disclaimer: it's all bryke's, except what's not.

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i. fire lady.

s3, ember island.

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"Chop these smaller, please," Katara says, reaching over to the spot next to her and taking one of the squares of stew vegetables that Zuko has cut, sliding it under her own knife and then halving it before sliding it back to him. "They'll cook more quickly that way and I'm running late for dinner—waterbending practice with Aang took longer than usual and everyone's going to be hungry soon."

The kitchen in the Fire Lord's house on Ember Island is well outfitted and now that Katara has cleaned the dust off of everything, she has a better set of pots and pans than she's ever had access to in her life. If she has to cook for crowds, she'd rather have good equipment to do so.

And ever since they've come to Ember Island, Zuko has been helping her with her chores. Not all of them, of course, but when he has spare time, he'll come and spend time with her, helping with whatever task she's working on. More often than not, that's cooking.

He starts fires for her, helps her chop vegetables and fruit and gut fish for their meals. He's even started brewing tea for her in the mornings, asking for her feedback because he says he wants to improve his skills, and even though she has little experience with tea in her homeland, she knows what she likes and doesn't like and she tells him that.

She reminds him, too, that his uncle will be glad to help him learn more, but he always averts his eyes and changes the subject when she brings that up. So she makes sure to bring it up often, because she thinks he needs to hear it.

This afternoon, they are working on a quick vegetable stew—one meal for everyone. Sokka will survive without meat and he can eat jerky with the stew if he's desperate, Katara reasons. But he probably will be desperate, which is why she's already set out some strips of jerky to take out with the bowls when they serve dinner. Katara plans to make enough stew to last through dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. Everyone else is outside and the kitchen is relatively quiet, the sounds of their shouts in the courtyard sometimes slipping in on the wind through the open window.

Zuko moves his pile of chopped vegetables back to the starting side and begins again without comment. Katara marvels silently at the difference between this boy and the one she fought at the North Pole. "Yeah, I noticed you guys were out there for a long time today."

"You noticed?" Katara quirks an eyebrow and looks at him briefly before returning to her own chopping. On the other side of the kitchen, a kettle bubbles with the beginnings of a stew.

"You watch Aang when Toph and I train him. I watch him when you and Toph train him. We're his teachers, so we need to know his strengths and weaknesses if he's going to be ready to face my father at the comet." The defensiveness falls out of his tone when he says, "And I mean, you're usually back inside by mid-afternoon for tea. You weren't today." He pushes a new pile of smaller vegetables toward her.

"Right," Katara says. That makes sense. Zuko takes Aang's training more seriously than the rest of them do most of the time, and it makes Katara uneasy to think that that might because of his personal experience with Ozai. The thought of Aang fighting when he's so unprepared makes her nervous, but the butterflies of nerves that flutter in her stomach when she thinks about the upcoming confrontation calm a little when she remembers Zuko's attention to Aang's training. Aang's teachers' devotion to his learning can't make him master all forms of bending, but it's a start.

"Thank you for helping me," she adds, pushing her own vegetables into the large pile of chunks they're amassing. "It's nice to have someone help out around here."

"Yeah, of course," Zuko says. "I like—" He coughs. "It's nice to spend time with you. You know, now that you're not actively trying to kill me."

When Katara looks up at him, Zuko is smiling, head tilted in challenge. It dawns on her that he's teasing, and she likes this better than when he tries to retell his uncle's jokes about tea.

Before she can reply, Sokka shouts for her. "Hey, Katara!" When he walks in and sees that Zuko's there, too, he high-fives Zuko and then says, "Suki and I are going somewhere that's not here for a while. You guys make sure Toph doesn't kill Aang, okay? They're practicing earthbending and Toph does not sound happy."

"I'll make sure they survive," Katara replies, waving him off. "You kids have fun!" She stretches her smile falsely large, knife poised in the air like a distorted thumbs-up, and Sokka makes a face at her. He reaches out and places his hand over hers, moving the knife back to the vegetables.

"Easy there, sis."

Then he's gone, and she sees both him and Suki pass the doorway before their footsteps fade away.

Katara resumes her task, but her mood is slightly soured. She's happy for Sokka and Suki, but for all that her world has grown so much during this year of traveling, it also means that her family is splintering off even further and in more directions.

"I don't know if Sokka will come back to the South Pole," is what she says when she speaks again.

Zuko snorts and Katara pauses in her chopping to glare at him. "What?"

"He might not," Zuko agrees, "but he's only, what, fifteen? I mean, I hope it works out for them, but—a lot can change with time."

Katara frowns and turns back to her chopping. "You're only, like, sixteen," she retorts. "So it's not like you know that much more than he does. And besides, my parents got married when they were sixteen," she says, jutting out her chin like the fact is a challenge. "They had a good marriage."

Out of her peripheral vision, she can see Zuko pause for a moment in his work. It's been only a few weeks since they traveled to Whale Tail Island together and everything from that trip still sits fresh in their memories. "I'm glad you have those memories," he says finally. "I think my mom was eighteen when she married my father. They didn't have what your parents did."

"No," Katara acknowledges, remembering greenish, glowing light and trying to reconcile that information with the boy she knows better, now. "I guess they didn't." Their knives nick at the surface of the wood, slicing through vegetable fiber. "I'm sorry."

It seems inadequate, so she tries to change the subject. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

Katara shrugs, but even as she speaks, the questions that came into her head somehow feel important to know, now that she's asking them. "Do you have a girlfriend back home? Or someone who's promised to you politically?"

"Um…no." Zuko shoves the last pile of produce over to Katara decisively and wipes his hands on his shirt. "I was arranged to be married to a high-ranking nobleman's daughter, years ago, but that contract ended when I was banished and taken out of line for the throne. I never even met her. And I, uh, I had a girlfriend in the Fire Nation, but…we broke up. Recently. So, nope. No one for me."

"Oh." Katara nods. "I see." She resists the urge to ply him with questions about his ex-girlfriend and instead piles up the vegetables in her palms and then into a bowl, which she then takes over to the bubbling pot. When she drops them in, she steps back out of habit to avoid any splashes of hot broth, then sets down the bowl and picks up a spoon to stir it. As the spoon glides through the simmering stew, a question occurs to her. "What would happen if Azula became Fire Lord?"

"Mass destruction," Zuko says without hesitation. He walks a few steps toward Katara, again a comfortable presence by her side. "She's just like my father."

The pain in his voice is palpable and Katara finds herself wanting to reach out to him and comfort him. Instead, she keeps stirring, waiting for the stew to bubble despite her ministrations. Food is its own comfort.

"No, I meant—" she looks up at the bitter expression on his face and offers him a small smile. "I meant, would she have to marry? What would happen if she doesn't have any children? She doesn't exactly seem like the mothering type. And what would her consort's title be? I've heard…" She hesitates for a moment, then ploughs ahead. "Toph called your mother the Fire Lady once. What if the Fire Lord is a woman and the consort a man? How does the title change?"

Zuko blinks at her, and Katara's answering smile is bigger this time. "We have chiefs in the Southern Water Tribe," she says. "The spouses don't get titles. I thought they might in the Fire Nation, though, so I was curious."

"Oh." Zuko takes a moment to consider. "The last time the Fire Lord was a woman was 400 years ago. I guess I should have paid better attention to my tutors, because I don't even remember her name. And, uh, my mother was never actually the Fire Lady because she disappeared before my father became Fire Lord, so technically she was only the Fire Princess when she…left. She's—she's the Fire Lady now, but she's never been here while she held the title. You can tell that to Toph the next time you need something to hold over her head."

Zuko's smile is tentative, blooming slowly over his face, even though his eyes still look sad under his shaggy hair, and something unfurls in answer in Katara's chest, warm and welcome. "I'll do that," she says.

She glances out the window at the sunshine, squints as she measures the distance it's traveled toward the horizon. "Dinner should be ready in time," she says. "Thanks for your help."

"You're welcome," Zuko says, ducking his head with the words, an almost-shy gesture Katara doesn't recognize from the prince who hunted them across the world. "Everyone needs to eat, right?"

"Yeah," Katara says. After a moment of consideration, she sets her spoon aside and reaches for Zuko's hand. When she touches him, Zuko stiffens in surprise, but then his fingers are curling around hers, still slightly sticky from their kitchen work. "Come on, let's go check on Toph and Aang. Dinner's just about ready."