Disclaimer: It's all Bryke's, except what's not.
A/N: For Dyce, who asked for some post-TSR fluff.
The morning light is still grey with half-twilight when Katara pushes open the door of her room. In her travels, she has grown used to a world where the sun rises at a somewhat consistent hour every morning, and the seasons' light shifts more subtly now that she's away from the world's southern pole, making it more difficult to keep track of time. She knows they've been traveling for almost a year now, but it seems like less than that, when days blur together, grouped by event or location.
Before she and Sokka found Aang, her world was orderly and small, an ever-rotating series of lights and darks that brought fish and work and, sometimes, news of the wider world or her tribe's men home from war. The last Fire Nation raid on the Southern Water Tribe had been years ago, and that had marked the first great shift in Katara's small world. After her mother was killed, the Fire Nation ship left from Gran Gran's youth became a living threat that haunted the edges of her consciousness, and playing with Sokka outside was never the same again because the sight of it was always there, just over the next snow bank or around the next igloo.
The world continued its lights and darks, but small didn't feel safe anymore.
After the iceberg broke, Katara's world shifted again; it became disorderly and frantic. The war wages on as it had for the past century, but she is involved in it now, and has to help lead a ragtag group of kids (because that is what they are, really, when the oldest one is barely marrying age and the youngest two aren't even teenagers yet) to the world's salvation.
She loves her friends and she is eager for the war to end (and she's scared, and doubtful of their future success), but months of constant travel and adventure have given her little time for reflection. She has learned that the larger world offers no safety, either, and even the quiet times she steals alone, stirring the cooking-pot over a fire or practicing her waterbending, are consumed by thoughts of the immediate, of the future, of the next step they will take in their plan.
Katara has not yet made the time to think through the fact that the world is not as painfully simple as she saw it in her eight-year-old mind, the view she'd held until she flew away from her home on Appa. First impressions can deceive (she'd thought Jet was good, but Jet lied and Jet said he'd changed and now Jet is dead) and people can change (Zuko chased them and Zuko betrayed her, but yesterday Zuko helped her avenge her mother's murder). She doesn't know what she thinks of all of this, but she wonders sometimes, blinking into the cooking-steam, if she could ever go back to the cook fires of her tribe's igloos and not feel a loss. She has seen the world now, but she doesn't know what other option it offers her, if they achieve peace.
The house is quiet—everyone else still sleeps, she suspects—and Katara's walk down to the beach is undisturbed. Even with the uncertain future ahead of her, she feels a new peace this morning. She was surprised to awaken so early, because even though cooking the food means she's usually one of the first ones awake, this is early, even for her new habits. She is exhausted from her journey with Zuko yesterday, but she feels less bone-tired and ragged than she had lately. She pivots her wrist, swings the water-bucket she needs to fill, and considers how it's funny that she should find this peace while in the Fire Nation and that the Fire Lord's son should be the instrument of its achievement.
On the sand, she abandons her bucket and sinks her toes into the mud at the edge of the tide, feeling her footing shift with each push and pull of the waves. She closes her eyes and breathes in the salty tang of the morning breeze, feels it wash around her with the water at her ankles. The Fire Nation is not as contrary to her sensibilities as she had expected it to be—it is hot, yes, but the air is humid and the country's islands are surrounded by the sea.
When Katara opens her eyes, the edge of the horizon has begun to pink against the iron-grey sea, and she regains her footing and works through waterbending forms until the waves reflect pink and orange. It is still early, but breakfast-time nears, and so Katara gathers her bucket, walks away from the ocean to find the nearby stream, and brings the water back to the kitchen with her.
She startles and nearly spills the water when she turns a corner near the kitchen and practically collides with Zuko. He reaches out to steady her, and the solid heat of his hand on her arm reminds her suddenly of other times he has reached out to help her—from the steadying hand on the shirshiu to knocking her away from falling ceilings. She feels her face begin to heat and she feels awkward suddenly, but she shouldn't now, after he's helped her avenge her mother and made amends for his betrayal in Ba Sing Se. Things should be comfortable between them, but she doesn't know how to act in peace with him.
When Katara regains her footing and waterbends the few fallen splashes back into the bucket, Zuko releases her arm and she wonders briefly if this is what peace in the world will be like—everybody having good intentions but not knowing what to do with them. Well. She'll treat him like she treats Sokka, then. Perhaps with less teasing, because she knows the prince does not like to be teased, but…oh, he's talking. She should listen.
"Are you okay, Katara?" Zuko stands a few paces away from her, looking at her with concerned eyes.
She nods and smiles ruefully. "I'm fine, Zuko. I just wasn't expecting to see anyone else awake at this hour."
"I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's all right." She smiles again, shifts the water bucket to her other hand. It's nice, not having to lash out at him or be on guard all the time. It's…easy…forasmuch as it's awkward and uncertain.
Zuko smiles one of his half-smiles at her, and the pause stretches on for just a moment too long before he reaches out toward her again. "Want me to carry that for you?" He gestures toward the water in her hand.
"Sure. Thanks." She hands him the bucket and he walks behind her to the kitchen, where she bends it into the pot over the fire pit while he starts a fire in the banked coals.
He makes to leave after that, but now that Katara has lost her morning's solitude, she's in no hurry to regain it. "Zuko, wait."
He pauses in his stride, twists around, and looks at her. He doesn't say anything, only watches her curiously as she stands near the cooking-pot, waiting for the water to boil. She remembers yesterday, and how he waited then, too, while she held rain in her grasp and turned it to ice-daggers by Yon Rha's sniveling form. When she speaks, her words are quiet.
"Thank you. For yesterday, I mean. For helping me and…and for letting me make my own decision." She had been angry for so long, and she's still angry, but she doesn't have the same questions as before. Now, she knows what she would do when faced with her mother's murderer, she knows what kind of man he is, and she knows the sort of life he will live, condemned by her vicious mercy. She left him to live with his own cowardice, and she will live a better life than that killer could ever imagine. She doesn't know the details of it yet, but she will make her mother's sacrifice matter.
Zuko's expression softens from curiosity to something that is not quite pity—and Katara is glad for that, because she would hate him again if he pitied her—but rather something more like…admiration? Katara digs half-moons into one of her palms as she bites back the creeping shiver that threatens to start behind her shoulders.
He shrugs. "It was your choice to make. We all have to deal with our pasts and it was time for you to deal with yours. I only helped you do it."
"But the others—Sokka, Aang—would have tried to convince me that there was no choice, that pardon was the only way. You didn't do that, and…it was nice to have the freedom to do what I thought was right, for once, instead of something that was good for the group, or for the world."
"I agreed with them." When Katara frowns, Zuko hastens to add, "I mean, maybe not about the forgiveness part, because—because I still don't know if my mother's alive or dead or where she is if she is alive, and I don't know if I can ever forgive the people who took her away from me, but I do think you were right to spare his life." He sighs. "But even if you had killed him, I wouldn't have stopped you. It was your choice to make." He had been meeting her gaze, a disconcerting fervor in his eyes, but he looks at the cook-fire, suddenly, and raises a hand distractedly to his scar as he mumbles, "I've learned that it's sometimes best not to speak up when you haven't been asked for an opinion."
"Zuko, wha—?" Katara takes a few steps forward, her fingers grasping through the air with the intention of taking his away from his face, away from the scar he's learning to forget but can't quite yet, but his own hand falls before hers reaches it. She pauses then, her question cut off by the look of hurt in his eyes, and slowly lowers her hand to her side. They are close enough that she can hear his soft breathing and smell the ash on his skin—or maybe that's the cooking fire, because she doesn't know if he was firebending before she ran into him. They are close enough that she remembers the catacombs under Ba Sing Se, and how she'd wanted to kiss him then, before his betrayal, and how she wants to kiss him now, after his atonement.
Tui and La, she's doing a terrible job of treating him like Sokka.
She doesn't kiss him, only turns to the now-boiling water and adds rice with unsteady hands as she thanks him again for the previous day, and doesn't ask him to leave when he stays and tries to help—all awkward closeness and accidental touches and Spirits, she's noticed before now how muscular he is and how nice that crooked smile he's offering her is, but this is the first time her noticing doesn't feel traitorous—even though she can make rice and tea well enough on her own.
Days pass, and Katara's life falls into a new sort of rhythm, one still fraught with tension as she and her friends prepare for the upcoming battle, but one punctuated by a new sort of shivering calm that seizes her heart when Zuko catches her eye and smiles, or when he helps her cook or wash the dishes. He didn't do these things before, and Katara hopes they mean what she'd like them to mean.
Her dreams are still restless and plagued by thoughts of war, but sometimes they feature yellow-eyed, brown-skinned babies now, and those ones bring a pleasant relief, even if they leave her heart hollow when the sun rises in the morning.
When Zuko asks her to follow him into battle against Azula, she agrees without hesitation.
Then the world is dark, but fire and lightning are bright, and the boy she thinks she loves jumps in front of the lighting his sister directs at Katara.
It is dark in the middle of the day, and when Katara first blinks her eyes open, she thinks she's home in the South Pole again. But the heat tells her that she's not, and a glance around reminds her that the darkness comes because there are no windows, only a few candles giving light.
For the past several hours, she has been dozing in a chair beside Zuko's bed—stubbornly refusing her friends' insistence that she get some rest, too, because she's exhausted—waiting for him to awaken again. She needs to know that he's all right, because he jumped in front of lightning to save her. She hasn't spent the past few weeks wondering what it would be like to live forever in a land of steady light, to commit herself to helping maintain peace in her former enemy nation only to abandon the boy she's hinged that potential on, not now when she's the reason he's lying here helpless. She won't leave his side now, because she needs to be sure he's okay, even if her imaginings come to naught.
Katara sighs and shakes her head sleepily. She's being a silly girl with a crush—which is something she swore she'd never do again, because look where it got her last time—and she can already hear Sokka's jibes about sleeping with the enemy if anything comes of this attraction she's sensed recently and she does marry Zuko.
"Katara?"
Zuko's voice sounds dry and even raspier than usual, but his eyes are alert when they flutter open. She takes his hand, checks his pulse, and says, "Yeah, it's me."
"You should be sleeping." He sounds disapproving, but his lips are quirked in a weak smile.
She smiles gently, blinking back tears at the memory of him lying wounded after Azula's lightning seared through him. "I couldn't leave you. You saved my life, and I needed to be around in case I needed to save yours."
"You saved mine back on the battlefield, Katara. I'm sure there are other healers here who could keep an eye on me."
She hasn't let go of his hand yet. "They could," she says, squeezing his fingers, "but I wanted to."
"I'm glad you stayed." He squeezes back, lightly, and looks at her with golden eyes that make her want to melt, to stay here with him and never leave. "Do you think you could help me sit up?"
"Sure."
A shuffle of pillows and Zuko follows, and once he's propped into a sitting position, Katara sits beside him on the bed. He looks tired but healthier than before; his skin has lost some of its sallowness since the battle. And his lips…his lips are chapped and Katara decides she doesn't care, because that is the moment when she leans in, slowly enough that she doesn't startle him and quickly enough that she doesn't lose her courage, and kisses him.
His lips are chapped but they are gentle under hers, and she pulls back after a press that was far too brief for her liking. But guilt surges through her when she realizes the ingratitude of her assumption—it does his character an injustice to presume that he saved her because he harbors any romantic feelings for her; it would be nobler, and certainly not unexpected for the man that he's becoming, if he did it simply because she is his friend.
Zuko looks at her, his good eye wide, and Katara's own eyes start to sting with embarrassed tears because if he's looking at her like that, it must mean that the kiss was a mistake, that she's read all the signs wrong, and now she's ruined the trust they've developed since the Southern Raiders trip. When she starts to turn away and stand, though, Zuko reaches out with surprising speed for someone who's as injured as he is, and his fingers wrap firmly around her wrist. "Katara, wait."
She turns her head to meet his gaze and wishes she could disappear. He takes a deep breath. "What was… Why did you do that?"
"Why does anyone kiss anyone?" she mutters, starting to pull away. His grip on her wrist doesn't loosen and he looks at her carefully.
"It wasn't—it wasn't a thank-you?"
She shakes her head no and almost defends herself by saying that gratitude is a stupid reason to kiss somebody, because that's not what kisses are for, but her next breath becomes a startled gasp when Zuko pulls her to him and kisses her again. This kiss is longer and…and nicer, and Katara's thoughts start to get fuzzy as his lips move against hers.
When the kiss ends, Katara buries her face in the crook of Zuko's neck and mumbles, "That wasn't a thank-you, either?"
His chest vibrates with a soft, rumbling laugh as he wraps an arm around her and pulls her closer. "No."
Katara shifts her body closer to Zuko's and arranges her arm across his stomach, careful to avoid the bandages that wrap around him. "I'll have to heal you again," she says, but he only kisses the top of her head and replies, "Later."
They will have to do a lot of things later, like talk about those kisses and about this newfound closeness that feels so foreign and so comfortable all at once, like figure out what they'll tell their family and friends, what story will work to tell Zuko's country because he's the Fire Lord now and everything he does has political ramifications. There is also news to share of the victories in Ba Sing Se and against Ozai. She heard them, blearily, from her friends as they arrived, but she would like to hear them again when Zuko does.
For now, though, Katara's thought that quickly overtakes all others is that this is a very nice sort of hug, much better than a hug of forgiveness. She falls asleep quickly beside Zuko, and she feels safe.
Years pass, and most of the Fire Nation comes to terms with the notion that their Fire Lord's wife is a waterbender. Those who don't, and are vocal about it, usually have other reasons to be under suspicion, and are silenced. Katara is thankful, years later, when their first two children bend fire. There are two legitimate heirs to the throne, at least, and time may reveal more.
When Zuko's mother returns from her exile in the Earth Kingdom, Katara cries along with him, and he is the one holding her back from storming the prison with intent to destroy when she finds out where he got his scar.
Katara misses her father and brother and grandmother terribly, but her visits to the South Pole leave her ever more assured that she made the right choice. The Water Tribe does not need her; it has other healers and bending masters—more are in the South now that they are working in cooperation with the North. The Fire Nation does not need her, either, because she can only teach them intangibles like forgiveness and acceptance (things that most of its people, contrary to the rumors she'd heard as a little girl, are willing to learn), but Zuko needs her, and she needs him, and their growing brood of children needs both of them.
So when dawn's light awakens her even though it's the middle of winter, she is usually able to stop herself from grumbling about how winters ought to be darker than they are here in the capital. Instead, she squints away from the light and snuggles into what she decided very early on in married life is one of her very favorite types of hugs, the one where Zuko pulls her close against him, sleepy but usually more awake than she is, and kisses her good morning. She kisses him back, laughs and blushes despite herself when he holds her close and mumbles some compliment that she would have believed more readily a decade ago, and is thankful for mornings of dawning light, because she credits one of those, spent together over a rice-pot when they were young and did not associate with the comforting familiarity they have now, with bringing her to his side in the first place.