Archive of Our Own

what does it all come down to? love?      Love

— e.e. cummings, you being in love

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she.

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

June

I see you worked things out with your girlfriend—

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

“I’m not his girlfriend!”

June raises a brow—the twin blushes on the apples of their cheeks, their raised, indignant brows, their gritted, adamant teeth. June knows young love—knows its tumultuous throes, and its embers fanning out from wispy seeds of denial, and its shaky breath in the beginning. She’s no stranger to this dance routine—but she has better things to do than watch two, moon-eyed, stuttering teenagers—the Fire prince and the master waterbender, too, of all people—stumble around each other. June does not have the time or patience for the whole song or dance—and she doesn’t care enough to try and shove them at each other, even if she’s noticed the desperate eagerness in the prince’s hands, as if drawn to her, like a dowsing rod is to water, or the way the waterbender never takes her eyes off him for longer than a moment, an odd, undeniable gravity that pulls them together.

Teenagers will be teenagers—and stupidity and pride naturally comes with the territory.

She’s a bounty hunter, though—and she always has the nose for these things. Always had.

“Okay, okay, sheesh, I was only teasing,” she says good-naturedly, raising her hands, “So, what do you want?”

Can’t say she never called it.

(“What happened? Your girlfriend run off on you?” —and the scent of seawater and salt and girl, traces of desperation hardening into brittle, cruel anger in the prince’s eyes, the roughened graze of his hands—and they are children, June thinks, barely past the age of ten and eight, children playing at war, children chasing the ends of each other, children that shoulder the mistakes of their forefathers, the ghost of their mothers—and she watches the prince, takes in his demeanor, the scar shaped like the bowing head of a fish, the gash of red, an old wound, not the kind that would come from his own hands or a mere accident—and—

She wonders. She wonders, and wonders.)

—

Cai (or more famously known as the Cabbage Man)

Fire Lord Zuko, here, here, one for you, and one for your lovely little lady, fresh cabbages, ripest of them all, come, come—

Fire Lord Zuko freezes in his steps, his composure faltering, a pink flush painting itself on his cheeks—and the beautiful lady standing next to him—Master Katara—stills and twitches, eyes widening, cheeks mirroring the flush from the Fire Lord’s own, and they make quite a wonderful picture side-by-side, Cai notes; her warm blues and his deep reds. He has been working all his life, selling cabbages, traveling around the three nations—and he seen these children hurt, these children laugh, these children grow into the shadows they hold, now. It has been five years after the war—and Fire Lord Zuko is a kind, gentle lord, he notes, only because it is the whispers from the villages and the cities in the Fire Nation, and there is this beautiful waterbender, a master in her own right, a celebrated warrior and healer, now serving as the Southern Water Tribe Ambassador to the Fire Nation, and she has been living in Hari Bulkan for a few months now, in the Fire Lord’s wing, if the rumors are to be believed.

Cai hums as the two fluster for words.

“I—“ it is not his first time seeing the Fire Lord up close—he has seen him, after all, just a boy, all the dwindling stages of his scalp and anger—but it is his first time to see him flustered, lost for words, and for many people, the Fire Lord had always seemed larger than life, a symbol of peace and justice that he has brought to the world, his scar and legacy like the breath of the spirits themselves, yet here, in the light cast by the setting sun, the Fire Lord looks like a man. A real, breathing man, and his scar is not a grotesque thing, it is not a damning sight, it is not what the myths make out of it, steady in himself—it is simply a part of him, Cai realizes, has been realizing every time he sets his gaze on the young man—and Master Katara, she had been a fireburst of a girl, passion at the very tips of her fingers, and Cai still sees the same fire burn in those eyes of the sea.

“I—“ the Fire Lord starts again, looks helplessly around him and his circle of guards, pointedly avoiding Master Katara’s gaze, “We’re not—she’s not—“

Master Katara sweeps in, gives away her words, her voice a gentle lilt. “We’re—uhm, friends. We’ve always been friends, mister,” she says, clearing her throat, “We’ll take a dozen cobbages, please.”

“Of course, my lady!” he exclaims gleefully, hurriedly reaching for a basket, “Feel free to choose any of them, Master Katara! May I suggest the ones at the first row—yes, yes, those, my lady—they are at their greenest! Perfectly in season!”

Master Katara smiles—and it is a beatific, graceful sight. Cai has witnessed the coming of a thousand beauties of all kinds, hailing from every corner of the world, men and women, yet there is a certain gravitas that surrounds Master Katara.

He can’t help but smile when he notices the Fire Lord’s gaze, a helpless pull, another tide in the relentless ocean, a lone dandelion drawn to the wind’s song.

“Katara,” Fire Lord Zuko says—and Cai is a little struck, that sense of intimacy interwoven in just her name sitting at his lips, a mouth like an altar, “Do we really need these much cabbages?”

Master Katara only sighs and stares. “For cabbage soup? What do you think, Zuko?”

Fire Lord Zuko is sheepish, scratching the back of his neck. “You don’t have to do this, you know—“

“Of course, I do, Zuko,” Master Katara insists, lifting another cabbage, examining it in her hands, “Kiyi asked.”

“Kiyi also asked for a separate castle built for her in Ba Sing Se. You don’t see me hiring architects for that.”

Cai is fascinated.

“It’s cabbage soup, Zuko.”

“You’re spoiling her.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Fire Lord—but is that not what you’ve been doing the whole time?”

The air is, then, still with silence, a pregnant, cranky pause. The guards hold their anticipatory breaths. Cai’s brows shoot up to his hairline.

The Fire Lord clears his throat, picking up a cabbage—a pathetic dark green, if Cai says so himself, grimacing in his head—and offers it to Master Katara.

“...what do you think of this one?”

The Fire Lord, conceding. Cai will cherish this memory for all time to come.

Master Katara rolls her eyes and shoves the cabbage away.

Cai may just be a cabbage merchant—but he has traveled far, and he has lived long, multiple lives all at once. He knows cabbages, and he knows war, and he knows beauty.

He also knows love in all its faces—its early flutterings, and its flight into sunlight, and its melting wings, and its descent into the tides.

Oh, this, he mulls over, watching Fire Lord Zuko look at Master Katara, offering to carry the basket of cabbages, sliding two bags of yuans more than necessary, honeyed eyes promising a thousand suns and countless wounds, this, I know..

—

Iroh

Perhaps, your Master Katara would like to join us—

Tea—all kinds, all blossoms and seeds and roots—is a delicate art, the kind that follows the natural paths of breath, branches and veins, the bittersweet rewards of time, one of its few mercies. Tea always depends on water’s temperament, just as the sea carves itself into the will of the moon, just as air molds itself into the shape of earth, just as dragons bow to the fire—and Iroh has lived many lives, has shed one after the another, has built and destroyed himself; still, this is the lesson that lives in his skin and hands and thought. Tea takes time, and time blesses one with the earthy, green fumes of a well-brewed tea. Time takes, as time gives—and in between its eclipses, the tea kettle whistles.

So it whistles, and so time marches—and still, it seems nothing ever seem to change. Still, the footsteps left on sand remain unwashed by the waves’ hungry mouth. Still, the day begins and ends—and a heartbeat traces the same constellation.

“Uncle!” comes his nephew’s incensed, aggravated reply, “Don’t call her that.”

Iroh only hums, raising a delicate brow. “Call her what, nephew?”

“Your—my—“ Zuko exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose, “She isn’t—she’s no one’s, uncle. She’s her own person. Refer to her properly.”

Iroh bows his head slightly, chuckling. “I did, nephew,” he continues, a slight grin on his face, “Tell me, what part of it was improper?”

Zuko bristles, incensed. “The—you know what, uncle!” he exclaims—and Iroh is so fond of the traces of the sixteen-year-old he had taken under his care, the rasp and the indignation and the fire-bright fury that had kept him burning inside out, “Don’t attach—stop attaching possessive pronouns to her name. It’s not your place.”

His nephew is a hard-shelled man—his heart is this very soft thing, tender and raw, shaped like the particular torture of longing, of watching, of staying still—and Iroh knows him too well to even try to play into it, his game of lashings and denial and sacrifice in the name of greater good. Iroh has lived two lives—one a destroyer, and other a man—and he knows that one man alone cannot shoulder the world and its ghosts for the rest of his life. Iroh knows that means death—not of just the body, its slow withering, but the soul, the chi, the heart.

His nephew has been slowly killing himself with this game, Iroh thinks—and all games, all plays are bound to end, either by hand or lightning.

“Whose place is it, then, Fire Lord Zuko?” he asks gently, “Yours?”

His face is rueful, and he looks down in shame. “No,” he rasps out, “No. You know she’s with the Avatar, uncle. You know we’re just old friends. I don’t see why you keep beating up the goddamn dead horse.”

“Because, Zuko,” he starts, sipping on his ginseng tea, “That horse is not dead. It is a very old, very tired horse—but nowhere near dead.”

“It’s dead because I say it’s dead and—“ his nephew grits out—but for all the roughness in his voice, something tender and old grows in his bones, in the honey sunlight of his eyes, “And she’s going to say yes, uncle. Aang is going to ask her to marry him.”

Iroh stills, and he realizes with a quiet crack in his chest that his nephew had never looked this young—he is well and grown, over five years from the war, from the day of Sozin’s comet, and he has grown into himself and his shoulders and his title; still, a heart is not in pace with the body, and it clings, and it drags its weight forward. “The Avatar has told you?”

Zuko nods, eyes grim. “I knew I never had a chance. I’ve made peace with that, uncle. I’ve come to accept it—but—“ he breathes, tames the coals of fire licking at his insides, “But I didn’t expect it to hurt like this. I didn’t—I’m not—it’s—“

Another breath. Another pause.

Sorrow settles—the bitter twinge of regret and words unsaid and time lost. Iroh tastes it on his tongue, blackening his tea.

“She comes first. We’re old friends—and if that’s how she wants it to be, that’s how it will be,” his nephew says—he has never been in the habit of putting his heart first, and Iroh grieves for that part of him that beats, “Just—forget I mentioned it. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to the tiles. Make your move, old man—or are you forfeiting?”

When he visits from Ba Sing Se, he watches his nephew descend from his mountain of burden and duty—the nation’s wingless dragon, he surmises; a rising sun—to have tea and play a game of pai sho. Inconsequent in the grander scale of things, yet something that splinters memory, that skips through his heart, that widens his pond of fondness for his nephew. Zuko had always been a soft child—uncertain with his fire, with what the world asked of him, with what he had needed from the world in turn—and he had hardened his resolve, roughened himself into a tunnel vision, an endless quest for honor that had always been in his hands—that was never meant to be given by the same man who had shamed the half of his nephew’s life—and he had always been good, a sweet boy, a kinder man. A kinder man who would rather choke on his own tongue and stomp on the lily pad of his heart into scraps than to speak for it, than to want and breathe it into life, than to let the flame burn and caress and scorch.

Iroh grieves.

Still, time marches. Still, the tea kettle whistles.

Still, still, still.

“Life is not a cruel game you win because you forego your heart, Fire Lord Zuko,” is all Iroh says, picking up the white lotus tile, “Duty and honor make peace—but your heart is what makes you, dear boy. You must keep it beating.”

“I’m not a boy anymore, uncle.”

“Yes, Zuko,” he says, nodding, “Still, the sun rises, and the tides with it. You must find common ground in the sand.”

Zuko lets out a frustrated groan, and Iroh chuckles.

“Agni, uncle. I have enough headaches as it is. I’m tired of your—adages! Just go run off and be a poet and leave me alone!”

“Ah, but who will be there to beat you at pai sho?”

Zuko grumbles, but begrudgingly makes his move. Iroh takes a sip of his ginseng tea. The fire crackles and dwindles.

Still, still, still.

—

Kanna

And how is that Fire Lord of yours, Katara? Or is it boyfriend now?

Her grandduaghter’s cheeks ripen like spring, all pink and sweet—it is a beautiful color on her, Kanna notes, and wonders if that Fire Lord gives her just as much reason to blossom, and he better. Katara had grown facing the darker side of the moon, the acrid, war-torn seas of their home, the violent loss of her mother, pulled from under her feet, and the absence of her father—and yet, her granddaughter still has heart enough to shoulder the world exacted and wounded and left empty from a war that had stretched on for a century, carving dents into the very shapes of one’s hands, and her grandduaghter is a master waterbender, a warrior, a healer, a hero, an ambassador—a woman of the people—

But Kanna wonders if she’s had a moment for herself—to exist, to breathe, to want as her own, for her own.

“Gran-gran!” her granddaughter exclaims, “He’s not my boyfriend—or my Fire Lord. We’re friends. Very good, very old friends.”

Kanna only hums. “Yes, sweet girl, and I’m guessing that is why you said no to the Avatar’s proposal and stayed in the Fire Nation for a year?”

Spring deepens across skin, and Kanna chuckles. “Gran-gran, I’m the Southern Water Tribe ambassador. And I don’t know what you’re implying but I’m not liking it.”

“I am saying, dear child—“ Kanna starts, reaching to place her palms on Katara’s cheeks, the warmth of blossoms, the careful pinks of honesty, “—that your heart is not at fault. I know others trouble you because of your decisions—including yourself—but you cannot keep carrying the guilt for something you cannot control. It’s alright to feel, sweet girl.” Katara looks up at her, those shimmering blues, and Kanna’s heart is stilted—in certain lights, and in moments when she had not rubbed sleep off her eyes yet and when memory abandons her for the sake of her heart, she sees Kya looking back at her. Her eyes, her sweet words, her open heart. She sees her daughter.

“You are a hero of the war, Katara,” Kanna says, caressing the bone through her cheek, a stray dew of tears, “But you are also a woman—and deep down inside you is a girl. A child. You are not your mother—and you don’t have to be. You don’t have to be anyone else’s. You don’t have to be what the world wants you to be. You are your own before anything else, darling girl.”

Katara smiles. “I know that, gran-gran,” she says, a soft, tender admission in the dead of the night, “I’m just—Zuko and I are just friends. That’s it. That’s the big, scary truth. There—there’s nothing more to it.”

“Hm,” Kanna says, shrugging, “That boy took lightning for you, Katara.”

“As—as a friend, gran-gran! Because we’re friends!” Katara pushes, crossing her arms, “He would have taken it for anyone, anyway. For Sokka, or Suki, or Toph—or, or Aang. Spirits, he would have taken it for you—because he’s good, and he’s so stupid, and—”

“Did he?”

Katara stops. “What?”

“Did he take it for anyone? For your brother? For your friends? For the Avatar?”

Her granddaughter stills, a lump in her throat, her blue eyes glitterining, the sea under sunrise. “You’re not making sense, gran-gran. I’m saying he took it for me because he would have taken it for anyone—not that he literally took lightning for all of us.”

“Well, that’s the answer to my question, dear girl,” Kanna says, “I don’t care if your boy would have taken it for anyone. He took it for you, Katara. Only you.”

It could only be you.

Katara sighs. “It happened years ago, gran-gran. We’re not kids anymore. It’s not—“ she tries to steady herself, stares at her palms, “We’re just friends, gran-gran. That’s all. That’s all it’s ever been.”

Somehow, Kanna hears that’s all it could ever be.

Kanna hums. “Well, that’s how I felt about Pakku for years, too.”

“It’s not like that, gran-gran!”

“It never is, is it?” Kanna says, raising a brow, “Only time knows. And that pesky thing of yours.”

“What pesky thing?”

“That stubborn little heart,” Kanna says, clutching her own, “It tells you many things you don’t want to hear.”

Katara takes in her words, her lips quivering. “Gran-gran,” she starts, sighing, “We really are just friends—and I like it that way. Zuko is—he’s more than good. And sometimes, good things last because they stay the same.”

“Change can be a beautiful thing, too, Katara, if both your hearts care for it.”

Katara laughs, shaking her head, kissing the top of her head. “I’m not arguing about this anymore, gran-gran,” she says, dusting off the little snowflakes and shapes of frost from her wool skirt, wrapping her arms around herself—and Kanna only smiles at the familiarity still threaded into her movements. The years have passed, a long, arduous trek of sweet afternoons and heavier nights, and her granddaughter has come and gone and come home—and she has grown taller, and she has grown out her hair, long waves twisted into beaded braids, and she has grown. Still, Katara wears her heart on her sleeves, right through the glimmer of her eyes, and Kanna’s vision goes blearier with the passing day, the slow hours, but she can read her granddaughter like the back of her hand. like a second breath—and she knows this face, these mannerisms of hers; the twitch in her brows, the constant teething at her lips, the soft tremble of her fingers.

Kanna knows—and she can only hope her grandduaghter does, too.

(After all, there is no sense in tiptoeing around a love that already exists in the space between two people; in their velvet words, in their deepened gazes, in their slow, helpless pull, then push—a spark of fire, a drop in the ocean.)

“What do you want for dinner, gran-gran? I’ll tell Sokka to pick some up on the way.”

“Smoked sea prunes would be fine. And tell Pakku to get off his lazy butt and help me with some stitching. And ask your boy when he’s coming back here. I want more of those Fire buns.”

Katara sputters out a laugh. “Will do, gran-gran. In those exact words.”

Kanna stares after her shadow, the echo of her footsteps. “Of course, you will, darling girl,” she mutters absentmindedly, “Of course, you will.”

Spring is beautiful on her.

—

Minister Shula

That Fire Lord Zuko and Master Katara—are they.....?

Today marks the tenth peace summit, the end of the century-long war that had ravaged through nations and bled her clan dry and empty and to near-death—and Shula is an old, tired woman with a wilting spine and a weakened heart, and she had lived through too many sunrises and monsoons, and still, she stands, attending the summit hosted by King Kuei in Ba Sing Se, a part of Fire Lord Zuko’s entourage. Some guest of honor she is, sticking to the heavy drapes by the sidelines of the room, nursing her fifth glass of rice wine with careful sips, an arm crossed over her chest—Jao, one of the younger ministers amongst Fire Lord Zuko’s council, the minister of shipbuilding and aircraft, stands next to her, a safe, quiet distance from the budding crowds surrounding the Avatar and his team. Shula has always held them in certain admiration and awe—to have been so young, steering the helms of the fate of the world—and in the same breath, she had pitied them in equal measure.

To have been so young, and to have been burdened with such weight, such incomprehensible heaviness—to answer for the past sins of one’s father, one’s nation, and to live out the rest of one’s short-lived, fatal eternity as its figurehead, balancing both history and opportunity, a peculiar, precarious balancing of fine-grained negotiations and necessary reparations and deep-seated legacies. Politics is made of fishbone and carcasses—and it is no easy, weightless thing to pick through it, to stand in the middle of its cadaver and weigh one’s options in churning it into something measurable, something substantial, something survivable under such tight, unforgivable standards, under such realities. Shula has lived and governed through politics—her duty both to her family and her nation; a representative of her name, a servant of her nation—but, somehow, Fire Lord Zuko and Master Katara—the Southern Water Tribe’s headstrong, spitfire ambassador for how many years, now, circling between Hari Bulkan, Wolf Cove, and her posts across the Earth Kingdom, the Air Islands, and the rest of the Fire Nation—have always captured her fascination.

And she is no easy woman to be fascinated.

Except—

“What?” Jao chokes out, coughing, brows knitting in confusion, “Are you presuming what I think you’re presuming, Minister Shula?”

She stands, eyes shifting towards the beautiful, undeniable painting that Fire Lord Zuko and Master Katara simply make, even just standing together in stillness, in propriety; poetry in motion, mythos in the making—the deep, royal colors of Fire Nation reds, long, heavy robes that trail through the floor, a broad, cutting figure, and the ocean-dark, moon-light shades of Master Katara’s dress-gown, a light, airy silk flowing through, polar leopard fur lining her thick cloak. They are in their own nations’ colors, their nations’ representatives and figures—yet Shula can’t help but catch the beads of sun carved through Master Katara’s belt, and the patterns of Tui and La on the insides of Fire Lord Zuko’s draping sleeves, and how they both sport small beads around their wrists, hidden and tucked away—but not unnoticeable entirely—something made of lilac and pearl.

The Fire Lord is simply speaking to her, his face schooled in monotony, a commanding gaze and straightened lips that reveal nothing—and yet, something glints in his eye, a light she has never noticed before, a spark she had thought had been snuffed out from his years as Fire Lord, the tender, wounding age of six and ten.

Yet its melting embers shine—flutter to life—when they meet ocean blues.

“Look at the pair of them,” Shula says, fingers twitching, aching to point like a school child, a playground brat to prove her point, “Is it truly such a scandalous thought?”

Master Katara suddenly huffs angrily, arms on her hips, overtly glaring at the Fire Lord—she says things, many things, and Shula waits for the Fire Lord, the angered furrow of his brows, the purse of his lips, something curdling from disappointment or disrespect or offense—as he does with ministers who overstep, and councillors who forget themselves, and dignitaries who forget him—but his eyes soften, instead, in the bright lights, in the twinkle of chandeliers and over-bright candles and glittering stones on columns, a weave of rubies and crytals and sapphires, like wax melting in sunlight.

The Fire Lord—hardened from years of war, from years under the crown—becomes soft at the touch of Master Katara, at one look, from one word.

Shula is fascinated.

“Yes,” Jao insists, the furrow of his brows deepening in thought, “It’s the oddest thought. He’s the Fire Lord. You are talking about his friend.”

Shula shrugs, sipping on her rice wine. “So? She is also titled in her own right—a master waterbender, a war hero, the South’s most prolific ambassador. How is it so odd for you?”

Jao’s eyes slit from suspicion. “You’re one of those, then, Minister Shula.”

Her face twists in confusion. “One of what, Jao?”

“Those romantic fanatics,” Jao finishes with a derisive sneer, huffing in disgust, “It’s a disgrace—an embarrassment for the nation, for both Fire Lord Zuko’s and Master Katara’s. Have you heard of that—ridiculous piece of poetry doing rounds in Hari Bulkan? In—Agni, everywhere else, I believe!”

“Huh,” Shula hums out, contemplating, “Are you referring to A Spark in the Moon?”

A poetry piece written and published by Ono No, an anonymous poet hailing from Ember Island—and Shula is admittedly an admirer of her works. Her recent work—a collection of her poetry written through the summer solstice—had been spread all around, both from the hands of vendors and librarians, through nobility, families, and citizens in the Fire Nation, hinting at the love cradled between the lord of fires and the lady of the seas and moon. It had blossomed, then—from the corners of Hari Bulkan to the sprawling islands littered across the Earth Kingdom—and even the icy posts of the sister stribes, Shula had heard. It’s a beautifully written work—and it had been more than amusing to witness Fire Lord Zuko and Master Katara nearly burst from their pink-cheeked, wide-eyed fluster when the poet laureate had recited the poem aloud for the morning court.

“Yes,” Jao seethes out, teeth grinding into place, “It is a misrepresentation of cultural values and identities.”

“Minister Ming was the one who set the poet laureate’s presentation, though,” Shula remarks with the raise of brow, “She is the minister of culture and tourism. It seemed well within her standards—and therefore, the nation’s. By extension, even the Fire Lord’s, Agni bless him.”

The clench of Jao’s teeth— “You oversimplify things.”

Shula scoffs. “You overcomplicate them.”

The scene stretches itself—and Shula watches how Master Katara nearly stomps on Fire Lord Zuko’s feet, crossing her arms with a huff, turning away from him with a decisive frown. Fire Lord Zuko lets her keep away in anger, merely standing, his palms flat on his robes.

A beat or two, a moment or three, an infinity or so—

Master Katara turns back around, a heavy frown still pulling at her face, and they’re caught in conversation once more, the sun and the moon.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Shula whispers, “It seems so—intense.”

Jao groans, palming over his face, seemingly scandalized. “You are such—an old gossip, Minister Shula!”

Shula can only innocently shrug. “What, look at the pair of them,” she gestures, “One wonders.”

Something in Master Katara’s face melts—wax to sunlight—and Fire Lord Zuko offers her his hand. The crowds part for them like the sea, and they stand in the very center of the room—Fire Lord Zuko carefully sets his hands around Master Katara’s waist, respectful of the distance, of standards set by propriety, as Master Katara grounds her own on his shoulders. They make a captivating sight—the swirls of blues and reds in the middle of the room like an eternal dawn, the mellow purples of twilight bleeding through moonstone and jade, an eclipse in motion.

Sun and moon meeting, she recalls from the poem, lovers brushing past, passed, paths—

Master Katara leans closer, standing on tiptoes, whispers something into the Fire Lord’s ears. Fire Lord Zuko grins, wide and sweet like a crescent moon. Shula watches a spring blossom softly land between them, like a nudge from the spirits, an answer, a call—like an inevitable, breathing thing, already sewn into the crevasses of their souls, already tied into the beats of their pulse.

Eyes of ocean, eyes of daylight—an endless dance—a trail of strangers—a history of names—

Fire Lord Zuko slowly brushes a stray strand of curled hair behind Master Katara’s ears, and even Jao’s angered, incessant tittering falls to a hush.

—and to spring, their hearts of birdsong; and to winter, their eyes of thunder; and to summer, their hands of devotion.

Shula has always been somewhat of a poet, too.

—

Suki

Katara, hey, he’s okay, he’s okay, breathe with me—

Katara is heaving in her arms, nearly trembling in her efforts to steady herself, her rapid breaths, and Suki’s lips purses in concern. “Hey, it’s fine. He’s fine. The royal healers extracted the poison from his bloodstream—and everything’s steady. The poison didn’t reach anything critical—but it might be a few more weeks until he wakes up again. It was an extensive procedure, taxing on his body,” she tries explaining, placing her hand on Katara’s shoulder, tries to ground her—but the words sink deep, and her firsts clench by her side, and a glass of tears starts blurring over her eyes, “Hey. Breathe, Katara. Are you with me?”

“He’s—“ Katara starts, shaky, breath punching in and out, a stuttered rhythm—and something in Suki’s chest clenches at the sight of it, “—I—how many weeks? What else are the healers saying? Did he—is he—can you explain the whole thing? I’m just lost—he just sent me a letter yesterday about fucking turtleducks—and now—what happened, Suki?”

Suki sighs, recounting the burst of events from yesterday night until today, the panic and guilt that had gripped her heart into oblivion. “It happened at dinner. The food taster sampled Zuko’s portions first—and nothing happened of note immediately, so dinner proceeded on. And, you know, he was fine—that was the worst part. He was fine until he suddenly collapsed in his office. It turns out the poison was slow-acting—from a black flutter bat flower, if I remember correctly—but even if it didn’t hit any major systems like his heart or mind, it’s still taking a large toll on his body—which is why it’s going to take him a while to wake up.”

Katara inhales, a wave of panic—worry—cresting in her eyes, and Suki tries to hold her tighter, tries to offer a semblance of comfort. “Who’s—who plotted it? The taster? Some noble clan? Are they being interrogated or tried? This is the fifth time this year, Suki—“

“Katara,” she starts, “The girls are on it. The matter is still being investigated—”

The words flood out— “The matter is that people won’t stop killing Zuko!” an outburst, her heart flayed in the open, and Katara curls in on herself, regret tinging through her eyes, the bowing of her posture, leaning against the wall, hands tangling against her own braid, “I’m sorry, Suki. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know everyone’s doing their best—it just—it caught me offguard,” Suki lets the silence sit—lets Katara find her words in its bubble, “It’s just—for the most part, I was there. I was the one healing him—and I was there, Suki. I stopped it, or I helped him up, or I healed him.”

“You were there,” Suki repeats, a gentle lull to her words, a softening, “But even if you weren’t—he’s okay, Katara. I promise. He is.”

“I thought I was too late,” Katara says, head slumping, her voice a small, scared thing in the dark—and Suki is still, biting back her words, and lets it simmer; she has been friends with Katara longer than most, and they’ve been through everything together, almost, hand-in-hand, when she rejected Aang’s proposal, and when she and Sokka had an argument—one of their biggest—over her posts, her life as a warrior and his partner, and when their first child had been born, and when Katara had first decided to take on an ambassadorial position in the Fire Nation. Katara is her sister—and somehow, Suki’s never seen her this shaken, something haunted in her gaze. “I was so scared that the first thing I would hear was—was—”

“That he passed,” Suki finishes for her, and Katara grimaces, reverberates with the physical ache of the words, an indentation in her chest, “He didn’t, Katara. He’s going to be okay. You know Zuko—he’s as stubborn as they come.”

“We argued about this once, you know,” Katara says, a dry chuckle, “Two months ago. We went out in a festival in some local village here—they were celebrating Tui and La, actually—and Zuko was—you know how he is when he’s set on something. We were alone because—”

Realization dawns on Suki. “Oh,” she says, “I remember. Your birthday.”

“He wanted to surprise me with the hospital. The center he named after me.”

Katara Medical Center. It had taken nights and days of planning, of secret meetings—meticulously and desperately hidden from the suspicious, curious Ambassador Katara, who had been on their tails the entire time—in the dead of night or the still afternoons, of Sokka and Zuko griping about engineering and structural details and Zuko, four floors isn’t realistic and Sokka, this is being made in your sister’s honor—I expect you to be more ambitious—

A silent stream of tears catch on Katara’s cheeks, and Suki’s heart lurches ar the sight, at the helpless waves of pain searing through, taking root. “And it was going so well, and I don’t think I’ve been happier—and we were leaving, and someone shot him down the leg with a poisoned arrow tip. And it was horrible—nothing is going to describe the pain of watching your friend almost die, again and again and again—but, at least, I was there. I was there.”

“Katara,” Suki starts, squeezing her shoulders, “Do you want to see him?”

Katara looks up, nodding, desperation threaded in the movements of her limbs, a barely controlled thing.

Suki leads her to the Fire Lord’s quarters, guarded by two of her warriors, Arah and Isha. They open the doors with a nod, and Suki watches as Katara hurries inside, biting her lip in contemplation, keeps herself to the sidelines. The healers have left moments ago, and Katara rushes to his bedside, an odd gravity in her footsteps, something unreadable in the cast of her gaze, taking in the sight of Zuko, the pallor in his skin like a crack in the marble, the cold sweat all over his body, the stillness. Suki watches as Katara softly kneels on the ground, a tremor in her hands, lifting them to cup his face, fingers on bone. It’s—unbelievably gentle, like the ocean slowly coming into the graze of sunlight, and the world holds its breath, stills itself for the fragile, wordless sanctity of the moment alone.

Suki can only watch, really.

“You fucking idiot,” Katara murmurs, loud enoiugh for the words to catch in the air, “You absolute fucking idiot. I’m going to kill you when you wake up. I swear to La I will. I told you to stop dying. Once wasn’t enough for you? The lightning strike wasn’t painful enough? You didn’t—” a shaky breath punches through, a small thing in the dark, “—you didn’t think it scared me enough?”

Suki is intruding, and something in her screams to look away.

The deepening of Fire Lord Zuko and Ambassador Katara’s friendship over the years is no secret—and Suki is no stranger to them; she’s seen and witnessed and stood close to them over the relentless waves of the years. She knows them—and she’s seen their incredulous faces and their eye rolls and their casual, thoughtless denials when anyone had thought to ask if they were more. She’s seen them—she has seen Zuko thoughtlessly carry Katara to her quarters after a tiring day of volunteering at the clinics and medical centers in Hari Bulkan and Harbor City and endless conferences with other dignitaries, and she has seen Katara needlessly worry over how much he’s eating, if he’s taking any time to rest at all (actual rest—free from bedside correspondence or his advisors at his heel in the sitting rooms), and she has seen them, through and thorough, uprooting and shaping their lives over the other’s, the waves intertwining and traveling to reach shore. Suki knows—recognizes—that kind of painstaking—but so godsdamned worth every fight and word and moment—effort. Suki knows it like a second hand, like another breath, like the familiarity of a stranger from a string of some past life.

Suki had always taken the time to stay in the Southern Water Tribe during summers, and had even introduced her girls to the tribe—while Sokka had made a habit of visiting Kyoshi Island or Hari Bulkan anytime he could, often tagging along with Aang or Katara.

She knows this—knows its bones and blood and back of the hand.

She knows this.

“Katara,” she calls softly, “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you, Suki.”

She nods. “Don’t mention it.”

She steals one last glance: Katara is leaning over him, cradling Zuko’s face like pieces of moon shard, thumbing over the outward jutting of his cheekbone, something undeniable in those eyes, sea-glass and a dam of thick, stubborn tears and a longing like breathing, another limb, a sister of bone-deep devotion that cuts you down the middle, in perfect halves; incremental burns, ice bursts, dew drops. Bone and sinew. Heart and vein. River and tree. Petal and honey-milk.

Suki watches as the sun slowly rises over moonbath, melts away through twilight, its non-touching.

She watches, and she knows.

—

Toph

I swear to fucking spirits, Sparky, if you make me move this stupid fucking clay one more time, I’m going to tell on you to your pretty little wife—

Toph feels the earthy, thunderous rumble of Zuko’s heartbeat. “Agni, what are you talking about now? What—what wife?”

She only shrugs, a flick of her hands, reshaping earth and stone and clay, fills out the spaces, carves it from word of mouth, from borrowed memory. “Who the fuck else?” she snorts out, rolling her eyes at the sudden mountain of silence from the idiot Fire Lord standing next to hair, “Who else are you acting this neurotic for, Zuko? For a spirits-damned statue?”

His heart runs and stomps and protests like a thousand lightning strikes in a glass bottle. “Toph, we are not going over this again. How many times do Katara and I have to explain the nature of our friendship—like it’s a fucking crime—”

“Yeah, we should start criminalizing stupidity. Thanks for the idea, Sparky. You’ll be the first one I arrest—you and Sweetness, both. Then, you can spend eternity together! And obsess over the millionth fucking statue of each other.”

The wind softly blows, and Zuko’s heart is odd—two beats too fast, three beats too slow; the slip of a half-truth, almost. Toph has spent the better part of a decade listening to her friends’ heartbeats, their quickening breaths, their bitten-off words, stuck on the stubborn, useless tongue—and she knows when they lie, or when denial becomes them, the sound of a blush or the feel of widened eyes, or when they scramble and try to keep secrets in utter futility. Their heartbeats try to outrun their ribcage, and the earth is molded to it, to every breath and step, to every word and glance. Toph knows the language—has memorized it inside and out, upwards and over—and the nuances in between.

Toph has been listening to the same breadth of lies—Sweetness’ sugary cover-ups and Sparky’s drilled-down refuting—for well over a decade now. She’s quite fucking sick of it, to put it down gently.

“It’s the first statue, Toph—“

She stops short, a deadpan. “Yeah? What do you call the one in Hari Bulkan? Or, uh, the matching ones in the sister tribes? Oh, is the humungous Katara in Ba Sing Se not ringing any bells? Oh, I know the one—the one in your personal bedroom—”

Bump, BUMP, bump, BUMP, bump. Toph cackles—too fucking easy.

“I do not have a secret statue of Katara in my bedroom, Toph,” Zuko hisses out, “That doesn’t even make fucking sense. And—and it is the first statue of her. Here. In Republic City. By Yue Bay. To commemorate—”

“What, now? Her existence? Her smile? The way she laughs during spring afternoons, or whatever romantic, gross bullshit you’ve cooked up in your head?”

Toph feels the burn of Zuko’s glare like a physical thing, and her grin only widens. “—to commemorate Ambassador Katara’s efforts in laying down the foundations for healthcare and education in the city.”

Toph rolls her eyes, resuming her stonework. “Your secretary phrased that for you?”

“Toph,” ah, the ever-beautiful sound of her name clenched out through gritted teeth. Toph mentally pats herself on the back—good job, me, keep it going, never give up, “Just—just focus. The slope of her nose isn’t quite right—and her cheeks are—fluffy. You’re making her look like a dragonfly bunny, Toph.”

“Considering I can’t see and you somehow appointed me for this job, I’d think I’m having a pretty fantastic go at it, don’t you think?”

She hears the sound of Zuko awkwardly shuffling on his feet. “You know that’s not what I’m trying to say. Just—you did a beautiful job, Toph.”

“Well, no need to state the obvious,” Toph says, feels out the crevasses and the shelling over the stone and metal through its tremors, the little vibrations of each slope and carved line, bends the stone into a thinner contour, “Relax, Hotman. Sugar Queen is going to love this. She might even cry again.”

The flustered splinter of a heart reverberates through the ground, and Toph can only sigh—how fucking obvious can an idiot be?

“Did she cry the last time we had an unveiling in the Southern Water Tribe?”

“Gee, Sparky, considering you were the one embracing her, I think you’d know. What, she wasn’t close enough for you to feel her tears?”

“Just stop talking.”

“Want me to stop finishing this statue up, too, then?”

Zuko clears his throat—but the silence is answer enough on its own. Toph cackles, slapping him on the shoulder.

“Oh, Sparky,” she muses, shaking her head in amusement, “It’s really fucking cute.”

An exasperated sigh. “What is, Toph?”

“That you and Sugar Queen think you’re hiding shit,” Toph finishes, evening out the bumpy finishes of stone and metal, “You’re not, by the way.”

“We don’t think we’re hiding anything because we’re not hiding anything, Toph Beifong.”

“You’re saying a lot of words, but I’m not hearing a singular, honest one.”

“Toph Beifong.”

The lop-eared rabbit heartbeat runs all over the place, up and down and sideways. Toph’s a little dizzy with it. Sparky’s heart is such a jittery, antsy thing, restless with itself.

“You know what—whatever,” is what he says, “Believe what you want. It’s clear you don’t susbcribe to plain, old, common sense. Just—just finish the statue. The shade of her eyes isn’t quite right.”

Toph stomps angrily, the ground cascading through the force of the rumbling impact of her steps. “YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO KEEP ADJUSTING THE DYE—“”

“Because you never get her eyes right—”

“BECAUSE I CAN’T SEE.”

“I’ve described it to you in perfect detail—”

“Beautiful or gorgeous aren’t the most helpful descriptions, Sparky!”

“You’re misquoting me—”

“My ass!”

Fire Lord Jerkbender groans—it’s Toph’s favorite sound in the entire world, coming close only to Sweetness’ brittle shrieks every time she’s had enough of her. It’s been twelve years since the war had ended with a lightning strike and a wordless fall—and the world had been rebuilding itself into a notion of peace, somewhat, a tightrope of treaties and endless conferences and annuals that bore Toph to fucking death. She’s gone through it—the motions and the like—and she’s been there when Katara and Aang had broken up, and when Mai had left the palace for good, and when Katara started to fill the empty spaces in the bright, hulking shadow of the palace with the graze of her hands, and when Zuko had started to become Kanna’s favorite and Hakoda’s unbeatable drinking buddy.

Toph may be blind—but, spirits, she isn’t fucking blind.

—

Po

Is the Fire Lord hunting for Master Katara?

Po had meant it as an innocent question, one stringing from actual curiosity—the winters in Wolf Cove mean near death, skin and fingertips and teeth tinged frozen blue, frost dusting the sky into something bleak and unforgivable and relentlessly still, and Po had been raised under the ravaging hands of both the sea and moon since he was a babe, their merciless winters, the rare sunlight like a crevasse, an empty thing, and he’s used to the hunts, the bloody, boiled carcasses of a puffin-seal or seal jerky or an arctic hen, whether from Tui’s breaths and tides or the icy grounds; Po is used to it. Po knows his way around his home—and he is a Southern warrior, built for the unrelenting winds and the heavy icicles and the thick snow reaching one’s knees. He had assumed the Fire Lord—he is more than well-built, properly muscled, his back and shoulders broad like their skies and mountains, like the warriors of their tribe—would be a pale, flimsy-fingered, tender-skinned firebender, from the looks of it, trembling from shores of Tui, from the tides ruled by La.

Many warriors and men participate in the hunt during the first monsoon, tailing the change of the seasons—but these hunts are notorious and whispered for its utter impossibility.

It is so fucking impossible to hunt for any kind of game during the first monsoon of the year.

And still—the Fire Lord—the spirits-damned Fire Lord—had wedged himself spirits-know-where in the emptiness of the Southern wilderness, the winds of the blizzard as roughened as dull knives against skin.

Master Katara is going to kill the rest of them, he’s sure—for killing off her Fire Lord in a night. He knows. He can see it happening behind his closed, shivering eyelids.

“What in the spirits are you talking about?” Silik asks, sharpening his tools with stone, hunching over the weakening fire that Fire Lord Zuko had set for them, “Why would he hunt for Master Katara?”

Po shrugs, kicking at an icicle, crossing his arms with a sigh. “Dunno,” he mutters, “He’s an honored guest, right? Whatever’s the bigger term for honored guest, actually. I don’t see why he should join the hunt if he’s not hunting for Master Katara.”

It’s a well-established tradition in the Southern Water Tribe: once a woman of their tribe marries, whether it is to their own or to those from another land or name, their partner must prove their love and devotion—their prowess and their hands and competence—through a fruitful hunt.

Silik hums, his movements slowing down in thought, the scrape of stone against iced metal. “I don’t see why not,” is what he says after a few beats of silence, “He’s just Zuko here. To the elders, he’s the Fire Lord, sure—but to everyone else, he’s just Zuko, really. He helps around, especially with the chairman and his family. Don’t you see him?”

The confusion grows thicker in Po’s head. “Don’t I see him what?”

Silik chuckles, patting him on the back. “This isn’t his first time visiting Wolf Cove, son,” he explains, something wistful in his eyes, “The Fire Nation is—until now, people cower from its name, its history, what it represents. Blood isn’t washed away by time or diplomatic flowers—it stains. Stays in the inside of our fingertips, whether we’re the ones who kill or remember. Dead people stay dead,” the hum of the cold, vengeful breeze, the light of the moon looking down upon them—and the tale of Princess Yue echoes in his head, weighing on his heart all of a sudden; he had been a child, then, unable to distinguish the shade of reds from hues of blood, “Someone has to pay for it—to answer for it, one way or another. When Fire Lord Zuko took his father’s place, he knew his duty to the people and the nations. He first visited the Southern Water Tribe to discuss the reparations his nation owed to our tribe with Chief Hakoda and the council,” he continues, coughing, “Everyone was uncomfortable at the thought of Fire Nation involving itself with our tribe—but when he arrived, he was—well, it only hit you, then, how young he was—how young they all were, our heroes. Just a boy, then. Skinny from the war and the crown. Nothing like the man you see, now.”

Po wonders, then. “How often has he visited, then? Counting now?”

“Every year, if he can help it,” Silik answers, “He often accompanies Master Katara when she comes back from Hari Bulkan. Sometimes, he visits out of schedule. Usually, if Master Katara extends her stay in Wolf Cove, so does the Fire Lord.”

Now, that’s interestring.

“So, is he and Master Katara a—” he coughs, looking around, lowering his voice into a whisper, “—thing?”

Silik looks at him as if he’s grown a second head. “What thing?”

“You know—a thing—”

“I don’t understand you young people’s Tui-damned language. Are you calling Zuko and Master Katara an object?”

“No, Silik!” he says, frustration seeping through, “I meant—are they not together? Fire Lord Zuko and Master Katara?”

“I...” Silik’s words are lost to the own flurry of his thoughts, his stone sharpener merely pressed against his spear, “I don’t know, actually. I assume they spend a lot of time together, given their posts—but, ever since Master Katara had separated from the Avatar, no one in the tribe discusses Master Katara’s personal life out in the open, but it’s—” Silik pauses, grimacing, “—been suspected amongst many circles. A couple of times.”

Po’s eyes widen. “Why’d they suspect in the first place?”

Silik’s eyes flash with amusement. “You nosy boy,” he chastises halfheartedly, shaking his head, “Zuko does not care for his title in Wolf Cove—and neither do we. He is a simple man here—he hunts, he helps with the building, he prepares the table. He sits with us. Talks with us—but, well, if anything, he is Master Katara’s man.”

Po’s gaze shines. “He is?”

“Every time his hunt is successful—and he has game to present to Kanna—the first plate is always given to Master Katara,” Silik explains, and Po almost gasps at the revelation, “No one has told him the particular relevance of that—act—but Master Katara never stops him.”

“So, he does hunt for Master Katara, then?”

“Well,” Silik starts, nodding his head, “Looking at it, I guess he does. Maybe, he just enjoys hunting—and Master Katara is the closest to him among us. Maybe, that’s why he always offers the first plate to her—a simple, continuous token of friendship.”

Po scoffs. “Nah, can’t be it,” he says, “Wouldn’t Master Katara tell him otherwise?”

“Hm, she would—”

Their conversation is cut short when a sudden rustle from the empty camp echoes through the wide skies above, and suddenly, the hulking figures make their way from the dark—Hakoda, the freshly elected Chieftain Sokka, and Fire Lord Zuko in tow. Po straightens his posture, his throat twisting with an awkward, choked-out series of coughs, begging Tui and La they hadn’t overheard any piece of their conversation. Po doesn’t want to be halved and spared into game by an angered Fire Lord—or an incensed father.

“You’re back!” Silik exclaims, chuckling heartily, greeting the chieftain with a bow of his head, “I thought some mink snake would have bitten off all your heads.”

Hakoda scoffs at the insinuation, laying down his spears by the campfire. “We’ve been doing this for how many years, Silik. Your lack of faith in Zuko astounds me.”

“You mean, in you, old man!” Silik jibes, accompanied by bolstering laughter, a messy crack in the wild’s silence, and Po shuffles awkwardly, “What’d you catch?”

Fire Lord Zuko—dressed in Southern-style cloaks, fur-lined and thick, heavy layers—is holding the kill without grunt or slack, a large polar bear dog, half his size, over his arm, white fur stained blood red and dirty. He almost makes a gruesome sight, Po notes, if it weren’t for that face. He can almost understand Master Katara.

“A spirits-damned beast, that’s for sure,” Chieftain says, groaning out the words, cracking his knuckles, “Fuck, I think my toes froze together. I can’t feel them anymore. I think that was the longest track I’ve ever done in my life. Hey, Zuko, be a nice Fire Lord and reheat the pyre. Thanks.”

Po catches the roll of eyes—but Fire Lord Zuko hardly bothers to show his irritation, merely leaning down, a crackle of fire bursting from his palms, lighting the fire in the brightest hues of orange and reds, the colors of life, of breath. Po watches as Fire Lord Zuko takes a seat, just next to Hakoda—watches him take the slap on the back with a teethy grin, the hardness of his marred scar somehow a gentle, almost beautiful thing in the light.

“You know,” Chieftain Sokka recalls, stretching out his feet, “We were supposed to just catch some puffin-seals. An arctic hen or two, if they were around. But—Zuko here—” he reaches to punch Zuko’s shoulder, “He wanted to catch a polar bear dog—because, apparently, my sister—”

“Sokka,” Fire Lord Zuko cuts in, a warning tone.

Their chieftain happily and easily ignores him, continuing on. “—couldn’t shut up about the polar bear dog this idiot accidentally hunted a few seasons ago! Hence, my frozen toes! I mean, seriously, Hotman, I thought the whole panting-after-my-sister was just part of your whole, angsty teenager thing—”

“Sokka!—”

Po’s eyes glitter. “Who panted after who?”|

“Oh, you’re in for a ride—”

“SOKKA—”

—

Sokka

Hey, where’s my brother-in-law? He promised me five bottles of rice wine this winter—

Katara’s eyebrows twitch—which, in Sokka’s experience with her long history of eyebrow-twitching, is never a good thing. “Could you repeat that, Sokka?” she says, mulling over the words, deceptively calm.

Sokka is a twenty-eight-year-old man. He is married to the strongest, most beautiful woman in the four nations, and he is a father to his little gleams of starlight, his entire skies, his brats, Tarkik and Runa, and he is the chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe, and he is an accomplished, decorated warrior and brilliant inventor, if he does say so himself (and he says so himself)—and he is not scared of his baby sister.

So, in a bout of bravery, he repeats the words: “Where’s Zuko—you know, my brother-in-law? He’s usually with you every time you come home.”

Katara breathes in, a slow intake of breath that looks like she’s gathering the force of La herself. “Sokka, are you high on cactus juice again? Is Aang sneaking shipments for you again? Do Suki and I have to stage another intervention—”

A thick coil of fear nearly sends him into paralysis. “What the fuck, Katara, of course, I’m not!” he exclaims, “I’m asking a perfectly logical question! Fire Lord-in-law always arrives with you, anyway—”

Katara punches his shoulder—which, ow, that woman does not pull her spirits-damned punches. “When did Zuko become your brother-in-law, you dolt!”

Sokka flinches, rubbing his shoulders with a frown— “Take a guess, Katara! Aren’t you two, like—fucking married or whatever weird mating rituals they do over there in the Fire Nation?”

Katara’s eyes bulge out. “Zuko and I aren’t fucking married, you idiot!”

La, her voice is shrill—Sokka’s certain she’s managed to crack one of their windows from the force of her scream alone. “....really?”

Katara runs her hand over her face in an act of frustration, Sokka presumes. “Do you—were you thinking that every time Zuko visited our home, I was bringing him along as my husband!?”

Sokka grimaces, scratching the back of his neck. “Were you not?”

Katara groans. “Sokka,” she enuciates, massaging the skin between her brows, “Think. You like thinking, right? That’s your life’s work—so, right now, in this very important conversation that I’d never thought we’d need to even have, think. Just think. Why would I ever marry Zuko—how could I—I mean, it’s one thing to think I’m in some secret marriage, but to think that I’d secretly marry one of our friends? And the Fire Lord, at that?”

Sokka raises his arms in complete, utter surrender. “Look, sis, my bad for getting on your nerves, but I honestly just wanted some rice wine,” he says offhandedly, shrugging, “And you didn’t answer my question. Where is Zuko? You usually have him at your heel.”

“First, he’s my secret husband, and now, he’s some deer dog?”

He shrugs again, nodding. “If the water flows, sis.”

“He’s the Fire Lord. And our best friend.”

Sokka nods along. “And, very importantly, my rice wine provider—which, if you notice, isn’t providing any wine at the current moment. What’s up with that?”

“He couldn’t come home for the winter solstice this year,” Katara explains, unwinding the beads from her hair, facing the crystal mirror, a pensive frown pulling at her lips, “He’s been busy with Aang, too, anyway—planning the peace summit in Republic City. It’s the eleventh, now, counting this year.”

Sokka catches the odd note of melnacholy bleeding through Katara’s words—and he wonders if it’s from the lack of warmth that nearly melts through the snowflakes and icicles and tendrils of ice that sit at the tip of one’s tongue, the emptiness from a shape that’s been carved in and out, filled through, a hearth, almost. “Yeah,” Sokka says, “They’ve been writing about which delegate to bring, and what words to not overuse for the speeches, and what to not eat whilehaving rice and jasmine wine the whole time. It’s actually educational. Who knew buttered clamshells didn’t sit well with alcoholic beverages, huh?”

Katara chuckles, mirthless. “You’re such an idiot, Sokka.”

Sokka walks closer, pats her on the shoulder. “Hey,” he calls softly, “You good? For real, this time.”

A soft thing—a careful thoroughfare for the smallest bouts of honesty that he barely strings out of her, nowadays. He’s taken to his duties—as a chief and statesman, as a husband and father—but so had his sister, and there’s barely been any time to sit down at the table and lay their hearts out gently, the slow conversation and the bated breath and the deboning. There is hardly any time to take a breath or to sit down and feel out if his toes still work, and peacekeeping keeps them busy and agitated and apart for months through moments—they manage the tensions, bury their hands into the heart of the conflict, and wipe away the blood once the sun had set. Regret curdles in the pit of his stomach at the thought of all the time lost, the conversations missed.

Who is his sister, now? And where is her heart, now? Its safekeeping and storms? Its refuge and respites?

(He’d always assumed she and Zuko had a thing—something he and Suki passionately discussed over late night covers and warm tea—how obvious and telling they had been with each other—but, well, considering her vehement denials--)

“I am, I am,” Katara says, shaking herself out of her misty-eyed stupor, softly placing the beads inside a deep, velvet red pouch, “I’m fine. Just—I don’t know. I worry, sometimes—a little, I guess. My mind runs. I’m not used to leaving Zuko alone. I’ve gotten used to—just in case—”

Oh.

“Suki says the attempts aren’t as frequent this year.”

Katara sighs. “Doesn’t mean they never happen.”

“When was the last time?”

“Mid-year,” Katara answers, crossing her arms, “Poisoned porcelain. We were visiting a childen’s home in Harbor City, one of the busier streets—and somehow, they managed to sneak it in during the gifts ceremony. Zuko prepared this horrible collection of toys. They were so creepy, Sokka. I don’t even know how the children liked it at all.”

Sokka hums. “I’m sure he’s fine, Katara,” he says, “Flame-o Hotman’s as tough as nails. And Aang’s with him. That’s, like—one plus one equals two.”

“Articulate as ever, Sokka.”

“You know what I mean!” he says, “A little distance isn’t going to kill Zuko, Katara.”

Katara’s face darkens, and she reaches forward to swat him again. “I know that.”

“You’re worried about him,” Sokka concludes, those damning words, “That’s why you have such a stick up your—”

Katara pins him down with an icy glare, and Sokka swallows down the rest of his words. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Mostly,” he says, raising a brow when he notices the dullness rusting over her eyes, the purse of her lips, the small lines tracing her forehead, “You know, I’m missing Suki, too.”

Her head snaps up. “What?”

Sokka grins, wide and crooked. “Want to spend the solstice in Republic City? I’ll call for an airship right now—”

Katara’s eyes widen, surprise coloring her irises a brighter blue, her jaw dropping from shock. “You’re—you’re serious?”

“Why not? The whole gang is there—even Toph—and I’m pretty sure Dad wants to spend some alone time with—er, Malina,” he pauses in the small lapse of the moment, clearing away the sudden itch in his throat, and he feels the twitch of a petty grin in his cheeks when he catches the roll of Katara’s eyes at the mention of the woman, “No way you haven’t warmed up to her yet—even I did. Come on.”

Katara groans, shaking her head. “Whatever, Sokka,” she says, walking to her rooms, “Just book the airship. It’s a good thing I haven’t unpacked yet.”

Sokka hums his affirmative, and he doesn’t even note the sudden bounce in Katara’s steps, her brightened countence, as if sunlight had seeped into her bloodstream and heartbeat at the thought of seeing her secret husband again, of spending her days at his side (like they sickeningly do—a pair of sugar-infested, sticky-sweet ants), counting dying stars and naming turtleducks and drowning in laughter and molten gazes. Sokka looks away and calls for an airship. Sokka grins, smug and knowing.

Katara’s bags are weighed delicately by her shoulders, hands shifting as she weaves the cerulean and lilac beads into her tangle of braids. “What are you grinning at like that?” she asks warily, eyes squinting into a glare half-meant.

Sokka shrugs, teeth flashing. “Nothing, little sis,” he says, a saccharine jeer twisting over his mouth, “Nothing at all.”

—

Aang

You know, you don’t have to keep hiding it, right? I’m not that twelve-year-old kid anymore and—

Katara wheezes, repeatedly coughing out a series of choked breaths, and Zuko stills in his seat, back stiffening into an overly upright posture, his crown nearly knocking itself off his head from the haste of his movements—and they make a comical picture of exaggeration, two tomato-carrots for cheeks, an absurdity to their movements. Aang can only raise a brow, tries to school his expression into something neutral—Avatar-like, the bridge between worlds and nations and nature, a mediator through and through—and still, the makings of laughter itching at the base of his throat, a glitter of mischief in his eyes.

“What?” Katara asks, eyes blue and widened like a full moon, an ocean of disbelief, “What are you talking about?”

Zuko is patting her back, concern on his features. “Yeah, what exactly are Katara and I hiding?”

Aang shrugs. “Uh, I don’t know? That you’re together?” he says, scratching the back of his neck, his words trailing off, “I mean, are you...not?”

Two, three stifling beats of silence that keeps them frozen like still water—and Aang tries to recount his words, his missteps. He’s always assumed that Zuko and Katara had found each other in the end—endless waves of rumors that had haunted him, then; echoes and echoes of the way Zuko had looked at her, of how Katara had found her home in the heart of the fire, eye of the storm—and the thought of his two friends together had been nothing but fishbone and knives and jagged cuts, bloodstream cut short and turned over empty, then, when everything had been raw and tender to the touch, at the mere thought.

But years had passed, as time had stolen and given, as wounds scarred over into inertia—a pond of thoughts and decisions, a dip of feet into the waters, the whispers of past incarnations, of spirits that brush into clouds and soft winds and quiet, noiseless days.

Aang had seen it—the mirror cuts of his ways, the unfit pieces, the grief in his body and mind shaped like a cavity, a hole in his heart, something oceans-deep engraved into his very being, something he had thought he could heal with lovers and admirers and the ribbon-finish of peace painted over with diplomacy and batted lashes, but still so hollow once he had turned it over, still a concave of guilt and loneliness and pain that had become him. He’s seen it, held and dissected it in his palms, and he’s worked around it, through it, from it—and, eventually, he’d been able to look at Katara in the eye and hold a conversation with her without the thrum of a heartache so long ago.

And, well, he’s always thought Katara had found companionship—the kind that tiptoes beyond friendship, beyond the relationship between an ambassador and a Fire Lord, beyond anything he’s mortally seen, probably—with Zuko over the years. There’s always been a certain gravitas in the space between them—something age-old and inevitable, new rhythms of tired heartbeats, something oceanlike that had threaded itself between the crackling point where fingers meet, its embers and ashes settling in the hollow of their throats.

It’s become a well-used, beloved maxim in the nations: where Katara goes, Zuko follow; where tides change, the sun chases.

That couldn’t have come from nothing.

“Aang,” Katara says softly, smiling, “I don’t know where in the spirit world you would get that kind of information from. There is no hiding anything. There is no it. There is no us.”

Aang hums, nodding solemnly. He turns his gaze to Zuko, expectant.

Zuko is blank-faced, the face he wears when dealing with pesky ministers and pushy nobles, each button pressed and plucked off. “What she said.”

Aang is calm, and peaceful, and he lives in the way of his ancestors—but—

“You’re....” he starts, a strain of confusion staining his words, “...serious?”

They’ve resumed to finishing the rest of their meal.

Katara hardly looks up. “Why wouldn’t we be?” she says, thoughtlessly placing two pieces of ocean kumquats on Zuko’s plate, “I mean, do you know how much everyone else asks that? I don’t get it.”

Zuko easily trades his dao bao dumplings, stacking it carefully on her plate. “Even my advisors won’t shut up about it,” he says, shrugging, “What exactly did you think we were hiding, anyway? That we’re involved in some scandalous, long-time, dramatic love affair?”

Katara groans at the sound of his words, rolling her eyes. “It’s so horrible, Aang. And annoying. Did you know they created a play about us?”

Aang almost bursts into laughter, trickling out in wheezes. “A play? Like the one in Ember Island?”

Katara nods emphatically. “It’s the worst. Don’t even think about seeing it.”

Zuko tears a fire bun in half, placing the bigger piece on Katara’s plate, hardly emptying out. “I didn’t think it was that bad,” Zuko rebuts—and Aang notes the oddest purse of his lips, suspiciously resembling a pout. The Fire Lord, pouting. Huh. Aang doesn’t know if the world is ending or beginning in entirety. “It had its flaws, sure—but I thought it was pretty decent.”

Katara scoffs. “What was remotely decent about it, Zuko? The fact that I was a moon-eyed girl for you the whole time? Slobbering over your muscles—”

“You weren’t a moon-eyed girl. You were yourself—a strong warrior and healer, an accomplished ambassador, and a master waterbender,” Zuko corrects, sliding in another half of a fire bun on her plate—they keep doing that, hands shaped by instinct, Aang has noticed, “And I do have muscles, anyway.”

Katara crosses her arms, raising a brow. “Which I don’t slobber over, Zuko.”

Aang’s gaze ping-pongs between them.

Their standoff between the intensity of their gazes—two oceans, two great fires, two mountains—eventually steams over with a conceding shrug from Zuko. “Alright,” is all he says before reaching for another bowl of sea prunes, handing it over on the side of Katara’s plate, “Of course, you don’t, sweeth—”

Silence, again. Aang chews very, very carefully.

Katara stills, and Zuko clears his throat. “I meant—sweet—it was sweet to think you did, though. You have very commendable muscles, too.”

Katara’s eye twitches. Aang bites his cheeks, praying to the spirits that the laughter threatening to burst and bubble out from the root of his throat stays there.

Katara inhales. “Thank you,” she grits out, “While I’ve never experienced any watery reactions to them, I think your muscles are admirable. Well-built and everything. Don’t you think so, Aang?”

“Totally,” Aang says, words shaky from the laughter he’s biting back with all the force he can muster. Can he airbend it out of himself? He could try—might discover new forms and enrich the cultural heritage and tradition of his people and his own legacy as the Avatar. “I love Zuko’s muscles. And yours, too, Katara. Very nice.”

“Thanks, Aang,” Zuko says stiffly, hurriedly shoving another piece of dumpling into his mouth.

Well, Aang thinks, makes an unsubtle show of staring at them—their magnetism, elbows touching and eyes meeting, an eclipse, and the thoughtless Here, your dumplings or More juice? between them like pebbles traveling across water, skipping stones over an ocean of history, of the space between fingertips and hearts and breaths, at least, they aren’t tryimg to hide it anymore.

He can’t help but grin.

—

Azula

I want two or three. Four is a bit much—but if it suits you both, why not. Of course, I wouldn’t mind looking over your brats if necessary—but five does stretch it a little. Don’t you agree?

It’s a beautiful day in the gardens—the fire lilies in full, boisterous bloom, the scent of peonies and sampaguitas and silver wisteria wafting through the air like some noble’s cloying perfume, a sky of lilac oceans and bare sunlight and dry summer winds. Kiyi is by the turtleduck pond, hastily throwing breadcrumbs at the poor, unfortunate, squawking things, and Zuko is carrying her from his shoulders, body leaning in such an atrocious, concerning posture that Azula feels the coming of a grimace at just the sight of it. Katara is staring at her, wide-eyed and brows furrowed, her teacup stilled mid-air, mid-drink—Zuko and Katara had made a habit of old-fashioned picnics in the garden, complete with the linen mats and the miniature kimono chicken sandwich and fire buns, their uncle’s beloved, ornate tea sets, adorned with gold linings of Agni and Tui, oddly enough. Kiyi often tags along, and their mother, too, if schedule permits it.

Recently, so does she.

“Two or three...what?” Katara asks, stilted.

Azula pops in a smoky cherry meringue in her mouth, shrugging delicately. “Children,” she says after chewing.

She hears the sudden burst of water—probably, from the pond, or the springs nearby—and raises a brow, catching the flood of heat coloring Katara’s entire face into a slob of fire, red-hot, bursting at the seams. “Children!?”

Azula can only roll her eyes. “Yes, children,” she quips, “I know you and my brother are definitely planning to have them. I just wanted to offer my advice before it happened.”

Katara chokes on her breath. “Zuko and I aren’t planning to have—” her blush only brightens and worsens under the heat of the summer afternoon, “—children!”

“Alright,” Azula says, taking another sip of her black tea. Silence dawns between them, and Azula simply watches the slow descent of the sun—often trickled through hours—give way to pink bursts, reminsicent of spring blossoms, moonlight bleeding through like watercolor. It is a quaint scene, and she lets herself drown in the sea of silence, the silent whispers of the wind brushing past her cheeks, the flutter of the turtleducks, the distant echoes of laughter. She closes her eyes, and everything seems so faraway, so untouchable, for the barest of seconds.

Sometimes, she still hears the crackle of lightning somewhere, somewhen, somehow.

She wonders if it is Agni taunting—or reminding—her.

“But—” Katara starts unexpectedly, a soft cut in the silence, something raw and vulnerable in her voice, “—he is—he’s good with Kiyi. It’s hard not to see that. And the children at the orphanages and clinics, and the families we visit, he’s just—they adore him, and it comes so easy to him, to be so gentle, so sweet, even when—and—after everything—”

Azula takes another sip. “You don’t have to explain, Katara,” is all she says, “I get it. I always have.”

Katara looks at her, smiles, before she stands up and joins Zuko and Kiyi by the pond, overcrowding the turtle ducklings—and if memory serves her right (and it does, every time, without fail), they are named, individually and properly and with careful, purposeful thought, meticulously cherry-picked by the palace’s most troublesome trio, consisting of a Fire Lord, the Southern Water Tribe ambassador, and their little sweet sister, as: Kale Cookie (the mother), Flameo Fire Flake (the father), and their brood of children, Lychee Nut Shake, Mooncake, and Sizzle-Crisp. Azula hums, feeds into the thing that’s been building in her chest ever since she’s met her mother’s eyes and took her brother’s hand and let Katara’s water pierce through her.

A kintsugi of a heart, somewhat. A half-life—barely there, but still beating.

She’s always known where to strike—has always hit the tender spots with precision.

Poor, unfortunate, squawking things, indeed.

❍ ☯︎

What is taking my idiot husband so spirits-damned long—

Katara crosses her arms, her feet restlessly tapping, impatience crackling through every twitch of the finger, every glance at the clock on the wall. She’s staring at the door—and she’s been sitting down, then standing up, then walking aimless circles around the small room, counting down to the second, each moment seeping out like velvet eternity—and she huffs out another sigh of frustration. She has been standing still in wait for hours—and she has nothing else to do with her hands. Winter solstice in the Southern Water Tribe is fairly calm, celebrated with a hunt and a bonfire in Wolf Cove, its fires as large and encompassing as the dying stars in the skies—but it’s the first day, and Katara is still set to arrange administrative matters with Sokka and the Council of Elders, and those meetings eat half of her day, and she doesn’t even have much time to spare for the rest of it, much less a whole season, and her godsdamned idiot husband is out there somewhere, taking his time to luxuriate in some airship—

Katara is going to kill him. She’s come to this decision—it has taken her only a decade to stand by it, but she’s going to kill him, swear to La.

The door is pushed open, and Katara glowers, teeth gritted.

Zuko stands there by the threshold, the bulge of his frame blocking off the weakened rays of light, the drooping sun painting the sky ice-white and bleary, grays dancing all over foggy clouds, tears of snowdrop floating down the sky—and he’s dressed in thick, caribou bear fur, deep, rich blues, skin paler from the arctic breeze, lips crusting blue and purples. Something in her heart squeezes at the sight of him—it’s been months since they’ve last seen each other again, and she had wanted to stay in the Fire Nation to celeberate the solstice, to drown in his eyes and his arms and his warmth, but she had her own set of obligations, and they never made a habit of forsaking their own titles for the sake of pleasure, but she’s missed him, and it’s sinking into her all at once like a physical thing. All the anger and chagrin flies away into the wind, and her body moves before she registers her own movements, and she’s practically running, crossing the space in a half-breath, jumping at him, arms wrapping around his thick neck, legs around his torso.

Zuko easily catches her weight, and she melts easily into his warmth. “Missed you, too, sweetheart,” he says through a chuckle, burying his nose into her hair, “Missed you. Missed my wife.”

Katara tightens her grip around him. “Missed my husband,” she says, breathless all of a sudden, her heart running in a thousand paces, and she pulls away to look at him, to take him in, eyes desperately catching on details she’s missed—the length of his hair (longer, now), the little scars littered on his skin (there are new ones on his knuckles, reddened and bruised, and she clicks her tongue at the sight of it), the bags under his eye (deeper, deeper, deeper—Katara wishes she could kiss it away, off his skin)—and she rubs her thumb on the roughened skin of his scar, softly kissing it over, “What took you so long to arrive here? I’ve been waiting since morning—and the sun’s about to set into oblivion, now. The bonfire’s starting in just a few hours, now—and we’ll barely have any time to ourselves after—”

“Breathe, sweetheart,” Zuko says, eyes crinkling, “I’m here for the entirety of the solstice.”

Her mouth gapes open. “The council allowed that?”

His arms tighten around her waist, palming her ass, and Katara squirms, sighing, head dropping to the crook of his neck, breathing in amber and woodsmoke and vetivar, traces of sandalwood lingering in the air, over her tongue, the warmth of him coalescing into her, intertwining with every breath, skin on skin. “Yeah,” Zuko grunts out, walking forward, distractedly slamming the door close with his foot, eyes devouring her, “Told them I’d consider their proposals for Fire Lady prospects in exchange for an extended stay in the Southern Water Tribe.”

Her face sours, and the green, horrid bile of jealousy rises in her throat—and her whole body stiffens, enough that she untangles her limbs from Zuko’s, back on her unsteady feet, crossing her arms as she leans against the wall, trying not to mourn the immediate loss of warmth. “What?” she says slowly, eyebrows knitting, “You’re considering—getting married?”

Zuko lets out a heated breath, and he is walking towards her, crowding her space, and he’s so tall, so tall, and Katara has never bothered to give his height any kind of special attention—she knows how her husband looks like, she’s had him over and under and inside her, but—but he’s towering over her, and his gaze is molten and all-consuming and dark, and Katara has missed him so, so bad, so much, so wholly and irreparably, and it’s crashing into her all at once, setting her alight—

Cerulean and amber intersect in heady strings, and Katara swallows back a gasp when Zuko leans over her, his hands engulfing her wrists in a searing grip, pinning them lifeless and still against the wall, and everything is hot, and everything is melting into the point where she feels Zuko’s fingertips tracing the flutter of her pulse, the smoke of his breath in her lungs, the heat of his skin against the sweat of hers, dirtying one another. “You think—” he rasps against her ear, and she almost whimpers from the tickle of his breath against the shell of her ear, goosebumps traveling up and down her spine, dragonfly hummingbirds in her guts, “—I’d ever consider anyone else when I have my beautiful, fucking incomparable wife right here?”

Katara gasps when she feels the graze of Zuko’s teeth on the thin skin of her neck. “You—you said—”

He bites her shoulder, and a throaty moan slips out of her— “I know what I said—but I did it, so I could spend the rest of the year here with my wife. I lied for my wife—for you. Are you understanding me, Katara?”

She’s panting, she realizes, back arching, chasing for the wet slide of Zuko’s tongue, the rough pull of his teeth against skin and vein. “Yes,” she gasps out, head throwing back against the wall, a loud thump, and she pulls him closer, wrapping her arms around his neck, moaning when his hard, muscled thigh rubs against her clothed cunt, the heady, sticky trails of slick dampening through her wraps, and she can’t get enough of the velvet heat and the addicting friction—she never could and she never has, “Yes, yes, yes, Zuko. Please. Please, missed you—missed this—”

Their lips meet, twirl, intertwine—a heady, thoughtless dance, tongues against teeth, warmth and fire bleeding into messy strings of spit, desire and hunger burning into each other’s mouths. Katara moans when Zuko bites on her tongue, teeth playing with the soft, wet flesh, and Zuko easily hauls her weight into his arms again, a hand half on her thigh, the width of it spanning the entirety of her thigh, the other gripping her ass, tight and unrelenting, a searing touch that sinks all the way to the marrow of her. Zuko carries her off the weight of the wall, walking them backwards to her room—to any available surface, really, because his tongue is still deep into her mouth, teeth clashing and breaths interlacing, lips refusing to part from the kiss, and Katara doesn’t give a damn if he fucks her here or the floor or the fucking throne room in Hari Bulkan—she doesn’t care—she missed him—him—

She whines when Zuko places her on the countertop of the room’s high table, meant for dining with guests and family, and this is inappropriate, and she should put a stop to this because she knows better—but the only thing that comes out of her mouth is: “Zuko,” she breathes out, fingers tangling through his hair, undoing his topknot, watching as his hair falls over them like a fountain, like a spring, “Missed you. Missed this. ‘M so glad you’re here.”

He presses his forehead against hers, arms caressing her waist, playing with the thick, woven red sash around it, the deep, intricate patterns of Tui and La engraved into the heavy fabric. “Missed you more, water lily,” he says, and every word that comes from his mouth is an ocean she wants nothing to do but drown into, “Missed you like a fucking limb. Missed your eyes. Your face,” he presses butterfly kisses on her eyelids, then the tip of her nose, the apples of her cheeks, the sharp jut of her cheekbones, the line of her jaw, endless and light and sweet. “Your pretty little neck,” his lips suck crescents into the hollow of her neck, the shape of her collarbones—and Katara trembles at every touch, at the heated press of his lips, at the wet heat of his mouth on her—he is so warm, always has been, but it’t a dizzying contrast, the chill of the air around her bones and skin, and the burning heat of him, the hunger that sizzles into her, a scalding touch that melts her to the bone, keeps her limbs loose and boneless and empty, so empty, so cold.

His clever, practiced hands unwrap her top and her sarashi bindings in one attempt—and she shivers when she catches Zuko’s darkened gaze, the hunger in his eyes, setting fire on her skin. “You’re so fucking beautiful, sweetheart,” he says, and each word drags through her, a searing tattoo—high-pitched, desperate whimpers falling from her lips when Zuko’s fingers trace the sharp lines of her collarbones, slowly teasing around the heaving of her chest, “Can’t believe you’re real sometimes. That I get to have you. That I get to keep you.”

Katara’s back arches into a bow—keening—when Zuko leans down, harshly sucking a hardened nipple into his mouth, a hand spanning across her waist, wandering through her body’s curves and dips, rubbing around the delicate skin of her tits, pinching her other nipple. “‘M yours—yours—Zuko—” she sighs out, trembling with pleasure all over, white-hot behind her eyelids, “Zuko, more, please—want more—need more—”

“Aren’t you needy today?” Zuko says, teasing, his tongue licking her nipples, makes a whole godsdamned show about it because he’s a tease, always has been, and Katara hates him, hates him with every shard of her useless, traitorous heart, “My beautiful, needy girl.”

“Zuko,” Katara gasps out, squirming when Zuko’s hands start trailing over her waist, caressing her hipbones, touching her everywhere except the place she needs it the fucking most, “Zuko, please, touch me, please, want it—want you—need you—”

Zuko’s mouth sucks purple kisses into her skin, leaving a map of messy, warm spit and teeth-shaped half-bruises, over her tits, the sensitive buds of her nipples, the juts of her ribs, the soft, curved dip of her waist, the skin over her upper thighs—and he grazes so lightly, too lightly, over the ache between her legs, the pulsing heat, the unbearable emptiness. “I am touching you, sweetheart,” he says, fingers squeezing her hips, follows the sharp curve of her hipbones, and Katarahates him so—she’ll freeze him into a godsdamned icicle after this, she swears, “Be a good girl and tell me where, yeah?”

Embarrassment curls high in her stomach, and she writhes from it, the heat blazing, licking at her fingertips, the peak of her nerve endings. “Zuko—”

He only raises a brow at her, a challenge in those golden eyes she’s memorized and built statues of in the crooks of her mind, in the hidden maps of her body. “Tell—” he lowers himself, his hot breath fanning against her heated skin, dampened from cold sweat, from the hummingbird beats of anticipation, a loud ringing in her ears, his large hands tucked under her knees, widening the spread of her legs—a blush slowly creeps on her cheeks at the sudden exposure, “—me where, sweetheart. Come on, use that smart mouth.”

Katara grunts, forcibly taking one of Zuko’s hands, her fingers around his wrist, placing the heat of his hand on her aching center, the cloth a futile thing, a useless separation between his touch and her aching, empty cunt. “Here, Zu, touch me here, please,” she whispers, a deep, scratchy yelp behind her teeth when Zuko starts rubbing the heel of his palm against her cunt, the pearl of it, sensitive and budding, and lightning striking through, pleasure burning and building like a wildfire, “Zuko!—fuck, more, please, more—need it so bad—”

Sweat is gathering at her temples, and the rush is dizzying, every touch—every grind against his large, wide palms, the rough calluses against her sensitive mound—like a shockwave, a revelation, a tsunami, and she squirms, writhes, whines—“Zuko, off, off,” she mutters repeatedly, words blurring through the heat clouding her head, hands uselessly trying to undo the complicated knots of her pants and sash, and she can’t think, everything is too hot, and she wants Zuko’s hands on her, in her, and it’s not enough, and it’s too much, “Take it off, Zuko, please—”

“Patience, Katara,” he says, the rough words like an indent on skin, and his large hand cups her folds, fingers feeling through the wetness soaking the linen of her clothes, and Katara aches, feels it eat at her, consume her entirely, spits her out into this needy, grinding thing, “My pretty, little wife. Spirits,” he breathes the words out, something roughened and gritty in the back of his throat, his honeyed gaze darkening into something molten, a bronzed tar, his fingers—deft, long, thick—play along her clothed, overheated skin, and his fingers are so mean, fiery in its grip, searing, “Missed you so fucking bad, sweetheart. Every time you’re away, I feel like half of me’s ripped apart, all the way here—all the way with you, wherever you are,” his fingers start to unlace the knots by her belt in a tortorously slow pace, and Katara twists in place, feels the sweat beading on her skin, feels her heart race and jump and melt all at once, “Whether you’re here, or in Gaoling, or in Republic City, or even just a room away from me—I miss you with my whole fucking body. Feels like godsdamned torture, sweetheart—being away from you. Feels like death. Feels like something’s lighting me on fire—or drowning me.”

Katara huffs impatiently, hair spanning out wildly against the table as he presses her flat against the surface, laying her down, a hand on her shoulder, keeping her still and steady, his fingers still teasing around her spirits-damned pants. “I’m going to drown you, you—ah—you jerkbending lord—mm—” she clenches on nothing, nothing but the friction of Zuko’s hands rubbing on her—and she’s been aching for months, and her asshole husband still has the nerve to tease her, to string her along, “I’m—fuck!—‘m gonna kill you, jus’ fuck me—please, Zuko—”

A groan builds in the back of Zuko’s throat, and Katara feels it reverberate through her, living inside her, her hunger, her need—and she barely manages to stifle her embarrassingly loud gasp when Zuko rips her pants and underwrappings in shreds, watching how the veins on his hands, his thick forearms protrude, green and purple lines against ivory skin, throwing the tattered pieces somewher in the room. He splays his hands on the bracketing of her hips, her warm, burning skin, and she’s naked, all his to see, to touch, to ruin and put back together and break apart—and his gaze is an intense, overwhelming weight she feels down to her bones, down to the desparate clench of her cunt, down to the curl of her toes. She whines and squeezes her eyes closed when she catches him staring at the messy traces of slick seeping out of her puffy, petal pink lips, the repeated clenching of her empty empty empty hole, trying to close her legs, keep it away from his prying gaze.

“Spirits, look at you,” he breathes out, finger thumbing at her pussy, tracing her slick from her pearl to her slit, and Katara throws her head back, pleasure wringing through her, white-hot and bone-deep and all-consuming, nerves on fire, “So wet. Fuck, ‘Tara, you’re dripping for me. I could drown in you. Is that what you meant? You’d drown me like this?”

His fingers inch closer, dipping inside her tight warmth, teasing her fluttering walls. “Yes, yes, yes—”

Katara keens, back bowing, when Zuko shoves two fingers into the plush, gripping heat of her cunt, moaning at the way he fills her, the rough shape of his fingers stretching her out, pushing and pulling, smothered in slick. “Fuck, sweetheart, you’ve gotten so tight. How am I going to fit inside you, sweet thing?” Zuko grunts out, flicking his fingers in her pussy until he hits— “There we go. There’s the spot. Let it out. That’s it, Katara—such a good girl for her husband. For me.”

She has to bite back a squeal, choking on her own heartbeat, electric pleasure surging right through, limbs tightening and loosening and shaking, his fingers hammering against her spot, sensitive and rubbery and wet. “Zuko—” she manages through gasp, a long, high whine drawing out from her scratchy throat when Zuko rubs his thumb on her clit, flicking the pearl slowly, excruciatingly, “Fuck—Zuko—there, there, there, please—oh, Tui—”

Something white-hot and intense and blazing bursts behind her closed, shut eyes, squirming on the table, and she can’t help but let out another pathetic, loud whine when he pushes in another finger—and it’s such a fucking stretch, and it’s been so godsdamned long, and she’s so full, how are his fingers so—big—

“You’re so tight, ‘Tara,” Zuko grits out, his fingers slipping out, snapping in, a steady, maddening pace, “How long has it been since I fucked you?”

The crude words pool into heat on her cheeks, in between her legs, and she tries squirming away, tries avoiding Zuko’s piercing, hungry eyes—but his grip keeps her in the same place, grounded still and helpless to his motions, to his words, to the heat rushing through her, into her, over her. “Since—since—before I left—Hari—the, ah, palace—La—” her words are barely coherent, strung through moans and whimpers, and she can’t see straight, can’t feel a thought in her head, can’t remember her name if it came down to it—his fingers are a tight fit, filling and emptying her, pushing on her spot, rubbing on her pearl, and it’s a mess of sensations, of nerve endings close to bursting, of lightning pleasure shaking through her spine, “Zuko—please—I want more—need more—”

“Not enough for you, love?” Zuko asks, something mocking and mean in his tone, and Katara cries out when he pulls his fingers out. Katara watches—a flush high on her cheeks, traveling down the corners and peaks of her body—as Zuko wraps his tongue around the fingers that had been buried in her, buries them right in his mouth, making a dirty show of sucking on them.

Something in her aches and clenches and writhes, so fucking desparate, dumb and stupid with her need—

“You taste so fucking good,” he husks out, and she shivers all over at the reverence in his tone, “You know something, sweetheart?”

Katara is panting, chest heaving, strands of hair sticking to her forehead. “W-what?”

“I haven’t had my dinner yet,” is all the bastard says before he lowers himself down, head nestled between her thighs, tongue licking a stripe on her cunt, and Katara chokes on her own breath, whines slipping out, an undercurrent of pleasure, blurry and so much, so fucking much, taking over, tides and tides of it. Her hands fly to his hair, fingers tangling through the long, messy strands, and she doesn’t know if she’s pulling him closer or pushing him away—but his mouth is relentless, and he drags his hot—so fucking hot—tongue through her folds, over them, licking over her clit, oyster and pearl.

“Fuck—Zuko—fuck—you’re—it’s so good—mmh—” Katara garbles out, breah hitching, crying out when Zuko plunges his tongue into her cunt, and her walls clench on the soft intrusion, the pleasure mounting, climbing, peaking. “—Zuko—fuck—there, please, there—”

Her breath falters and stutters when Zuko looks up at her, mouth busy fucking her cunt, lapping at her mess of slick—a wave of embarrassment and something headier gushes through her when their eyes meet, his darkened ambers steadily meeting her shaky, fluttering gaze, like a scorpion bee to honeydew, like moth wasps to a flare of light, and his pupils are blown wide, the black swallowing down the honeyed sunlight, something else replacing it, something heady, something incensed, a trail of dark smoke, thick ash, tendrils of fire fire fire, so pure, lighting her from inside out. Zuko looks at her—keeps her eyes—dark and ravenous and something she wants to drown herself in and never come back up for air—and Katara’s entire core clenches, sucking in his tongue, his fingers, his breath, and she can feel slick pour from her cunt like the deafening flush of waterfalls, the steam of springs that washes over skin. She wants to curl from embarrassment—but Zuko keeps her thighs apart and he drinks her slick up like some wine he can’t get enough of and he looks at her in the eye, refuses to avert his gaze, refuses to look away.

His tongue plays with her cunt, delving deeper into her folds, like breathless strings to a tsungi horn, and she mewls.

“Oh, oh, Zu, please, please—” she’s babbling nonsense, at this point, and all she hears is the loud, wet noises of Zuko’s tongue tracing her walls, fucking in and out, flicking against her clit, lapping eagerly at her slick, drinking her up, drinking her empty, “—Zu, mm, I’m close—‘m so close—fuck—”

She thrashes on the table, thighs needily locking around Zuko’s head, hanging over his broad shoulders, practically folded in half, when he pushes in two fingers along with his tongue—and the sensation is so much, and she feels something closing in, something splintering, devouring her whole. A throaty, rough scream tears out of her throat—she doesn’t care enough to even think about the noise, about someone hearing—and her chest heaves with the electrifying buzz climbing through her body, leaving her a shaky, needy, breathless mess.

“Fuck, Zuko—” she rasps out, words slurring from the numbness of pleasure, legs fluttering and shaking, hands roughly scraping against his scalp—and he’s still down there, still licking up her slick, and she wants to push him out, wants him closer, wants him inside, wants him so far away, “—you’re so good, so good for me, to me, love you—fuck—”

Zuko lifts his head from her cunt—half of his face is smeared with her slick, hair matting from it, eyes dark and hungry—and she nearly comes a second time from the sight of him alone. He wraps a hand around her ankle, pressing a kiss to the heel of her feet, under the folds of her knee, over her inner thigh, the ridges of her ribs—all her pleasure spots, kissing off the sweat pooling, the musk of it thick in the air, playing her body like a tune he’s easily memorized in his head. Shivers follow and chase after his touch, his heat.

“Best swim of my life,” he says against her collarbone, sucking on her neck, noisy and teethy, “You’re my ocean, Katara. I love drowning in you.”

She rolls her eyes—her husband is an insufferable poet at heart, despite his cute, defensive denials—and wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him impossibly close, her arms slinging around his neck. She meets his mouth, a heady, dirty kiss, rolling her tongue over his, over his teeth, a soft mewl sneaking out of her when she tastses herself in his mouth—until one of his hands, warm and heavy in its grip, pulls on her hair, forces her away from him, strings of spit in the space between their lips.

His eyes are black, almost, and she shivers from head to toe. “Beg, sweetheart,” is all he says, her neck arching from the odd position he’s keeping her in, “Come on. I want to hear my wife beg for my cock.”

The shamelessness of his dirty, coarse words is a physical thing that indents its weight in Katara’s body, something hot and heavy unfurling in her guts, a liquid, thick rush seeping through. “I’m—” she starts, voice wavering, panting, “I—Zuko, please—just—”

He leans down, licking off the sweat on her neck, tongue trailing over her veins. “Not like that, sweetheart. Beg. Properly.”

Katara whines, throwing her head back, slowly rolling her hips agaisnt Zuko’s sculpted waist. “Zu,” she moans out, harsh breaths panning out against his neck, eyes fluttering close, a state of overwhelm, “Zu, please, want you—want your cock. Haven’t had you in so long. I’ve been so—I’m so empty, Zu, please, please—I missed you, and I’ve fucked myself—so stupid, just thinking of you—so many times—” his grip on her hair tightens, and the slight pain buzzes straight into a jolt of pleasure up her spine, “—please fuck me, Zu. Want you. Need you. Need my husband—my husband’s cock—”

Zuko leans down, a growl on the tip of his tongue, capturing her lips in a messy kiss, swapping spit and tongues colliding in a practiced rhythm. “Fuck, Katara,” he says, his voice husked out, the syllables rough and mean on his tongue, “You drive me crazy—you, and your eyes, and your godsdamned words, and your tight, little cunt—”

She yelps when Zuko lights his pants on fire, the searing heat nearly melting through skin— “Zuko! What are you doing!”

He sheds off his heavy robes, while burning his pants to ash, lips twisted in a wolfish, handsome grin, the heavy smoke lingering in the air, trails of ashes floating around them, a sharp contrast against the icicles through the walls and the biting winter frost. Her retort dies in her throat when she catches the sight of his cock against his stomach—hard and obscene in its shape, its sheer size, and Katara still has to breathe slowly, has to center herself, no matter how many times she’s had him, and he’s had her, because his cock, in all spirits-damned honesty, is a fucking monstrosity—and spit gathers in her mouth, throat drying, when Zuko inches closer, still smelling of smoke and sandalwood and the raw burn of fire, pressing his cock against her folds, and the sight of it is so dirty, so crude, his thick cock—like Agni’s fucking rod—rubbing against the fluttering petals of her cunt, her achy clit, coating it in her slick.

Little whimpers are punched out of her at every movement. “Zu,” she pleads, hips arching, tries to angle her cunt just right-- “Zu, put it in. Please. ‘M so empty—”

Zuko coos, thumb caressing the corners of her lips. “How could I ever deny my pretty, little wife what she wants?”

The head of his cock slowly, agonizingly slips inside, already a wide stretch, and Katara whines, her walls fluttering wildly around the wide, thick girth—the sound of their groans filling the room.

“Fuck—”

“Shit—” Katara gasps out, “I fucking—oh—your cock is a—ah—problem—”

Zuko is panting silently, chest rising, and he’s trying to ease in—Katara can feel his restraint, his efforts—trying to slow himself down for her. “Is it now?” he mutters distractedly, eyes fixed on the way her cunt is stretched around the shape of his cock, and she flushes in embarrassment, “Fuck. You’re so pretty here, sweetheart.”

He thumbs the edges of her cunt, the obscene stretch, the soft, little flutters, and she whines, grasping for his shoulders.

“Zuko—”

He kisses the tip of her nose. “Shh, I’ll put the rest in, yeah?” he murmurs, butterfly kisses all over face, “You think you can take it?”

“I’ve been taking it, you pompous, arrogant—” she grits out through barely bitten-back moans.

The breath in her chest is tight when Zuko plunges the rest of his length into her cunt, burying himself to the hilt—and he stretches her so wide, so deep, so open, shaped around him, an anchor in the sea, a scorching fit, burning her from the inside out, all her nerves set on fire, calling out his name, screaming for him.

“Oh, fuck—” she cries out, breaths punched out, “Oh—Zuko—”

She whimpers when his cock slowly slides out of her pussy, then shoved back in, a wet, humiliating squelch echoing in the empty, still room, and Zuko sets a relentless, thorough pace, his cock pistoning in and out, pushing and pulling like tides to shore. Zuko fills her, its familiar, addicting heat settling into the deprived crevices in her body, the deepest parts he can reach, molded to each others’ shape, the furl of her cunt stretehed out, an obscene sight, darkening petals around his cock, beads of pre-cum slipping out, a small white stream trailing down her inner thighs, the place where they meet and coalesce and enmesh into one breath, pooling under them, on the table, lewd and coarse and theirs.

“Zuko!—fuck—oh—fuck—” she cries out at every rough thrust—every mean push, every teasing pull—her fingers digging deep into his shoulders, scrambling over his back, nails sinking deep into the stretch of skin, scratching out a crisscross of angry, red lines, “—oh—oh!—there, right there, please—fuck—”

Zuko angles his hips with a grunt, his cock rutting deeper into her, and she sobs.

“There, there, there—ngh—”

The room is drowned in the lovers’ symphony: punched-out grunts and whines pitched high, the audible, incessant sound of his cock pistoning in and out of her, wet and messy, a river of her slick and his pre-cum between them—and Katara has missed this, has ached for this through the seasons like another heartbeat, dragged along every coast of the sun, every shard of moonlight; the thought of him, his warmth and his rugged smile and the skin of his scar under her fingertipes, under her lips, behind her eyelids every time, half-dream, half-memory, and he lives in her, almost. He’s build a home inside of her—had crawled inside of her heart, settled within her ribs, spread his warmth all over until she was made of him, until he breathed nothing else but her—and she’s become his homeland; something they reach for, something they’re made of, irreparably, incessantly, inevitably. Katara clings on to Zuko, fingers sunken deep into his back, her entire body jostling with every rough thrust, every punch of his hips, his cock ramming into her with desparation, hitting the spot with memorized precision, the shock of lightning in her quivering limbs.

“Fuck,” Zuko groans out, a particularly rough thrust sending her forwards, knocking off the simple ornaments—and the sole candlelight—off the table with a resounding crash that neither of them bother to give much thought, lost in their cascade of ecstasy, “Fuck, sweetheart—forgot how tight you—shit—get.”

“It’s been—ngh, fuck—so long, Zu—” Katara pants out, crying out when he rubs the head of his cock against her sweet spot, his thumb sneaking down to play with her clit, tracing it in circles, “I missed you—ah fuck—so, so fucking much—Zuko—”

In, and out, and in, and out—she pulls his face to hers, kisses him with a wild ache, tongue tracing over teeth, tongue against tongue, a dance or a fight, tongue swirling and brushing over each other, cerulean and amber, wave and sunlight, and she wants every part of him swimming in her, his spit, his breath, his warmth, his cum—

“Zu-ko,” she whines against his lips, barely inches apart, her fingers tracing the edges of his scar, lips planting small, fluttering kisses, like falling petals, “Zuko, ‘m close—are you—ah—are you, too? Want you—ngh—inside—inside me—”

Zuko lets out a harsh, jagged laugh. “I’m already inside you, sweetheart,” and he emphasizes his point with another thrust, and anothet, and another, pounding into her, pounding her into the spirits-damned table, rocking and shaky with their weight, “What else does my greedy wife want?”

Katara whines, her entire body pinkening in fluster, clenching around Zuko’s cock. “Your—mmh—your—ah—your cum, Zu, please, please, please—”

Zuko leans down, groaning, wrapping his mouth around her nipple, sucking around it—and stars burst around the cloudy, hazy edges of her vision, a blinding, dizzying wave overcoming her, the air between them erupting in curls of steam. Zuko continues pounding into her, keeps at his unrelenting pace—and she takes every thrust, skin slapping against skin, whirls of steam in between them, the heat sinking in, coming off from Zuko’s palms, the line of his shoulders, the piston of his hips, the raw scent of smoke and ash hanging in the air.

“Zuko—” Katara cries out, overwhelmed, head against the table, toes curling, arms flying, “—please, Zuko, just—fuck—yes—fill me up—mm, just like that, Zu—ah—”

Zuko stills, burying himself inside her, as far as he can go, ribbons of deep groans pulled from the back of his throat, reverberating through bone and skin and the pounding of their hearts, and Katara whimpers at the sensation of hot, thick—so fucking hot, near scalding—liquid filling her, keeping her warm from the inside, the edge of the table burnt and splintered from the grip of his hand, wisps of steam in every pant and sigh.

Katara’s still dizzy with the aftershocks, body trembling, swept into the warm, honeyed sunlight of Zuko’s gaze. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, plain, old adoration—the kind they’ve spent years dancing around—in his tone, “That was one spirit of a welcome, sweetheart.”

Laughter buds between them, and Katara traces the line of his jaw, pulling him in for a peck, just to feel his lips against, just to feel the mirth of it. “Missed you, too, Fire Lord,” she says, biting his jaw, reveling in the throaty groan she feels against her skin, “Zu.”

“‘Tara.”

He still hasn’t pulled his cock out—and she clenches on it, locking her ankles around his waist, moaning at the weight, the impossible warmth. “Don’t pull out. Don’t go away. Ever. Let’s skip this season’s bonfire. I want to stay like this for the whole night.”

Fondness swims in Zuko’s eyes, his palm cradling her cheek, thumb by her cheekbone, underneath the pads of her eyes, and she bathes in his inescapable tenderness—in his touch, and his warmth, and his eyes that she keeps, that she has only for half the seasons, for a bare quarter of the year, sometimes. “Who’s going to light the pyre, sweetheart?”

She buries her face in his neck, fully clinging onto him. “Sokka’ll find a way,” she murmurs through skin, licking at his collarbones.

His fingers start brushing through her mahogany curls, tucking the strands behind her ears. “You sure about that?” he whispers, so softly, slowly lifting her chin upwards with a finger underneath, entangling her eyes in their dance, dandelions in the air—ocean blues and smoky embers, “What if he accidentally burns the entire plaza down?”

“Mm, don’t think so,” she mumbles, eyes fluttering, taking his thumb in her mouth—she watches his gaze burn, smoky and dark, the pad of his thumb pressing flat on her tongue.

“Insatiable thing,” he says, thumbing the wet, pliant flesh of her tongue, the ridges of teeth, the ticklish roof of her mouth, “My pretty wife.”

She releases his thumb with a pop. “My jerk husband.”

He pouts. “Why am I a jerk this time?”

She pulls him closer, and closer, and closer, until their heartbeats are in sync, until she can feel the fire inside him sear right through, until he can drown in her waters, until they can’t find the point where they begin and where they end. “You made me wait,” she says, “You have a royal airship at your disposal. You’re the Fire Lord. We barely see each other as it is—I barely see my husband—and he made me wait. Do you know how much I’ve—” she bites her lips in thought, drowning in him, those sunlight eyes, “—I missed you so much, Zu. I can’t believe you’re here. I thought I’ve been dreaming you the whole time—that the spirits drove me to madness.”

Zuko chuckles, pecks her lips, soft and chaste. “Now, you know how I feel every time I have to watch you fly away from Hari Bulkan, sweetheart,” he murmurs against her skin, “Feels like watching the spirits take my heart for their own safekeeping. Feels like having to breathe without my own lungs.”

“You’re overdramatic,” Katara says, teasingly pulling on his hair, “Every time I board the airship, my first instinct is to jump off it and see if I’ll land in your arms.”

Zuko laughs—warm warm warm, sunlight on skin, right through her bones, inside her lungs, a forest fire—and the tips of their noses brush. “Let’s try that next time. Might work.”

It’s been a few years since their ceremony in Ember Island—the violets, and the betrothal necklace sewn from crystal moonstones and blue satins and dried fire lilies, and the hand in hand in hand, the entire sky bathed in twilights, the lilac twining of moon-gleam and sunburst, oceans of purples in between their eyes, their heartbeats, their breaths; the moon and the sun and the ocean as their witnesses, the Fire Sage calmly at the peak of the cliff—and still, Katara hides her betrothal necklace underneath high collars. Still, Zuko entertains the marriage prospects from the trees of noble families, propping themselves in a painstaking, useless line—it’s futile, and it’ll lead nowhere, their customs and posturing and lash-batting, because Zuko is hers, all hers, completely, wholly, from body to chi, souls entangled and enmeshed. She’s in him, and he’s in her—they’re oceans made of each others’ embers and ashes and secrets—and even through the distance strung between them, even through the conscientous secrecy and the hidden smiles and the hands under the table, it burns, and grows, and stays, like a tether, like a weightless string too thick, too alive to cut through. Katara has denied herself this for too long—had spent years wasting time, and so had that idiot—and it’s a piece of her, a piece of them, that she wants to keep away from the world, just for a moment, just for half a breath.

(Damn the politics. Damn the rest. Damn it all—just for a while. Just for now. She’ll keep this—she’ll keep it hers, and his, and theirs, for as long as they can, for as long as they eclipse, again and again—just for a while--)

The truth will bleed out—as so it often does—but Katara wants it to scar first.

Just between them. Just for a while.

“Carry me to the baths?”

He easily lifts her weight off the table, and she whines when she feels his cock jostle inside her. “Fuck, Zu, how are you still—hard—”

He raises a smug brow. “You make me burn, Katara. Haven’t I told you?”

She flicks his shoulder, gleams of laughter twinkling in her eyes, cheeks aching with the width of her smile, the intensity of it. “Abidcate and become a poet and run away with me, Zu,” she whispers, “Let’s live in the swamp.”

Zuko looks at her—all the stars in his eyes, all the oceans by his palms—and something in Katara—something that’s been aching and burning up and molding to ice all at once—settles, breathes itself into a rhythm, waves reaching for shore. “Sounds like a plan, my love.”

He kisses the tip of her nose—and she sighs in his arms.

It would be a nice way to go, she thinks, to drown in sunlight.

[BONUS]

High Sage Usi

...my lord, my lady, what is—er, what is that—

Usi had descended from the sages’ sunlit rooms, incense still thick in the air, their morning offerings to Agni, after he had been summoned by the Fire Lord. He is brushing away the ash from his robes—until he is greeted by the sight of the Fire Lord, in all Agni’s glory, and—unsurprisingly—the Southern Water ambassador.

Usi tends to Agni’s will—as Agni tends to the Fire Lord’s fate.

If the Fire Lord cares to marry the Southern ambassador in a secret ceremony—Agni and Tui as the mere witnesses—then, Usi supposes, it is somewhat the will of Agni delivered.

This, however, Usi is not prepared to deal with.

This—being the Fire Lord, in Agni’s glory, and the Southern ambassador, by Tui’s blessing, and an oddly-wrapped bundle in her arms. Usi feels the slow trickle of dread climb down his spine. Sweat starts to gather. The blaze of Agni burns brighter, nearly blinding in naked daylight.

The Fire Lord meets his gaze, steel-hard and immovable. “High Sage Usi,” he greets, the perfunctory bow of his head, “Master Katara and I have something to discuss with you.”

The dread coils tighter in his stomach. Usi prays for his dear life.

Oh, Agni.

The Southern ambassador speaks, her eyes in resolution, endless blues—La’s beauty on skin. “High Sage Usi,” she briefly bows her head, too, and clears her throat—and Usi’s gaze keeps catching on the bundle, thick and heavy-looking, “We—”

The master waterbender shares a glance with the Fire Lord. A wordless conversation, it seems.

The Fire Lord clears his throat. “Uhm,” he starts—which is unusual. The Fire Lord is not one to lose his composure. “Well. Surprise? We have an—we have heirs, now. It was unexpected—but you may inform the council to stop pestering me about the matter of succession. We, uhm, succeeded. With the succession, that is," an awkward pause between every word from the Fire Lord, and Usi feels the half of his vision start to go bleary, “The, uh, ceremony, too. The crowning ceremony. How would that work? They were already moon-blessed and sea-kissed in the South Pole, by Tui and La—but, well, they’re sun princesses, too. At least, half of themselves, and—”

The mercy of silence. 

(Sudden, painless death, ultimately, would have been preferable, at this very moment.)

Usi feels the world freeze over. The coming of death. The screams of Agni.

The Southern ambassador puts a hand on the Fire Lord’s arm—and in that miniscule movement, she reveals the heirs; two, beautiful stars, one with dark hair, eyes touched by Agni, and the other with strands just as dark, eyes painted by Tui and La, a striking, piercing resemblance of their parents. Twin stars, sun-bathed and moon-burnt.

Usi starts feeling a little faint.

“Oh, Tui," he squeaks out, a brittle thing hanging limply in the air.