preg!tara
A/N- Fic from my Zutara Blog - November 21, 2016. Requested by anonymous.
He was mad. He had to be. She'd told him in a note. A damn note! Just left it on his bed as she dressed to leave. She'd left him sleeping and smiling and thinking she'd be there when he woke. But she couldn't be.
She couldn't face him. Sure, they'd been best friends for years and been sleeping together almost a year to the day, but he was the Fire Lord. A ruler of a nation. A king with a castle. She was nothing. No, not nothing. Just dirt. Something he shouldn't even bother to wipe off his shoes. But for some reason he did. He'd treated her like an equal. He asked her opinions. He listened when she spoke. He'd let her —asked her— into his bed. Gave her the option to say no. And she hadn't.
She should have.
She glared at her reflection in the mirror. Why did he ever want her? She wasn't good enough for him. She'd never be. Especially not now. Especially not in nine months when she was swollen to the size of a house.
She already loved this small being inside her. This child. His child. Their child. And she would do anything to protect it. Even if it meant breaking her own heart.
Would he believe that it was his? She'd went to him so willingly. Crawled between his sheets like they were her own. Surely he must think there were others. But there weren't. There was only him. That's all there'd ever been. All there'd ever be.
Her fingers shook, pulling at the tie on her robe, revealing bare skin. She touched the lower part of her belly, knowing it wouldn't be flat for long. She shivered, not from cold, but from thought. Knowing below her fingers life was growing. Part of him lay within her. A sort of parting gift she had taken without permission.
His hand slid across the bed, searching with his eyes closed, but the only thing that met his touch was scold blankets.
"Katara?" he shot up, his sheets falling to his waist as he did so. He was alone in a sea of red silk. His only companion a folded piece of parchment sitting on the pillow where her head should have been. He took it carefully in his hands, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before opening it.
Five words written in small, perfect handwriting were all that met his gaze. Five words that changed his life and made his stomach drop. He would never forget those words. Not even as he crumpled the paper into his fist and burned it.
I'm pregnant and I'm leaving.
That was all she'd left him. No goodbye. No warning not to follow her. Nothing. She didn't even have the decency to tell him in person. Did she think he'd be mad? Did she think he would have thrown her out? That he'd banish her from the bed they'd shared so many times?
How long had she known? She must have known when she slipped through his door last night. Had she meant to tell him? Did she try and he just hadn't heard? This didn't matter, of course, because he knew now. He just hoped she wasn't gone yet. He had to see her.
"Kat, can I come in?" The door opened slightly when he knocked on it. The room was supposed to be the palace's guest suite, though in the past years Katara had been the only one to use it, so he had come to regard it as hers.
She was still staring at her reflection in the mirror, both hands pressed to her stomach, when he stepped in the room. "Love?" he spoke using his softest voice and calling her her favorite names.
"Go away, Zuko." She pulled the robe closed, shielding her naked body from his was his robe, one of his older ones, he'd given it to her when he noticed how she seemed to favor it. It was a little worn, but she loved it; it was soft against her skin and it smelled like him. It warmed her now to have this since she would no longer have him.
"Zuko, please. Don't… Don't make this any harder on me. I want—I have to go."
"Why? Why does it have to be hard? Doesn't it matter what I think? What I want?"
"No," her voice trembled and she could only form the one word. "No."
"Kat, you're not being fair."
"Zuko, I can't. I— You don't need this, you already have so much to worry about. I can handle this."
"You don't know what I need, Katara!" He hadn't come for a fight, but if that's what it took, he'd give her one.
But that's not what she wanted. Her arms wrapped around herself and she looked at the floor, "You don't need this, I know that."
"Maybe I don't need it, but I want it, Kat. I want you. I want this. Stay with me. Please." He closed the distance between them, placing a hand on her waist and the other on her cheek.
She pressed into his touches with a sigh, "Zuko…"
His hand left her hip to slip between the gold trim of her robe. Her skin quivered beneath his fingertips and she brought her own hand to his, pressing their fingers to her.
"I hope he has your smile," she whispered, kissing the wrist of the hand that still held her face.
He tugged at the loose binding that held the robe together and dropped to his knees, "I hope she has your eyes." He kissed her tan stomach imagining how it would change in the coming weeks. Imagining her glowing and full with his child. Their child.
"Marry me," he blurted, kissing her skin again. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision, he had intended to ask her in a few days over dinner and candlelight, but now felt like the time.
"What?" Her head shot up and he glared at him.
"You love me, right?"
"Well, yeah, but… You're just asking because I'm pregnant… that's not a solution. That's not a good reason, Zuko."
"I know that, Katara. But I'm asking because I love you. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. And I want to wake up next to you every morning. I love you, Kat. Marry me."
She closed her eyes against the brush of his lips, "Okay."
He kissed her stomach again, a smile distorting the press of his mouth against her skin. She laughed a bit, pulling away from him when his tongue drug up over her navel and to her sternum. "Zuko! I'll marry you, but mmmm…" she lost her train of thought as he nipped at her breasts and her fingers laced into his hair.