"It takes the mortal storms of a star to transform dust into something incandescent. Our dust, shambling and subtractive as it is, would be radiant, if we were close enough to a star…"
Late spring, and they're wrapped up in a fur blanket, Katara pointing out constellations that her mother used to name for her and Zuko mapping the freckles dusting Katara's cheeks. He knows she senses his eyes roaming across her face, even as he nods at her nervous monologue about bears and hunters and spirits in the sky.
She trails off when his hand winds around to hers. In the quiet, the turtleducks' chirping drifts up to the palace rooftop. She burrows into him as the wind picks up over the palace, and her very presence warms Zuko from the tops of his ears to the tips of his toes.
"All bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible."
Katara glows, like the green crystal caverns of Ba Sing Se. A subtle luminescence, one that clings to Zuko if he stays with her too long. He worries it'll show on his robes, that a member of his council will turn to him during a cabinet meeting and point out the light emanating from his chest where her head has laid for so many hours.
He closes his eyes the first time he kisses her, but his eyelids glow yellow as if he's staring into the sun with only a whisper between him and the brightness of its rays. When he peeks through his lids, the only light he sees comes from the moon hung on a velvet ribbon, nestled in the hollow of her throat above her collarbone. As the days progress, Katara's whole figure becomes wreathed in a soft white brilliance that Zuko can't tear his eyes away from.
"Are not the stars the most beautiful fireflakes? As transitory as snowflakes, only their transitoriness is protracted."
One glance from her cools the fire raging inside his mind. Another, and he heats up like a teapot strung over a campfire. This rapid heating and cooling, expanding and contracting, would crack weaker clay than Zuko, but he is born of fire and cooled by betrayal. He knows heat and cold, and relishes the dual sensations Katara's touch ignite in his veins.
Fire and water cannot coexist for long. One will snuff out the other, steam evaporating into the sky. But Zuko only sees the glimmer of her snowflakes in his firelight, the stars traveling thousands of years just to brush the earth's surface. He does not watch the sky long enough to see a star flicker, then fade from existence, leaving the earth not a whit colder for it.
"The sun can never spend the night."
He hesitates at first, but gives in when she trembles under his caresses. His power weakens as hers grows stronger, the sun sinking under the moon's pull. Nighttime painting over day. Melting into the pillows at his back, he pulls Katara onto him. Uncertain, this mixing of the sun and the moon.
Teeth collide in a hurry, mumbling apologies as they race down wide expanses of skin. Zuko knows he's running on stolen time, feels the same adrenaline coursing through his veins that spurred him on when he donned a blue dragon mask.
Katara is soft valleys and rounded hips, hungry for the taste of his lips. All fumbling hands and reverent kisses, he sinks into her embrace and forgets how to breathe. The sun and the moon explode in a burst of light and white and shuddering sensation. Zuko doesn't know how he'll ever spend a night apart from her again.
"You are a moth and the star is you."
Zuko's burning up, but he's always liked the sensation of warmth. Once, as a child, he wondered if firebenders could burn. His father answered this question with a fistful of rage. Zuko has felt flames lick his cheek, yet their heat is nothing compared to Katara's tongue. Licking his ear, teasing his neck… Zuko's on fire once more.
Deep inside, somewhere she can't reach, he senses the fragility of their position. He is to be married someday to a proper Fire Nation noblewoman; her people do not trust his yet. Deeper still clings the notion that he'd rather face a future of hurt than a present without her. Their time is limited— a second in the life of a star— but he'd be a fool to cut it shorter than it's already destined to be. He knows pain, and he can brace himself against the impending supernova. He'll savor the moments they steal together, bottling them up for a day when their little universe implodes.
"Perhaps being both would very soon melt your brain and leave you… hanging transparently in the giant dancing green waters of the world."
Moderating a peace accord, with the Avatar at his side, Zuko accidentally says Southern instead of Northern. A small slip of the tongue, but his mind's on Katara and he can't switch his focus. The Water Tribes are kind, and Zuko laughs it off, but his secret burns a hole through the roof of his mouth. It is hard to serve both a nation and the urges in his heart.
He shouldn't— can't help himself— but he grows used to her body warming his bed, her legs mingling with his, her incoherent murmurs just before she falls asleep. Tonight when Zuko arrives home late, Katara is curled up around a pillow, teetering towards the edge of his bed. Zuko pulls her from the edge and wraps her in his quilt, and dreams of treading water in an arctic deep blue sea.
"The stars will come out, but they will only illuminate themselves."
They meet in his chamber now, their rooftop now home to a flock of toucan puffins roosting for the spring. Furtive, candlelit brushes. Katara leaks light, and Zuko can't help but lap it all up as it spills into his mouth.
The sense of hurtling through space, of free falling into the abyss threatens to overwhelm him. His world, once governed by the sun, is now ruled by the moon sprawled out before him. No less demanding, but it pushes and pulls, taking and giving.
He can't see beyond her luster; there are worlds beyond their own, but he can't remember how they feel beneath his feet. All he knows now is icy roof tiles at midnight, silk sheets at sunrise, rotating around Katara in a dance that claims his total concentration.
"The spaces between stars are so wide that thousands of galaxies have to converge before the stars will crash."
And then it snaps. He snaps. The weight of the universe presses into his back. A kingdom to run, converging on him to hold it up. The sun cannot orbit the moon, no matter how he worships her. No matter how he'd burn for her, he can't let his kingdom go up in flames.
So he pulls away. He's spent so many hours bracing himself for the scorching heat as they combust that he's unprepared for what follows after: the cold. It's dark now, in this world without Katara.
When he had imagined the end, Zuko pictured a series of burns swelling in every place she's kissed him. He never imagined a numbness settling into his chest, his arms growing limp and his fingers unwieldy. After so much light and laughter, he never thought about the space it would leave. The vacuum.
He pictured his room red and smoky, not this black, empty space threatening to swallow him whole. He's stopped spinning, he's stopped laughing, and he imagines this is what stars must feel like before winking out of existence.
"(Oh to be like a galaxy, to mingle without wrecking. But then we would have to be composed of so much more sky.)"
The space between them grows; his world dims. But it keeps on turning, without his permission. Zuko is blinded by need, alone in a bleak world of dignitaries and courtesans, treaties and balls. Jewels glitter in the torchlight. Rich satins rustle, sweeping along the palace corridors. A glimpse of blue— and he finds only a dignitary from the Northern Water Tribe. The sound of a thousand empty words chitter in his ears.
All he aches for is the crush of her hips against his, her wit activating his smile, her water cooling off his soul. In the morning, he mourns the loss of the night. In the evening, he waits in the garden for the stars to appear. Only when the sun goes down does he feel close to her, but even then, he's acutely aware they're occupying different orbits. Their paths never have to cross again.
"I will look up at the stars and bleat, 'Stars… you are so serene! How can I be serene like you?' They will look at each other knowingly, for they have answered this question millions of times."
He turns to tea, even as he cringes at the irony of it. Iroh's nephew, an avid tea drinker. The palace chefs must snicker at that. But they bring him cup after cup, orange blossom and jasmine, ginseng and a black blend so bitter that it washes away the despair in his mouth.
Then he starts walking, only his thoughts for company, nowhere to be. Evenings, he prowls the palace gardens, eyes locked on the grass, the bushes, anything but the sky. The best nights are when it rains. The clouds cover the heavens then.
The staff whispers when the Fire Lord appears in the kitchen, robes drenched, hands clenched, the rest of the palace asleep. He's taken to brewing his own tea, though the head chef protests at the thought of his lordship serving himself. This way Zuko's hands keep busy, portioning out the leaves, heating the water. His thoughts, crying for peace, find a measure of solace in the work. Two scoops of chamomile, a squeeze of lemon, a pinch of sugar. Equal parts bitter and sweet.
In his cup, the tea leaves settle into constellations. A hunter's belt, a catgator's maw, the tears of two lovers.
"'Person, you will never be like a star. Things for you will always float away and spill and melt. The closest thing to serenity, for you, is laughing.'"
The moon is waning in the sky, the dawn fast approaching when he hears her laugh. A silhouette eclipses the moon, smells like salt and snow and overripe mangoes. Propped up on his elbows, he cranes his neck, sure this must be an illusion. The desperate dream of a sleep-deprived man. But then she is in his arms, kissing his neck— are those tears? Zuko wipes at her cheeks, and then at his own, and a chuckle bubbles from deep within his stomach to join hers.
"You're back," he whispers. She nods, and their mouths collide, and Zuko's at peace with the world once again.
"It is starry out and I am not in a conquering mood. Come and miss the boat with me. Come and play some guessing games."
The Earth Queen feasts below Zuko's feet, no doubt waiting for the company of the Fire Lord. The sun kisses the horizon as Katara leans to kiss him from their rooftop perch. "You should go," she says. "Can't keep her waiting much longer."
"We should go." Two letters have never tasted sweeter.
When the Fire Lord enters the feast with a waterbender on his arm (not just any waterbender, the youngest master of the century! Hakoda's daughter from the South!), the hall falls silent. Perhaps there was a better way to inform the council of his choice. But Zuko doesn't care, not really. He's got Katara by his side, and everything else— the whispers, the stares— it all fades away.
"We'll read aloud the illegible electric green script of the northern lights; we'll speculate about which star in the next ten thousand years is going to go supernova."
Happiness: a tricky word. Once, when his hair was pulled tightly back into the phoenix tail of a Crown Prince, Zuko believed that happiness was found in feeding turtleducks and the smell of his mother's fire lily perfume. When his head was shaved, Zuko replaced happiness with honor, found in doing his duty to still serve the Fire Nation in his banished state.
His hair grew in and so did his conscience, a gentle fluttering sensation brushing the back of his neck. He learned happiness hides in jokes among friends, friends that become family, freedom from tyrannical rule.
Once he earned the right to lead his nation, he pinned the golden crown into the base of his bun and grew happy at the sight of his colonies peaceably prospering in the Earth Kingdom. Seeing diplomats from all Four Nations united among their differences, watching his people rebuild their lives out of the war's ashes.
And then as he let his hair down at night, he found happiness in stargazing next to Katara.
"If we were close enough to such a star, to that deep and dangerous light, we would be ravished by the vision…
A low growl escapes Zuko's throat when he sees her. Tonight, she sparkles brighter than the firmament, white gold against the stars' silvery glow.
A few words from the minister, a hug from Hakoda, and Katara steps into his arms, never to leave. Their world needs a sun and a moon; together, they will bring light to their nations.
Zuko doesn't know what the stars say about their story; how it will end is a mystery to him. But when he gazes into the vast expanse stretching high above his palace, he imagines a future twinkling brighter than any galaxy.
… emerald shreds veined in gold…
A child in his arms, wrapped in a deep green blanket with amber eyes and dark tufts of hair.
… diamond bursts fraught with deep-red flashes…
A radiant Katara still standing by his side, silver streaked through her braid, gleaming in her ceremonial Fire Lady robes.
… aqua and violet and icy-green astral manifestations…
A thousand sleepy mornings and a thousand more sleepless nights. Starry rooftops, tea for three, and the sound of laughter swirling into infinity.
… splintery blinking harbor of light, dust as it can be."
The quotes in italics are excerpts from Amy Leach's essays, Things That Are.