with a bow, and Sokka steps on the corner of his cape, pitching Zuko back into the snow when he tries to stand.

“Sokka!” The whole family shouts. He raises his hands in surrender and helps Zuko up, but Katara definitely hears him grumble, “Kiss-ass.”

She punches her brother in the arm, eliciting an affronted sound, but he picks her up in a hug that squeezes the breath out of her, and she finds herself holding onto him just as tight. “Good to see you, sis,” he says as he relinquishes her. She pats some snow off Zuko’s back where he missed a spot, and he gives her a searching look when she wraps her arms around one of his. As the group starts walking towards the chief’s residence, Katara bends snow down the back of Sokka’s coat, and the indignant squawk and exasperated sighs are like music to her ears.

The feast that welcomes them back to the South Pole and celebrates Katara and Zuko’s union is a massive, joyous affair. All the original inhabitants of the village she’d grown up in, as well as the few northern transplants she has befriended over the years mob the communal hall, as well as...

“Suki!” her brother greets his girlfriend with equal exuberance whether they have been apart for months or hours, the later being the case on this occasion. After gamely accepting Sokka’s affections, she slips away to hug Katara and Zuko, congratulating them warmly, though her teasing smile holds the tiniest hint of I told you so.

As the party swings into full motion, Katara realizes that Zuko has disappeared. It feels strange, almost disingenuous, to accept all of the congratulations and gentle teasing knowing that there is a question hanging over them. She would feel better if Zuko was at her side. Tables nearly overflowing with food line one wall, children zip through the grownups with hands full of sweets, and drinks flow. Katara finds herself seated around the fire with Suki and some of the couples when Sokka and Bato deposit a red-faced Zuko directly into her lap. Her arms instinctively wrap around him to keep him from toppling over.

“What did you do to him?” She calls after them as they stumble and giggle back to the young warriors watching and laughing by the door. “Are you okay?” she asks Zuko, her hand reaching to run through his hair, only to find it tied in a wolftail, much to her surprise. He nods, head flopping in the exaggerated motions of the inebriated.

“‘M good,” he hums, letting Suki pull him out of Katara’s lap and onto the floor between the girls. He slumps against Katara, and very carefully accepts a cup of hot chocolate from the large pot that had been mixed for the kids.

“I bet you are, Sparky,” Suki tells him, barely restraining a laugh. “Getting Katara to settle down is no small feat.” He smiles at Katara sadly, sitting up straighter, and she opens her mouth to reassure him, when one of her mother’s friends speaks up.

“Really,” Kuya agrees, grinning across the circle. “A lot of us thought you two were going to be just like Tui and Liàng.”

“I thought it was Tui and La,” Zuko mumbles.

“That’s a common mistake for foreigners,” Kuya tells him. “Tui and La are siblings, children of the Earth.”

“Liàng is our name for the sun spirit,” Katara says, and he nods in understanding.

“Yes,” Kuya agrees. “And he is the lover of Tui, the original moon spirit.” Her smile wavers a bit at that, and Katara feels a pang of sorrow both for the loss of Tui and the distance of Yue. “Tui’s mother, the Earth, didn’t approve. She worried that her daughter would be outshined by him, and forbid them to be together. But Liàng loved Tui so much that he promised to shine so brightly that she would always be able to find him. So when Tui’s mother divides them, the sunset makes the icebergs and glaciers glow, Liàng stretching back and back and back to grab the edges of night.” Kuya reaches her hands out towards the low flames, then pulls them back, only to repeat the motion slowly as she continues the story. “And so he does again in the morning, reaching out and out and out to beg her to stay,” her voice catches as she says, “just a moment longer.” She glances at her husband, Nitu, who had been gone with the warriors for years on end. He rests a hand on her knee, and she takes it between her palms.

Katara can feel Zuko’s every breath despite the stubborn inch of space between their arms. She reaches for his hand too. His fingers squeeze hers back as Nitu smiles sadly at his wife and finishes the story. “Tui would see him from the other side of the horizon and know that he was calling out for her. So she promised her lover that she would linger in the sky as long as she could, waiting to steal a moment together. This is why sometimes the moon appears in the sky before the sun has set or lingers into the morning. This is also why near the solstices, when the spirits are called away to their duties more and more, the days and nights stretch longer and longer. The lovers will wait for each other for eternity.”

“I would,” Zuko whispers against her ear. Katara turns and presses her lips against his ear and whispers back,

“I’m done waiting.” His expression takes on the look of fierce determination she has so often seen across a sparring ring and she thinks, now there’s my husband.

As always at Southern Water Tribe gatherings, one story sets off another. Hakoda and Bato get up and re-enact their most daring (and most embarrassing) adventures from their years at war, elders keep alive the memories of those lost to violence but not time, and spirit tales abound. Katara teaches Zuko songs and dances she has known all her life, her voice retracing her mother’s words from when she led her and Sokka through them. He catches rhythms easily, always so coordinated, but his tongue stumbles a beat behind over lyrics even though his voice isn’t bad. His red robes stand out, and it should make him look like an outsider. Instead, he looks at home almost as much as everyone else.

It is towards the end of the night when he truly shocks her by clearing his throat as the laughter around the fire dies down and asking, “Is it alright if I tell one?” Zuko, for all his many talents and wonders, is not a storyteller. Even now that he has grown out of most of his youthful awkwardness, and being Fire Lord has forced a certain degree of comfort with public speaking, his words are always characteristically direct. She can feel him tensing with nerves beside her, and for the sake of his pride, she hopes that if he is going to fall on one side of himself, it is not Fire Lord Zuko. If this turns into a speech, nobody will let him live it down.

The elder that has been regaling him with the tale of a years-long feud between his father and a stubborn turtle seal gestures to let Zuko have a turn. All eyes shift to him, faces displaying a range of apprehension (Suki, Pakku, herself) and amusement (all of the warriors). She grips his hand to reassure him and wills him to hear her think, just tell The Boiling Rock, just tell The Boiling Rock. When he lets go of her, Katara turns to him, surprised to find that he is already looking at her and that his expression belies no anxiety. Then he faces her people and begins.

“My country hasn’t been much for folktales in the past, but my uncle tells one that I think fits the occasion.” There is no sound in the hall besides the crackling fire and Zuko’s voice. Even the musicians have fallen silent, unsure of what to do with an unfamiliar story and voice, waiting to catch the rhythm. “Many years ago, when dragons still filled the sky and the outer islands were still rising from the steaming sea, there lived a poor fisherman. His father had been a fisherman, and his father’s father, all the way back since Agni and Samudra’s children rose from the sand.”

Katara smiles a little to herself at the secret knowledge that the poetry in his words is not his own, but rather learned from the repetition of his uncle’s telling. “Day in and day out, the man would rise with the sun and walk out on the spit of rock near the village and cast his lines and wait for the fish. When the sun began to set, he would return to town with his catch. It was a peaceful life, but as the years wore on, he could not escape the longing for something more.”

He glances at Katara, and she shivers with the distinct feeling of him seeing a “something more” inside of her. “Then one day, out on the distant rocks, the fisherman saw a beautiful woman waving her arms. The tide was high, and sent crashing waves breaking again and again over the submerged rocks that separated them. She must need help, the man thought. He would never survive swimming such rough waters, but in a few hours, the tide would lower, and he could guide the woman back over the rocks to the shore. The fisherman called out to her that he was coming for her, that she would be safe.”

Zuko’s hands stay folded in his lap as he tells the story, but the even tenor of his voice has everyone leaning in, eyes fixed on his face. “She showed no signs of hearing him, and thinking that the waves were drowning out the sound of his voice, he waited and waited, watching the water for a sign of the tide receding. The waters remained high, though. Eventually, the fisherman’s mother came running down to the beach. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t you see there’s a storm surge? You have to come home!’ The fisherman turned to her and said, ‘I know, mother, but I can’t just leave her here - I must find some way to save her.’ His mother stared at the rocks where he pointed, but saw nothing. The fisherman was shocked to find the beautiful woman gone. ‘You must be sick from the sun,’ his mother said. ‘Come home, and I will make you a new hat while we weather the storm.’ The fisherman followed her, but he did not think he was seeing things.

Days passed. No storm came, and the sea receded. The fisherman asked all over the village if anyone knew who had been out on the rocks, but nobody could answer him. Everyone in the village knows to stay off of the far rocks because one can get easily stranded - only someone mad would think of it. At night, he saw her in his dreams, and as the days turned into weeks, the fisherman became convinced that the woman’s waving arms were not fear, but rather beckoning, the motions too smooth and rhythmic like the waves themselves. As the weeks became a month, he realized that she must be his true love, and that it was his destiny to find her.

So when he returned to the rocks that day and found the woman waving from the rocks yet again, he knew that the spirits had granted him a second chance, and he was determined not to waste it. ‘I’m coming!’ he shouted, as loud as he could, over the waves. ‘I’m coming, my love!’ She could not hear him though. So this time, he ran to the forest and began building a raft of vines and fallen logs, determined to prove the depth of his love and rescue her. He toiled all day, until his hands were dirty and bleeding, but at last the raft was built. The fisherman ran back to the beach, but the tide had already gone out, and the woman was gone.

He spent the next month building a boat. He had never been able to afford one, nor had the patience to build one himself, but as he made offerings to the spirits each night for the woman to return just one more time, he threw himself into the craft. It left him weary, but proud when the work was finished. Back to the shore he went, this time carrying his boat. Sure enough, the woman had returned. ‘I’m coming!’ he shouted again. ‘I’m coming, my love!’ He pushed the boat into the water and started to paddle out to her. The waves were choppy, constantly trying to shift him off course or run him aground on the rocks. The fisherman was determined, though, and slowly, he got close enough that he could almost catch a glimpse of her face.

Then, a sudden wave sent water up over the nose of the boat. When the spray cleared, the woman was gone. It was impossible, but she had vanished. The fisherman thought the wave must have swept her into the water, and he looked overboard, searching for her, but saw nothing except shadows. Thinking that surely one of them must belong to her, he searched for a rope to throw her, but the only one he had was hopelessly tangled. He tossed it over anyway, watching the bundle sink and praying to the spirits.

Just as he began to despair, there was a tug on the rope. With all his might, he reeled it in, his heart leaping with joy. Only when he hauled the tangle of rope back into the boat, there was no woman ensnared in the loops. Instead, there were fish, larger than any he had reeled in from the shore. Again and again he tried, and each time there were more fish. Until at last, the fisherman had to admit that the woman had surely drowned. He returned to the shore and wept until sundown. It is said that on that night, he wove the first fishing net. In the end, nobody on the island was ever hungry again, except for the fisherman’s starving heart, trawling the depths in hopes of recovering his lost love, his nets finding only fish.”

Zuko sounds so sad as he finishes the story, as though the fisherman’s loneliness is his own. One of the children calls out, “Was the lady really dead?”

“There are many theories about the fate of the woman, depending where you go in the Fire Nation,” he replies. “Some think she was just a seal and his eyes were playing tricks on him.” The kids giggle at that, and he smiles. “Some say she dove in to swim towards the boat and did die tragically, while others say she was comitting suicide to escape his clearly deranged affections. Others say that she was a spirit who was so enamored by his efforts that she turned herself into fish to feed him. My uncle says that she was the ocean spirit herself and disappeared because such powerful spirits are not meant to be seen, much less captured.” Zuko glances at Katara, holding her eyes as he says, “Personally, I think the woman was a waterbender who just didn’t want to get tied down because some guy thought she was pretty and in need of rescue.” She thinks she understands why Uncle Iroh had told this story so many times over the years, and why Zuko remembered it so well. She thinks she also understands what has put the hesitance in his touch. There is a chorus of laughter from those who don’t know the depth of this moment, but Katara pulls him into a kiss.

It isn’t until late, after her family has continued the celebration well into the night, that she is able to get Zuko alone. After getting ready for bed as slowly as she could, waiting for him to come upstairs, she goes after him. Out into the hallway of her grandmother’s house, she sees light coming from downstairs and follows it. He is seated on the furs that surround the low table, a cup of tea by one hand and a letter marked with Iroh’s official advisor seal in the other.

“What’s happened?” Katara asks, startling him away from his reading. Iroh wouldn’t be bothering Zuko (in an official capacity anyway) if it weren’t a matter of grave importance. Her heart dances nervously in her chest, her mind already spinning possibilities of Ozai loyalists returning, of Azula relapsing, of freak storms sweeping in.

“Uncle needs to tell palace security whether the outer gates are going to be open for the wedding or not,” he says. The grave tone of his voice is incongruous with the concept of wedding planning thus far, which has primarily consisted of such pressing matters as, “what dishes are a must-have at the reception?” and “what flowers would the bride like in her hair?” This newest question, however, is no small matter.

“Oh. Right.” Katara takes a seat beside Zuko and steals his teacup for a sip to wash away the bitter taste of anxiety with sweet peppermint.

“I know you had said initially that you wanted the courtyard opened to the public, but I figured I should double-check given…” he shrugs one shoulder awkwardly. The fact that we’re sort of hiding me from the rabid adoration of an entire country, Katara thinks, and sighs.

“If I start hiding behind the palace walls now,” she says, “I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life.” Her stomach curdles at the thought. Katara is not built to be a distant ruler or an idol on a pedestal. “Responsibility isn’t a problem for me; I’ve always had way too much of that. I’ll take the late nights and bickering politicians over being powerless again any day, but…” she shakes her head. “Zuko, I need to be a person.” He nods, silent. His eyes are fixed on the scuffed, knotted wood of the table. She can tell he is thinking deeply about something, but leaves him to it, not wanting to disturb the peace.

“My Lady of the Tides,” he murmurs half to himself, half sadness, half admiration.

“Well I certainly don’t plan on diving off of any rocks and disappearing into the sea,” Katara tells him, “but the name sounds nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Much better than Fire Lady, at least.” Her tone is joking, but Zuko picks out the slight unease with which she says her future title.

“Would you rather be called something else?” he asks.

“I don’t know if people would go for that, Zuko,” she says. “I mean, hasn’t every Fire Lady ever gone by...well...Fire Lady?”

“You won’t be like any Fire Lady ever. And names are important. This one feels like it’s yours. After all, there’s a reason Uncle has told me this story so many times since we got together.”

“I know.” She takes his hand.

“If I’d followed my stupid selfish impulses - chased you around the world again, begging you to be with me?”

Katara winces a little, pained at the idea. He wraps his arm around her waist and presses his lips to her temple. “If you had done that, you wouldn’t be the man you are now. I want to marry you because you’ve learned to be patient, and because you trust me enough to believe I’ll come back.

“I don’t want you to get scared off into the sea.”

“You see, the thing about the tides,” she says, leaning into his warmth, “is that they always come back in.”

He smiles and kisses her again. “They’re pretty relentless too.”

Katara starts to question the romantic symbolism of the blanket when her father drops off the pieces of the frame they are meant to use and informs them that a lesser-known part of the tradition is that there is...some assembly required. They have to shove the bed and the trunk of her mother’s things into the corner to make enough space to lay out the pieces, and the “instructions” were written down by an elder some time ago in spidery handwriting and vague terms.

“This feels like an elaborate prank,” Zuko tells her, when they are both sweating and frustrated from having to take apart and reassemble several partially-constructed looms.

“Well, what it is is a sacred tradition,” she snaps.

“Well, then the sacred pegs won’t go in the holy board, and that feels like a bit of a bad omen.”

“The spirits aren’t ‘cursing our marriage’ or whatever, you’re just a lousy carpenter. Let me do it.” She nudges him out of the way, abandoning the directions and taking the mallet he had been trying to drive the pegs with. Lining one of the wooden pegs up with the first hole, she gives it a hard whack! that makes Zuko flinch.

“Careful, you’re gonna break it! Gran-Gran said this thing’s like five hundred years old or something. Then our marriage would be cursed for real.” She looks him in the eye and hits the peg even harder. She clips her thumb a little and it hurts, but she just tucks it into her palm and bites her cheek. When she tries to wiggle the peg, it stays firm, and she gives him a smug look.

“You think things get to be five hundred years old around here by being delicate? Here, try it again. Show this thing who’s boss.” Katara hands him back the mallet and watches him line up the next peg. He takes a deep breath in to steel himself before bringing it down - still not as hard as she had, but with considerably more force than his previous attempts. The peg tacks into the hole, staying upright when he lets go. “See? Do it again,” she encourages. “Harder.” He does, and the peg goes the rest of the way in.

“That actually felt really good,” he says, grinning.

“Then keep going,” she tells him, laughing at how much joy he seems to get from violently hammering the thing that’s been fighting him all morning. It looks like so much fun that she ends up dashing down the hall to borrow another mallet from Sokka’s tinkering tools.

“Bet I can finish my side first,” Zuko teases.

“Oh you’re so on,” she laughs.

After that, the frame is built before they know it, and though their arms are sore when they sit down to dinner, they are still laughing when they do. Hakoda smiles at them.

“Seems like you two have got the hang of it already.”

The flex of Zuko’s arms as he strings the warp threads onto the loom is beautiful. Katara observes him from where she is ostensibly laying out the sequence of yarn they will need for the weft, a ball of soft burgundy squished in hand. He is hers, and he is so lovely, and she half wishes that they could stay at the South Pole forever. If he ever missed his palace, she would build him a new one out of ice.

The fantasy falls apart quickly though. There is a proper clinic and waterbending school now where she could work. But her abilities would no longer be useful in a unique way, and if she is honest, now that she is not alone, she revels in her singularity. Then there is Zuko. Katara may disagree with Azula about the divine right to rule, but there is no doubt in her mind that Zuko - the blood of a Fire Lord and an Avatar pumping through the heart of good man - is destined to heal the Fire Nation. There is also no doubt in her mind that if a fortune teller held their bones in fire until they cracked, the fissures would fit together like a key in a lock.

Still...he looks very nice. “Have you ever thought of doing your hair a little differently?” she blurts. He raises his eyebrow at her.

“I don’t really think about my hair all that much…” He sounds suspicious, but grins like he has an idea of what the look on her face means. “It’s sort of just part of the uniform. What would you like me to think about doing with it?” Katara hums, head tipping side to side as she considers the length of his hair, which he is still tying in a wolf tail. She knows he won’t be able to keep it like that when he has to go back to wearing the crown, but...

“Let me put a couple braids in it? Maybe a few beads?”

“Well, if I’m going to be an official member of the tribe, I probably should.”

The weaving itself starts on the third day of their visit, though not until after lunch. Sokka drags Zuko off for some “brother bonding” right after he finishes his morning meditation. Katara wants to protest, except Suki appears to be in on it, wheedling her into sparring practice.

“How’s the blanket coming along?” Suki asks as they circle each other out in the hard-packed snow behind the house. Katara freezes a patch of ice right in the path of Suki’s foot, but her boots have been fitted with some kind of metal spikes that bite in and keep her from losing traction. “A gift from Sokka,” she confirms, smug at the surprise on Katara’s face. A small dagger whizzes past Katara’s cheek, nearly catching a hair loopie and embeds itself in a lopsided snow-Suki that is likely another of Sokka’s strange courtship rituals.

“I thought Mai put the knives away.” Katara throws a small spray of ice shards that Suki slashes away with a sweep of her katana.

Suki shrugs. “Ty Lee talked her into some private lessons.”

“I’m sure.”

“So. Blanket?” Suki tries to advance, but Katara takes a step back, just as her friend knew she would.

“Well we finished setting it up before bed last night, but some people wouldn’t let us actually get around to starting the weaving yet.” Waterbending tends to do poorly in close combat since power comes from being able to have a wide and fluid motion. The few times Katara has needed to win such a fight have ended messily.

“Relax, Sokka’s not going to steal your boy forever,” Suki teases, throwing another dagger that Katara swats away irritably.

“It’s fine, I’m not in a hurry.”

A crease appears between Suki’s brows as she tries to creep around under Katara’s guard. “Is everything okay with you guys?”

Katara pulls together an octopus form and starts snatching at Suki’s limbs, forcing her back farther, keeping her from being able to firm up her stance.

Suki keeps talking. “You seemed-” snap! “like you’re having fun.” snap! “Is he being dumb?” snap! Sword slashes through water whips, but Katara reforms them almost as fast.

Katara’s frown of concentration settles deeper in her brow. “It’s been a little tense,” schlick! “We can find a solution-” schlick! “But that sort of requires talking.”

Suki rolls under her next strike and pops up close enough to take a slash at Katara. She pulls a shield of ice up between them, and tries a new move she’s been working on: a combination of earthbenders summoning a column of Earth with a stomp of their foot and a sweep-stomp move from one of her father’s warrior dances. It doesn’t quite work, only lurching her up a few feet, and Suki gets her sword stuck in the ice jerking it away from Katara’s knees.

“Monkeyfeathers,” Katara mutters, scuffing the ice with her boot as she sweeps her arms down to melt it away.

Suki retrieves her sword from the puddle of slush and shakes it off. “I win,” she sings, bumping Katara, who crosses her arms and feigns a pout even as she links arms with her friend to walk back to the warm house.

Gran-Gran brews them tea to warm up. Suki waits for her to join them before she prods at Katara. “So, what is it you and Zuko need to solve exactly? Your letters sounded like everything was going great.” At her grandmother’s sharp look, Katara isn’t sure if she wants to kick her friend’s ankle for trapping her or hug her for forcing her to seek guidance. She sighs.

“It’s just a lot to get used to. Leadership is so different down here, you know? Dad was elected by the council, and they can kick him out if they think he’s not acting in the tribe’s best interests. And he’s just...I mean, he’s important, but he’s still just a guy, you know? People want his respect, but not because they think he’s magic or whatever.” She wiggles her fingers and then drops her chin in her hand, elbow propped on the table.

“They think Zuko’s magic?” Suki snorts. “When I did security for him, I stopped him from dying by drinking his own brush water more than by assassin.” It’s a funny joke, but now that Katara is thinking again, her stomach squirms from stress. Maybe she should’ve asked for herbal tea instead.

“They sort of think he is, but...mostly it’s me.” Gran-Gran gives her the same proud but sad look she has seen many times before. A weathered hand stills her fidgeting fingers on the tabletop. Her grandmother’s hands are cool and strong.

“You know I am not superstitious or vain enough to think the spirits care much for the individual lives of mortals, but do you remember why I always made you and Sokka honor them anyway?”

Katara nods. “Belief is necessary for hope.”

“Yes. Believing in the spirits, or the Avatar, or enduring peace - these things give us hope. And you, my dear, have given people a whole lot of hope.” Katara’s lips twitch in a half-hearted attempt at a smile. She is proud of that, of knowing that her work stands in the light on its own, not faded into the shadows, but…

“It’s just sort of...heavy. Aang and Zuko, they’ve given people a lot of hope too, but I think it feels like a lot because-” she searches for the words to describe how exposed she felt having people recognize her in public, seeing the statue of herself as a spirit. “They’re good people, but they’re also these larger than life symbols. When it comes to my work, the symbol is just...it’s just me.” She thinks again of Azula and the dragons. “Maybe Azula is right; maybe I gave away too much of me.”

Suki tilts her head and then shakes it, denying the possibility. “They don’t need less of you; they just need more to believe in.”

Gran-Gran gives her an approving nod, and squeezes Katara’s hand. “You have never let anyone make you smaller. Don’t start now.”

When she finds Zuko already waiting upstairs, he is breathing short puffs of fire and rubbing his arms, the Mark of the Brave painted on his forehead.

“They took you ice dodging?” Katara exclaims, caught between sentimental joy over their shared mark and concern over how chilled he looks.

“Yeah, your brother gave me a hard time about ‘finally becoming a man’.”

“Oh no,” she says, but she’s already laughing at Zuko’s self-satisfied expression.

“He wasn’t laughing long.” Katara shakes her head. Her brother has a knack for drawing out a person’s inner child - herself included.

“Why are you freezing? And,” she tilts her head as she notices, “wearing my dad’s old coat?”

“Mine, uh, got a little wet,” he says, abashed. Katara’s eyes widen and she reaches to feel Zuko’s forehead.

“And they let you just come up here by yourself? You could have hypothermia!” Her hands reach for a blanket on the end of the bed and drapes it around his shoulders. “Take that thing off,” she orders, pointing at the coat.

“Well, if it’s doctor’s orders,” he says, a little smirk on his lips as he obeys.

“They should know better,” she continues, starting to work up to a full rant as she rubs her hands up and down his arms and then starts grabbing for yarn and preparing the shuttle to keep her hands busy. “Ice dodging isn’t even supposed to happen until summer - it’s dangerous! Every year, there’s always some idiot that doesn’t mind the ice and dies.”

“I promise I’m fine,” he tries to convince her, taking up his position on the other side of the loom. “Uncle taught me how to warm myself with firebending, I’m really just chilly from the walk home.” Katara just grumbles and winds faster. “It really wasn’t their fault. I asked them to take me.” She leans back from him, surprised.

“You asked to get dragged into an ice field?”

“Your brother has talked about how it’s part of preparing you to become an adult in the tribe, so. I’ve thought about it before, but after you were asking about my hair the other day, I knew that it was important to me.” Tears spring to her eyes, and her chest feels tight with appreciation for Zuko but also frustration with her own situation. She fiddles with the loaded shuttle, casting about for something else to do, an outlet that isn’t curling up in his lap and crying. Zuko tilts his head, and says, “Tell me.”

When your relationship has been conducted almost exclusively via letters and rushed visits, there really isn’t time to skirt around emotions. Doing so tends to make Zuko feel insecure and Katara feel unwanted, feelings that tend to bring out ugly parts of themselves that they still struggle to outgrow. It takes more effort than usual to fight the urge to swallow back her own feelings. “I don’t know what to do,” she admits.

He rolls out the plans for the blanket that they have gridded out, their handwriting curled around each other in the margins where they noted symbols and colors. “Start with this.”

When she passes the shuttle into his hands and he pulls it through to start filling in the first curling waves of their blanket, she calms a little. As she sits across from him, passing the shuttle back and forth, fingers picking out strings, she thinks that this is what their marriage will be - the two of them in a constant give and take. In this way, they have been weaving their blanket for a long time already, for years through letters, the threads stretching the world over.

She has always thought best when her hands are busy, and it makes it easier not to have to look at him while she recounts her conversation with Gran-Gran and Suki. Her eyes lose focus on the work in her hands, and she recalls his words. Rewrite the rules...You’ve done it before. When she pauses in her work, he gives her a curious glance.

“Zuko, you said a lot of the old stories went away because Sozin wanted the Fire Lord to have more sway over the people than the spirits, right?”

“Yeah, there were all kinds of local legends and minor deities like The Painted Lady, and we used to have our own stories about the moon and the ocean. Uncle only learned some of them when he joined the White Lotus.”

“I think we need to bring them back,” she says, and it feels right. “We’ve spent so long trying to bring balance between people, but…”

“There’s still something missing,” Zuko agrees, nodding. There’s a thoughtful furrow in his brow, as he sets aside the slate blue yarn and picks up the silver for the leaping dolphin gulls. “I felt it when we were at the party - this sense of being more complete. I thought it was just feeling like I really was a part of your family, but I think I was also feeling that connection to the spirits.”

Katara smiles at that. It’s been a long time since she lived at the South Pole in any permanent way, but through the years it has always been a place for her to regroup, to step back and get perspective on how far she has come. The thought of it becoming the same thing to Zuko makes her stomach warm and fluttery. Then her forehead pushes into a matching crinkle. “How do we make it happen though? It could take years to catch on.”

He hums, considering. The shuttle starts to move back and forth again, and as each thread is added, the picture grows clearer. Eventually, Zuko gives her a hesitant look and says, “I might have an idea for how we could speed up the process.”

“Hit me with it.” She reaches for the ice blue of the background.

“We do have a whole wedding festival coming up that people are...a little bit excited for.” The drastic understatement gets a snort of laughter from her, but it’s a solid idea.

“You really think it would work?”

“Caldera will be full of people, and they’ll probably be talking about whatever happens for a while.” Katara nods, thoughtful.

“Do you think we can pull it off?” As he takes the shuttle from her, he lets his hand briefly cup the back of hers, fingertips tracing tendons and knuckles.

“I would never doubt it.”

After that, their weaving sessions become planning meetings as well, patterns coming to life faster and faster as they get a feel for the craft and their excited hands try to keep pace with their words. Messenger hawks start flying between the South Pole and the palace in a speed and number that surpasses even the most desperate periods of Katara and Zuko’s courtship. Ursa and the head housekeeper start frantically shuffling around delivery orders and entertainment schedules. Fire Sages are directed to pour over long abandoned archives. Uncle Iroh reaches out to his contacts within the White Lotus in an attempt to recover many of the legends about water, earth, and wind spirits that past Fire Lords had tried to wipe out entirely. Aang agrees to come ahead of the ceremony to help fulfill the “spiritual bridge” part of his Avatar duties (and maybe fit in just a little surfing).

This all hands on deck effort to launch a spiritual revival and pull off a wedding also necessitates Zuko turning over some general oversight responsibilities to Azula. It’s really just reading memos summarizing the ministers’ quarterly reports and then signing off that they were filed and reviewed. However, it exposes more details of the inner workings of the council and Zuko’s policy agenda than his sister has ever been privy to before, and it sets him on edge.

Katara surprises herself by telling him, “I think you can trust her.” Her past run-ins with Azula flit through her mind, and despite how initially upsetting they had been, she decides, “She’s been trying to help us for a while now.” Zuko nods and sends the order off. He agrees again when Katara suggests they ask Azula to tell the story of the first firebender. Katara is the one to write that letter, and when she reaches the bottom, hesitating over the closing, she realizes that she has never written to Azula before. In the end, she signs it “Your Sister,” and hopes for the best.

All of the planning takes until the day Katara and Zuko carefully remove their blanket from the loom and knot the tassels that cap each end. When it is done, Katara looks down at the material that stretches between them, dotted with moon flowers and cherry blossoms, a pair of red and blue dragons breathing the southern lights into the sky, framed by a border of curling waves shimmering with silver and gold creatures. She strokes a finger over the twined bodies of the koi fish draped across her knee.

“We’re married,” she says, all breathless wonder. When she looks up at her husband, there are tears catching in the lines of his smile. He crawls across the blanket to reach her, and she meets him with a kiss, toppling him back onto it.

Clutching hands tangle in her hair and clothes as she kisses his face dry. Eventually he manages to hold her still long enough to press his lips to hers.

“We’re married,” he murmurs, staring up at her in awe.

Katara nods and kisses him again. “Yeah, we are.”

“Thank you,” he says. She opens her mouth to respond in kind, but Zuko’s lips brush her neck and she just gasps instead.

It is after a dinner of heartfelt congratulations (and gagging noises from Sokka and Suki) that Katara finds that she and her father are the only ones left awake in the house. They sit beside the fire, nursing a nightcap. Zuko is asleep with his head in Katara’s lap, their newly completed blanket draped over them both. Her fingers still stroke through his hair, more for the familiarity of its softness than to keep him asleep. It has been a while since anyone has spoken, but the older she gets, the more she finds herself in these quiet moments with Hakoda.

“Words sometimes get in the way of things.” When he speaks, at first she thinks it is just a vivid remembrance of hearing the words before. He continues though. “I certainly don’t have the right ones to express how I have wished for and feared this for years.”

“Dad, you realize I’ll probably see you more now, right?”

Hakoda smiles sadly, setting his drink aside. “A parent’s worries are never really that simple.” He stands and beckons her to do the same. “I have something for you.” Katara gently replaces her legs with a pillow under Zuko’s head and tucks their blanket tighter around him to keep the warmth in, then follows her father up the stairs.

In his room, he retrieves a small wooden box that Katara does not recognize. He presses it into her hands without ceremony. “I made this for your mother when we were first married.” Katara feels herself getting choked up without even seeing what it is.

“Dad. You should keep some things for-”

“I have things saved for your brother too,” he cuts her off, stepping away from her hands trying to offer it back and taking a seat on the end of the bed. She looks at him and tries to read any hint of reluctance in his face.

“Some of them should be for you, you know.” Whereas her mother loved to collect what little trinkets and keepsakes she could, her father has never been much for possessions. It is, she thinks, a part of their shared nature - people always called away by duty. She has spent years living with only what she could carry on her back and would have parted with many things she now treasures if Gran-Gran and Zuko had not both insisted on keeping a bedroom waiting for her visits.

“I have the important things,” Hakoda tells her, another set of words she has heard time and time again. Its meaning has expanded slightly over the years - my health, my children, peace. It is only with new and personal understanding that she notes the way his fingers blindly trace the patterns of her parents’ blanket where it is still neatly folded at the foot of the bed. She knows now that it is not just a promise, not just a collection of hours of hard work and laughter. It is thousands of times reaching for a hand that always reaches back, asking “You’re sure it’s me?” and thousands of times being promised, “Yes, it’s you.” How could anything else matter? She opens the box.

It is a hair comb - one she does not remember ever seeing her mother wear. It is bone carved into tall, curling waves, the water set with glittering abalone, the foaming edges and comb teeth polished white. “It’s beautiful.”

“She always said she was saving it for something important,” he tells her. “I couldn’t think of anything that would be more important than this.”

“Thank you,” she says. They do not cry. Instead, Katara turns and faces the mirror while her father ties her hair in a top knot. She only hazily remembers him doing her hair as a little girl, in the small window between her mother’s death and his departure, so she carefully memorizes the determined set of his mouth and every gentle tug at her scalp. When he pokes the comb into her hair, it takes a few tries before it stays and sits straight, but he gets it. She turns away from the glass to look at him. “How do I look?”

The rough pad of his thumb traces the mark of the brave onto her forehead. “You look like Katara.”

The journey back to the Fire Nation has Katara’s mood changing between a deep peace and stomach-turning anxiety nearly as fast as she paces the deck of the ship. Some days she trains until she has worn out Zuko and every crewmember that can be spared, only breaking when her husband puts up a show of jealousy that they pretend isn’t a pretense to make her go eat lunch. Others, she is so restless that she hoists herself over the stern railing and bends herself over the sparkling water to the ship her family is traveling on. There, nobody argues with her taking over someone’s job, gladly handing over their post.

As they get closer and closer to Caldera, and the plans for the festival start to become final, the fear of what if it doesn’t work starts to be followed by a hopeful wondering of what if it does? She lies awake at night watching the moonlight on her husband’s face, their blanket holding the warmth of their bodies close against the chill of a sea breeze, trying to imagine their plans coming together. In her mind’s eye, it looks like the summer solstice festival she has attended in years past, the streets filled with performers and food carts, fireworks sparkling in the sky.

The ships wait just outside the port overnight, sailing the last small distance to the docks just as the sun rises on the first day of festivities. Royal guards carrying decorative staffs topped with trailing ribbons create a path through the crowds thronging the docks, allowing Zuko’s family to make the walk from their palanquins to the gangplank. They stop before the couple and Katara’s family, and greet them with bows. It’s a contrast to her own family’s reception as they return the formality.

At least until Uncle Iroh pulls Zuko into a tight hug. Ursa steps forward to welcome Katara back, and she sighs as Zuko’s mother enfolds her in soft silk and the faint perfume of makeup.

“Welcome home,” she murmurs. Katara is relieved to find herself smiling.

Iroh reaches for her next, and it is old habit by now to lean down to squeeze him back and accept a whiskery kiss on the cheek. “It is a wonderful thing you are doing, my dear.”

Katara returns the gesture. “Thank you, Uncle.”

Azula’s eyes go wide in horror when Katara turns to her, fearing that she is about to be subjected to a similar public display of affection. Laughing, she decides to have mercy and simply nods at her.

Before they depart the docks, Katara and her family press their hands to the hull of the ship and offer a quiet prayer of thanks to La and the favorable winds that carried them. As she slowly turns around, Katara feels anticipation building in her stomach. Right on cue, Fire Sage Shyu clears his throat and instead of declaring the wedding festival open, says, “You know, Master Katara, the Fire Nation had a similar tradition long ago.”

“You don’t say?” she replies, biting back a smile.

“If I may?” he asks, looking to Zuko for approval as though the three of them had not planned this moment in letters. At the inclination of Zuko’s head, the Fire Sage turns to address the royal family and the crowd as one, projecting his voice to be heard over the crowd. “We used to have a practice of thanking the sea for safe passage as well. You see, while Agni - the Sun spirit - is regarded as the father of our people, the mother of our people is said to be Samudra - the sea.” A hush falls over the crowd. Not in a hundred years has a Fire Sage preached of the importance of any other element, much less to the Fire Lord at his own wedding festival.

“While Agni rose the volcanoes that formed the Fire Nation, it was Samudra’s cool waters that made the lava become stone, her relentless waves that softened the land into sand and soil. To this very day, it is the combined care of the sun and sea that grows our crops and fills our nets. But it has been a long time since our people properly honored the sea for all that she gives us.” Katara feels Zuko’s hand around her own, gently squeezing.

“Perhaps you should remind us all,” Zuko says. Shyu bows, accepting the request.

“We will need an offering from the land.”

Uncle retrieves a plum from his sleeve. “It was a snack for the ride home,” he says, “but for the spirits, I suppose I can part with it.”

Shyu resumes his instructions, his voice calm and resonant. “Samudra, as the mother of our people, does not ask for anything we cannot give. She simply asks us to acknowledge the blessings we have received from her, that we never forget who we are.” Beside Katara, Zuko’s breath catches at the words. Shyu asks for a blade, and Sokka, Suki, Hakoda, and Azula all procure knives, surprising the Fire Sage and startling laughter from the rest of the party. He accepts Hakoda’s, and passes it to Iroh, who follows his instruction and cuts the plum in half, offering the pieces to Zuko and Katara. They accept them, bowing shallowly.

Fruit in hand, they repeat Shyu’s words as he intones, “Mother Ocean, thank you for your protection on this journey. Thank you for the land to which I return, and for your watchful eye.” Their eyes meet, as they both wonder what to offer as sacrifice. Should they eat part and cast the rest off? Squeeze the juice into the water? She does not ask for anything we cannot give, Katara thinks, gazing down at the fruit cupped in her palm, the pit shining in the center.

Her thumb digs into the tender flesh easily, hooking under the pit and ripping until it slips free into her hand. She shows it to Zuko, and he nods encouragingly before she drops the pit into the water, to be carried off by the waves. Perhaps it would wash up on some distant shore and become a tree of its own. As she bites into the plum, she watches Zuko do the same, his eyes falling shut for just a brief moment. She wonders if it tastes sweeter than he remembers too.

After the ritual is complete, Shyu proceeds with the declaration of the wedding festival, setting the crowd cheering again. Once safely settled in a palanquin, Zuko lifts her hand to his lips and kisses the lingering plum juice from her skin. The plan has begun.

“Are you sure I can’t officiate?” Aang asks Katara almost immediately after his arrival at the height of the first day’s celebration. He is ostensibly in Caldera attending the festival as a close personal friend of the couple (and Toph Beifong’s chauffeur), but when they started laying their plans, Katara and Zuko had asked him if he’d mind adding some “spiritual bridge” duties to his itinerary of street food and party tricks. He had happily accepted, and thrown in an offer of additional assistance with the wedding.

Katara has to look up a bit to fix Aang with her firm expression, and she still is not used to it. “Positive.” Immediately, Aang’s pleading expression, a cartoonish display of big gray eyes and wobbly lower lip, washes away the strangeness of him in this grown body.

“We don’t even have to tell Sifu Hotman though; it could be a surprise!”

Katara imagines the look on Zuko’s face if they arrived at the altar and Aang appeared. She laughs just recalling the dramatic expression of horrified outrage he turns on her whenever she hurls herself into their friends’ childish schemes. “It wasn’t Zuko’s call,” she tells Aang honestly, remembering the message they had received back after Aang pitched his idea to the Fire Sages. “The sages...had concerns.”

Aang looks gobsmacked, his jaw falling open. “Like what? I’m the Avatar!” He throws his gangly arms in the air, gesturing at his very official looking formal robes. “I’m the uniter of nations, the bridge to the spirits! What could make more sense than me overseeing the marriage of the Fire Lord and the world’s greatest waterbender?”

Katara winces. “It was probably a bad idea to put the Momo thing in your proposal after last year’s Summer Solstice incident. Once they saw that, there really wasn’t anything we could do.”

“But it’s symbolic! Flying lemurs mate for life!”

“It’s okay, Aang.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. "Like we said, the wedding isn’t a huge deal. We’re already married by Southern Water Tribe traditions. The ceremony is for the citizens. And Uncle and Ursa.” Aang’s bluster rushes out like a breeze, and he nods in acceptance of her comfort. His hand comes up to squeeze Katara’s.

“I know, but...you guys are my best friends.”

She smiles and promises, “And you’re ours. That’s why I asked you to come help with this. You’re a part of our story. Sort of the beginning of it, actually,” she says with a laugh. Aang smiles gently back, and his eyes do that thing that’s started to happen more and more over the years, where the goofy boy she first met recedes, and she can see the millennia worth of wisdom stored inside his soul.

“It started so much earlier than that.”

That night, Aang takes over the outdoor theater to tell a story that his friend Kuzon’s father had told the boys on a camping trip once. It was about how the great spirits challenged each other to fill the world with the most beautiful creations possible.

“You already know the sea and sun worked together to grow lush greenery everywhere,” he reminds the audience. He lifts a bouquet of puffy white dandelions and blows the seeds into the air, sending them drifting over the crowd to another round of applause. “The moon, thinking itself the most beautiful thing in existence, broke pieces of itself off and created the stars.” He gestures to the glittering sky, and murmurs of appreciation rise up as many consider the beauty of the night for the first time in a long time. “The earth shaped creatures out of clay and let them bake in the sun into statues that began to move.”

As he speaks, he waves his hand over a lump of clay on the stage, pulling until it takes on a distinct shape. His puppet starts to dance, and the audience laughs. “Humans! But the wind loved the Spirit World, and thought there could be no place more beautiful. So it swept up many smaller spirits in a great tornado,” With a sweep of his arm, poor Momo gets spun around and around. Children’s delighted shrieks filling the air. “Swirling them faster and faster until they started to combine...” The mini tornado stops abruptly, and Momo tumbles into Aang’s waiting hands. The Avatar lifts the lemur proudly over his head, presenting him to the audience. “ - And gave us animals!” The crowd cheers, and Aang lets the lemur scamper off to beg more snacks off of Ursa. Once more, he grows serious, and Katara feels a swell of pride in her chest. “In the end, it was declared that there was no winner, for the spirits could not bring themselves to decide which of their precious creations was the most beautiful. It was the combination of all of these - the balance between all the spirits’ efforts - that made the world what we know.”

Over the following days, the pockets of celebration become so numerous that Katara and Zuko can’t attend every one, but their friends and family seem to always be eagerly rushing off to some other part of the city. Temples that have remained respectfully clean but empty for the past century suddenly burst with flowers and fruits on the altars, the air scented with incense. In the market, craftspeople are frantically trying to re-learn how to make charms for luck, prosperity, fertility, safe travel.

As Katara walks through the city center, arm in arm with Zuko, people still bow to them, but she finds that they are not inundated with gifts as she had been when their engagement began. Instead, people call out wishes for various spirits to bless them. They take in the smiles and waves of the couple, but move on, headed to the next performance the same as their rulers are. When they move through the crowd, their people fall in behind them, but the destination always has a larger purpose.

Masters Piandao and Jeong-Jeong recite epic poems that had been orally preserved by the White Lotus. Fire Sages tell tales of Avatar Roku and others long since passed. All over Caldera, people are hearing stories long thought lost to history, marveling at what greatness was lost when pride was allowed to eclipse honor and humility. (Katara, Sokka, and Aang gang up to spend a good twenty minutes making fun of Zuko for that line in his toast for the evening.)

Katara’s favorite moment of the festival is the evening before the wedding ceremony when it comes time for Azula to tell the origins of firebending. Just before she is meant to perform in the public courtyard, she approaches Katara and Zuko. For once, the princess is not wearing armor. Her public appearances are still exceedingly rare, and even then have not gone beyond quiet attendance of events. She has dressed in short pants and an ornately embroidered tunic, the outfit more reminiscent of an acrobat than a soldier. While Katara does not think anyone believes this makes her any less dangerous than usual, she finds that she appreciates the effort. Azula does not bother with pretense without reason.

Azula nods to Katara, but her eyes show a hint of hesitancy when she turns to Zuko. “Brother.”

“Azula. Are you ready?”

“I went to the sun warrior ruins like you said to.” Katara’s breath catches, remembering what Zuko and Aang had found on their field trip. He hadn’t mentioned to her that he’d sent his sister to the original masters.

“But are you ready?” Zuko asks again, and Katara realizes that he hadn’t told her that she was looking for dragons, just sent her to the ruins. Azula’s face softens in a way Katara has never seen, but remembers from when Zuko had learned the true meaning of firebending.

“I learned from the masters,” Azula says. “And…” she bites the inside of her cheek like a part of her does not want to admit what she has seen. “I think I need you to do this with me.”

It feels a little like a dream to Katara, everything just a little too bright and strange. When her head whips to look at Zuko though, the look of pride on his face is entirely real. “Of course, Azula,” he says.

Katara’s heart is in her throat when the siblings once again face off in the palace courtyard. Her palm is sweaty against Ursa’s hands clinging to her. She feels her mother-in-law jump as the two figures surge into simultaneous motion. There is no fire to start, both of them circling closer and closer. The air is still, as though everyone in attendance is holding their breath. Then the siblings meet in the middle, their fists pressed together, and Katara remembers the form. The Dancing Dragon.

They rise, turn, and begin again. It is halfway through, as they reach the outer edge and start to curve back together again that flames flicker to life, beginning to pour from their hands and feet. It is like no bending she has seen from her husband before. The fire is like brushstrokes in the air, building, the shape of it growing more distinct as it is carried along. Zuko and Azula meet again, and the images in their fire resolves: they are creating dragons.

The flaming beasts surge past each other, red and blue twining together as the dance begins again. This time, the dragons follow, soaring through the air, growing, their dives more dramatic as the steps repeat over and over. The audience is hushed, but the silence is awed rather than tense, and nearly every eye is trained on the sky. Only Katara and Ursa are more interested in the dancers themselves. Katara’s heart settles, her lingering fear melting away like a frost. Beside her, Ursa’s cheeks are streaked with tears, but she is smiling, one hand pressed to her heart like she needs to hold it inside her chest. As the last of the sun dips beneath the horizon, Zuko and Azula rise one last time, the dragons merging into one creature flickering with a rainbow of colors before bursting into sparks, raining down over the crowd as it begins to cheer for both of them.

Late that night, a spring storm rolls in. Katara grips Zuko’s hands as they listen to the drops patter on the roof. There is no thunder and lightning shaking the night, just a cool, cleansing rain. Sounds of parties continuing on regardless send occasional snippets of song on the wind.

“I think it’s working,” she whispers.

Forehead pressed to hers, Zuko nods, kisses her through a smile. “Looks like you did it again.”

Katara kisses him back. “It’s never been me alone,” she says. “Not since you.”

The wedding itself is at noon on the last day of the festival. The previous night’s clouds burn off, leaving the day mild and sunny. Falling cherry blossom petals dust the ground and drift on the wind like snowflakes. So this is why he was fussy about the date, Katara thinks as she steps out onto the front steps of the palace.

Despite having already been married for a couple of weeks now, she can see Zuko’s eyes go misty as he takes in the sight of her. Katara wants to fold him into a hug or kiss his cheek, but they are observing tradition, so she simply takes his arm as she is supposed to, and hugs it close to her chest so he knows what she means. He smiles at her as though her devotion is some new and wondrous gift, as though he has not been the ballast of her reeling soul for years.

They kneel before the sage, and all Katara can focus on is the thrum of his pulse beneath her fingers where she holds his hand as they are bound together yet again. You’re sure it’s me? and as she has promised a thousand times, she does so again: Yes, it’s you.

As the sage lifts her mother’s comb from its box and raises it above Katara’s bowed head, he announces, “All hail -”

Katara squeezes Zuko’s hand. You’re sure it’s me?

He squeezes back. Yes, it’s you.

“Master Katara, Lady of the Tides!”