The fires had been put out over an hour ago. Embers no longer hung on the lazy breeze that wound its way through the city. The battle had been intense, grueling even, but short. The once opulent Royal Caldera City was now as scarred as its soon-to-be firelord. Zuko. Katara hadn't expected Azula to be so swift, had thought she might be able to help or at least move to a piece of cover that wasn't as likely to be hit with fallout from the sibling's duel. She hadn't expected Zuko to goad his sister into summoning that most wretched form of firebending, and if even if she had, she wouldn't have expected Azula to fall for it.
Katara paused and put a hand out to steady herself, leaning on the charred frame of what was once a door. When she took her hand away, pieces of the wood crumbled into ash and slowly drifted to the ground. Her hand left a dark streak to mingle with the others that marred her tunic. She didn't notice. She'd been able to distract herself from the churning waves of adrenaline and worry she felt while there was a task at hand, but now that it was steam and not smoke that rose from the gutted buildings in the square, now that all of their wounds had been stabilized..
Her eyes remained fixed on the farthest point of the horizon. The comet had dipped below the horizon hours earlier, taking with it the angry red cast it had imposed on the world. She'd seen light in the distance, and felt her heart in her throat as it split the sky in red and blue. She didn't know how but she knew that was it. The final blow was being struck, and it was unlike anything she or Zuko had ever seen in the waking world. Azula had cackled and railed against her bonds once more as the murderous red overtook all but a barely visible point of blue in the sky. Katara felt herself falling, or rather, she felt as though the world was falling and she remained rooted to it as surely as when General Fong had entombed her in rock those many months ago. Her throat closed, her breath caught, and as the piercing cackles of the monster chained in the square behind her reverberated through the carnage, Katara of the Southern Water Tribe knew true terror.
And then, when it seemed that all hope had been snuffed out of the world for good, the blue she knew was Aang, her Aang, flared back with a vengeance. It ended suddenly as it began, and Azula had sank into a deep catatonia. There were no words, but as the blue light faded into obscurity both Zuko and Katara realized they had been holding their breath.
Since then, the surety of the moment had passed. Ozai was dead or defeated, of that she was sure, but at what cost? The blue had been eerily similar to the blue she'd seen as Aang's spirit during the siege of the north- if he couldn't kill Ozai, would he have struck a deal? His life to cancel out the self proclaimed phoenix king? It was the kind of bargain Aang would make. Had her brother and the others gotten involved, and if so, what could come of that? These and countless other scenarios nagged at her as she stared into the sky, waiting. Years later, she couldn't tell you if it was a second, an hour, or a day that passed.
She saw the airship first. Zuko awoke and bristled on the ground, unable to rise and unsure if the ship was friend or foe. Even Azula lifted her head at the sight, a faint glimmer of what might have been hope in her eyes as the fire nation symbol came into view. Katara stood her ground.
Minutes passed like square wheeled carts rolling up an unpaved hill, fraught with doubt, jarring and painfully slow. When finally a trick of the light caught her eye, Katara distinguished the silhouette of a glider baring down faster than falcons fly towards them. It was almost as though the earth itself began to buck and kick all over again, but Katara welcomed it this time. "Aang!" she breathed. Zuko's eyes snapped into sharp focus through the haze of pain and exhaustion, and a smile spread on his lips. Azula sank back into the grate, once more indistinguishable from the ruined city in character and composure.
Aang landed several paces away from them in a gust that set damp ash into the air like snow, his face a mix of emotions. There was a half second pause before his glider dropped, wings unfurled, from his hand and he rushed forward only to collide with Katara at what had been the halfway point between them.
They had both played this moment out in their heads many times before in separate hopes and daydreams. Katara had done so with increasing frequency after Aang's disappearance on Ember Island, and in those dreams she had bargained with the spirits for his life, had imagined it filled with long and tearful monologues where she explained herself, where they traded speeches and near-poetic accounts of what exactly they each were feeling. But all of those were dreams. When the moment came, it was all they could do to hold on to each other like drowning men hold to rafts in a near-crushing embrace. Aang felt Katara's frame quietly shaking in his arms, and knew that he was crying too. This moment was what they had fought for. Every day spent traveling, every bruise, all of the heartache and toil was worth it because it had led them to that moment.
The ragged churning of the zeppelin's engines was getting closer. Aang pulled back just enough to meet Katara's eyes. The ragged shreds of his clothing fluttered briefly in the breeze as the airship banked overhead before clumsily turning in search of a good landing area. He looked away for a moment as time started to catch up with him and he weighed his current situation with how things had been after that wretched play. He was about to turn his eyes up, worry, confusion and maybe hope on his lips when he felt Katara's fingers on his jawline, pulling his lips to hers. Aang once again lost his grip on time.
As the airship landed several blocks away in the courtyard of what was once a fancy garden estate, Zuko shifted his weight against the rubble he lay against and smiled as he looked away from the Avatar and the waterbender. There would be bumps in the road, scars that begged to tell stories and storms to weather...but peace and love had survived the night. It may only be a spark, but he could work with that. After all, he was the firelord now. Sokka's voice drifted around the corner, and Aang and Katara turned helped Zuko to his feet. There was a celebration in order..just as soon as his side stopped throbbing.