HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYYY TO MY WONDERFUL FRIEND GINA JADE. I LOVE HER SO MUCH. HAVE AN AMAZING DAY, DARLING. :D
So here's the sequel to "A Thousand Words And Then Some," as so many of you asked for. If you haven't read the first part, I suggest reading it. You'll miss out on parallelism and continuity and some other stuff otherwise.
I own nothing! Zuko, Katara, Iroh, Hakoda, Sokka, Suki, Yue, Kya, the Firebending Salute, and anything else recognizable belong to Mike/Bryan/Nickelodeon/Viacom. The second drawing is inspired by YoukaiYumi's drawing titled Zutara: With You... on deviantART. I don't own that either. Ummm...Kai La is mine, though.
Enjoy!
"Dear Agni, dear Agni, dear Agni," the servant girl chanted anxiously, pacing mechanically back and forth under the stone arch that led out to the gardens. She clutched a woven basket in her hands so tightly that her delicate knuckles were milk-white. Right before Princess Katara had left, she had entrusted the maid with a set of simple directions. Now, they seemed more daunting than anything else.
Frankly, she was distracting.
Fire Lord Zuko sat beneath a willow tree in his mother's garden, trying to clear his mind by meditating. That servant girl's chanting and mindless marching, however, were making that incredibly difficult. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the pond sipping quietly at the trailing willow branches and on the restless, swirling energy inside him.
"Come on, you can do this," Kai La encouraged herself. She worried the handle of the basket with thin fingers. Zuko watched her for a minute with half-closed eyes before giving up on his meditation altogether.
"What do you want?" he called in a monotone.
The maid froze mid-step and sheepishly ducked her head. "Good afternoon, my Lord," she said as she went to stand before him. He nodded curtly, and she took his unspoken allowance to continue. Awkwardly, she heldout the basket for him to take. "Um, this is from Princess Katara, my Lord. She told me to give it to you once she left."
Zuko eyed her warily and took the basket from the palace maid, unwrapping the blanket tucked inside. Despite himself, he blushed when he unearthed the basket's contents.
It was his handmade sketchbook from the treacherous days at sea and the long, boring nights spent in the tiny apartment above the Jasmine Dragon. When he couldn't bend, he drew. Some of the pictures were a little more recent, sketched in the tense days preceding Sozin's Comet. The smooth lines and curves of the charcoal usually melded together to capture Katara's fluid beauty.
There was an ostentatious bulge between the last pages of the book. Carefully, the young Fire Lord opened the booklet, and the waterbender's precious necklace slid from the paper to his lap. Kai La looked on as he picked up the blue choker, his amber eyes wide. He removed a scrap of paper that had been inserted between the pages and looked from his drawing of Katara in a simple bending form to the scrap.
On his drawing, in his careful freehand, Our children will be beautiful.
In her loopy print, Yes, they will.
He stared for a long time at both sets of writing before a shaky feminine voice tugged him back to reality. "My Lord? Is—is everything alright?" Zuko looked up, trying to hide the moronic smile that threatened to break across his face. In the end, though, his stoicism was betrayed, and he grinned anyway.
Before, the servant girl had found it in intimidating to look the Fire Lord straight in the eye because of his scar, but now there was a light to those eyes and a flush to his cheeks that she had never seen. It made him look like a normal teenaged boy. She caught a glance of the crisp drawings and smiled back at him.
"You love the Water Princess very much," she observed.
His bright eyes smoldered. The maid was about to apologize for being so tactless when he spoke. "Yes," he said solidly, his voice low and raw. "I do." He then excused himself and headed to his private chambers, searching for a blank sheet of parchment and the velvet sack in which he kept his charcoal sticks.
After second guessing himself at least a dozen times and starting over from scratch twice, he rolled his latest addition to his sketch-and-caption compilation and tied it up for a messenger hawk.
...
"Where are we going, my Lord?" Kai La questioned nervously as she trailed behind the Lord and a small group of men—she recognized a few of the servants as well as General Iroh—across the docks. People bustled around and shouted orders; Zuko could feel a headache coming on from the frantic rush, but once he looked out to sea from the pier, he didn't feel so bad.
"The South Pole," Zuko answered eventually.
...
He didn't really know why he had brought the maid with. After they had departed, he had realized that a little maid wouldn't be of much help on the ship. She proved him wrong later on, though. When Uncle started to play his tsungi horn after the evening meal, Kai La was more than happy to sing and dance with the crew. Since a pretty girl was a lot more fun to dance with than the often-moody Fire Lord, Zuko wasn't exactly missed during the festivities. That in itself made Zuko thankful that he had brought the girl along.
As it turned out, Kai La provided a wonderful distraction for the ship all day. She would play pai sho with Iroh or mahjongg with the sailors, and she'd recite old legends and poems to anyone who would listen. With the ship's attention elsewhere, Zuko was able to go about his business uninterrupted.
On the third evening out at sea, after being cooped up in his cabin for nearly sixty consecutive hours, Zuko rejoined reality. He went to Iroh first, who beamed brightly and chuckled heartily. Next, he went to the petite servant girl, whom he found sitting on the starboard deck, her feet dangling against the hull and her eyes fixated on the waves beneath her.
"It's the middle of the Moon Keeping festival," he said as he approached. She immediately scrambled to her feet and bowed to him. "I'm going to ask her to be my Lady." He held out a braided ribbon on which a smooth, pearly stone carved with the Water Tribe insignia and the Fire Nation symbol for "eternal" hung. Afraid to touch it, the girl stared at the necklace in awe.
"Wow," she breathed.
"Do you think she'll like it?"
Kai La tried very hard not to gawk at him. "Absolutely, my Lord. It's perfect for your Lady."
Satisfied, Zuko nodded his thanks, wrapped the necklace around his wrist, and headed up to the ship's bow where he stripped himself of his shirt. Shifting into the first position of the Dancing Dragon, Zuko closed his eyes and felt some of his power wane as the sun sank below the glassy horizon.
They would arrive at the South Pole the next day in late afternoon. That gave him less than twenty-four hours until he would hopefully have his queen. He repeated the stances again and again, bending without flames in synchronicity with the constant rocking of the ship. Kai La retreated to the servants' quarters as the air got progressively colder, and Iroh came out once to tell Zuko that he was going to sleep and that the young man should do the same.
Instead, Zuko gracefully transitioned from one pose to the next and thought about how Katara wouldn't be sleeping either. After all, it was only one night away from the full moon, and the pull of its energy would leave her restless.
He didn't remember if he slept at all that night, but when he came to his senses, it was dawn. The sailors and servants rose along with him, bringing him plates of breads, fruits, and salty meats. Iroh, who would have stayed asleep if not for the smell of freshly cooked bacon, brought him a cup of tea and watched the sunrise with his nephew.
Hours later, as icebergs began floating past the ship, Zuko's mind began conjuring up every worst case scenario for his proposal. Maybe he'd drop the necklace into the ocean, or he'd accidentally insult her, or he would offend the Tribe by not asking Hakoda's permission first, or they wouldn't approve of him because he was Fire Nation and try to kill him…
"Prince Zuko," Iroh sighed, using the lower title by means of habit. "Relax, and let your heart speak to her rather than your mind, and her heart will listen. You belong to your Nation, and she to her Tribe. If loyalties withstand, both sides will learn to accommodate love."
Zuko paused. "Thank you, Uncle."
"You are very welcome. Now, Nephew, you should change clothes. We will arrive shortly. We don't want your lady friend to think you crude." With that, Iroh winked, and Zuko went to take his advice. As he shrugged into fresh clothes and pulled the traditional armor over his tunic, he could hear the crew bringing in sails and shouting orders.
The Fire Lord looked out of one of the portholes in his cabin to see the enormous mass of ice that was the South Pole. He could see the shape of an ice castle, probably constructed by Katara, along with a complex of tents. Sailing closer, Zuko saw the fancy lanterns from the Northern Water Tribe strung on ropes tied to slender ice poles. Katara had been telling him about them when she was in the Fire Nation; she said that there were five kinds of lanterns with different markings, one type each for the moon, the ocean, life, prosperity, and luck.
Anchors were tossed overboard and ramps slid out from the sides of the ship. It was dead silent as Zuko descended the ramp and stepped on the South Pole for the first time in almost a year. He did his best to not look uncomfortable or awkward, but an entire tribe of people staring and waiting did not quell his unease.
"Well, if it isn't Fire Lord Zuko," a gruff voice came, and it took Zuko a second to realize who it was. Hakoda gently pushed to the front of the conglomeration, grinning.
"Chief Hakoda, sir," Zuko responded, watching in surprise as the Chief gave him the Firebending Salute. Zuko returned the gesture and held out his hand for the Water Tribe handshake. The heavy tension among the Tribe immediately lifted as Hakoda grasped the other man's forearm.
"Nice to see you again, son."
"Same to you, Chief Ha-"
"Zuko! How's it going, jerkbender?" Sokka exclaimed as he clapped his friend on the shoulder. The crowd that had gathered for the ship's arrival dissipated as the two exchanged the "hey, how are you, how's your family" conversation.
"Hey, um…where's Katara?" Zuko asked when the small talk was over.
"She's with Suki, getting ready for tonight. She's doing something special to honor Yue this year. Why?"
"I—Actually, I need to talk to your father."
...
Once the moon hung high in the black velvet sky, Katara emerged from her tent and drifted to the icy shore. The train of her cerulean dress trailed far behind her, and the fur-lined bell sleeves swayed elegantly as she walked. She had markings on her face: two identical flourishes sprouting from the inside corners of her eyes and swirling over her cheekbones, an eight-pointed star on her chin, and a crescent moon on her forehead.
Zuko did his best to blend into the Tribe, most of whom were snacking on ocean kumquats on a stick or chatting with neighbors. He had traded his Fire Nation armor for a borrowed parka, and he was determined to remain inconspicuous until after her tribute to her Moon Sister.
Drums started pounding slowly, and she extended her arms out, rolling her shoulders and letting the movement flow down to her fingers until it looked like she was bobbing gently underwater. There was a harsh beat of the drum, and with it, the waterbender shoved down on open air then lifted her hands, great curved sheets of ice rising up out of the ocean as she controlled her element.
Katara bent water and ice, snow and fog to her liking. She moved with a sinuous grace than only a bender could possess, and every move was accompanied by the sturdy rhythm of the drums. When she finished, Katara stood in the center of a crystalline moonflower, letting the remnants of her manmade snow flurry drift around her and her tribe.
Sokka started the round of applause for his sister, and shouts and whistles soon followed from the crowd. She curtseyed to the Tribe and then bowed to the moon, whispering a short prayer to Yue's spirit.
Hakoda stepped forward then and hugged his little girl. "Before you go," he said, addressing both the Tribe and his daughter, "there's a little surprise for our Master." He held out an envelope for her to take.
"A surprise, huh?" Katara chuckled. She broke the seal with a grin and slid the folded paper out, playfully ignoring the shouts for her to hurry up and open it. They were a great diversion, Zuko thought, using her preoccupation to his advantage and moving closer to her.
She fully unfolded the paper, a slight flush tinting her cheeks as she saw his latest sketch. It was just the two of them, sitting together after what she assumed was a sparring session. They were so close—she was cuddled into his side, and he had one hand splayed gently across her mostly-bare back.
"What does it say?" someone yelled.
"It says…oh my god," she breathed, one hand coming up to cover her gaping mouth as she processed the carefully handwritten words. "It says," she tried again, but she couldn't keep her voice steady enough to read it out loud.
"It says, 'Would you do me the greatest honor of becoming my wife?'"
Her head snapped up and her vision swam as she watched Zuko awkwardly kneel down, fish out a necklace from one of the parka's pockets, and ask her again. "Katara, daughter of Hakoda and Kya of the Southern Water Tribe, I want to love you every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?"
Words eluded her as she threw her arms around him, burying her nose into the fur of the jacket. She kissed him then, bringing her cold hands up to touch his warm face. "Of course I will," she whispered against his cheek. As Zuko brushed back her hair and clasped the ivory pendant around her neck, the entire South Pole shook with wild cheers; Katara smiled up at the moon as tears glided down her face.
...
In the glorious months that followed, Katara regularly visited the royal seamstress with her newly-appointed personal assistant, Kai La, to design her wedding dress. The design mimicked Lady Ursa's gown from years back, keeping the same silhouette and high collar. It would be sewn with bolts of golden fabric compared Lady Ursa's red, and the hem would have tiny celestial symbols embroidered in crimson silk thread.
It was the same dress that Zuko had drawn her in, in the illustration that he had sent by messenger hawk. Katara gazed at the picture, sketched in charcoal with his calligraphy gracing the bottom of the now-crinkled page, and fondly touched her betorthal necklace.
She would be an amazing Fire Lady.
~Fin~
I've missed writing Zutara so much. But I'm back and I'm pumped for Zutara Week 2011!
I SUCK AT GETTING THINGS OUT ON TIME. Started July 2010. Wanted to have it done before school started in August. Then wanted it to be done for my sixteenth birthday in November. Then wanted it to be done by Christmas. Then wanted it to be done before the end of school in May. It is currently July 2011. Yeah.
Few little notes.
A) Yeah, I know that Katara technically left everything on her bed for Zuko to find. It just didn't work well and it's my story, so I changed it.
B) I suck at writing Iroh. Blahhh.
C) Aang and Toph are not in this because [I didn't want to write them] Toph didn't want to go to the Pole because she can't "see" on the ice and Aang stayed behind with her. XP
Review, please?
Tchao, Zutarians.
Erika
xoxo