A teenager can also be a father.
Zuko was one.
His palms, heavy, dense, with weight and responsibility—
Zuko had always been a father—
The lover to a girl, no longer existent, with whom he had sired a child whom he'd never had the chance to meet.
Zuko knew what it was to be a father—
He had been a father to an unborn child, a father to the one Katara had only carried for three months—a secret hidden from everyone but him, her, and the all-knowing eyes of Toph.
Hidden.
A teenager can also be a father.
Zuko was a father.
He was a father to Aang, a brother to Sokka.
He had tried to be one—for Azula—but had inevitably failed.
Once he found that Katara had not bled for more than a month,
Zuko had felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
The weight of realization. That although the task was daunting, he was fearless. He knew how to be a father.
He didn't shirk underneath the duty. He didn't deny it; he didn't freak out.
He was 17. He was 17 and Katara was fourteen. He—he could make a father.
It was in his hands.
Three months at Ember Island, while training Aang, he had been like a father.
For the unborn child laying unspoken beneath her cloths,
For the young avatar breaching puberty and not knowing how to accommodate new changes within himself.
To both, he had been a father.
For three months, he had been a father.
To the Duke, he had been a father.
To Sokka, an older brother, a mentor, a comrade in arms.
To Katara, he had been a mother, a lover, the one who cared for the slowly rising lump on her stomach.
A teenager could be a father, Zuko thought. He had been.. a father.
It had been written upon on the lines on-top his palms.
The heavy weight, which he had always carried, learned to embrace.
The day he had taken Aang out shopping—outfitted him in a proper pair of pants once he realized that Aang instrinsically lacked them for his given age. That day, Zuko explained to Aang what it meant to be a man and be a boy. What the extra cloth and bagginess on Aang's new clothing meant. What it symbolized and why it was necessary. All the unspoken rules that came with being an honorable man.
He, Zuko—was a man. He realized this the moment he set on shore and met the group which he would—must groom to fight his father.
He was the oldest to all of them.
So, honestly, it was not so hard to realize that he was completely capable of being a father.
He did not get scared when Katara told him, her eyes watering.
He locked his eyes with hers after his gaze flickered a bit in realization, and then nodded determinedly, never moving his gaze. His mouth had quirked up a little bit in a smile.
He was seventeen. If he was old enough to have sex with her, he was old enough to be a father. He knew it so.
He knew how to be a father.
But he was a father who had never seen the true child he had sired.
He was a father whose unborn child had perished along with his lover, his lover's hope, and his lover's brother—his own brother.
They had perished. Before his eyes.
Zuko was a father who had outlived his sons, his daughters, his younger brother.
So when he sat down on the gold silk of his large, enormous bed in the palace of his newly reclaimed throne, he pushed his palms to his eyes and tears fell from his eyes in a flood.
In the room beside his, sat a young girl of only 12 years on top of a silken mattress silently. Though she was normally loud, outspoken, exuberant and crass, now she looked her age and perhaps even younger. She stared blankly ahead at the wall ahead of them.
Although the walls were thick, she could still hear his sobs and shudders wracking through him in the room beside hers.
Hers was outfitted in green and cream fit enough for a princess. But it didn't matter, because she couldn't see it. His was the fire lord's.
It was the night after the great battle and they were the only two left.
Toph sat silently and listened to him sob across the wall.