He would look up to find her deeply asleep when the baby was not moving. At other times, during the night, during a nap when he would abandon his returned desk to lay with her, the baby was far too active for anything resembling a good sleep.

"Sleep," he intoned at her stomach, and felt Katara laugh as the baby, in defiance of his order, do… whatever it was that babies did. Surely by now it was a little cramped in there?

He read to her, long passages that he was grateful for in the times they couldn't sleep, when the would discuss triumphs and tragedies of fictional people. Though he had avoided the tragedies like a room of sick people since the last one, when he had looked up from one particularly emotional scene to find her silently weeping. It made him all squeamish inside to remember it. She had said something… how it was horrible and beautiful at the same time. He imagined it would take a greater bit of a decade to understand.

He watched her with anxious eyes as she paced, her hands worryingly on her back.

"Keep reading," she said. "I'm just restless. Just want to keep the blood moving."

A sudden thought struck him.

"Where do babies sleep in the South Pole? It's so…cold," he finished lamely.

"With their mother," she said, her walk a little brisker. "In a well made home, a baby could sleep without her mother near for warmth, but it's more convenient… if the baby is crying, or hungry, or needs cleaning."

"Ah." Well, that made sense. He was confident that they could supply her with whatever she needed when the baby was born. But he still wondered if there was something vital he had forgotten.

He wondered how long he would need before he was fully able, all the time, to look at her and know that inside her was a growing child that would one day be even more real. Inside her was a strange tangle of things that gave life…Her body was uniquely formed, so that just such a thing of this was possible. He certainly lacked that mysterious exit from which babies emerged all pre-formed and wailing. He was able to conjure fire… but this… this was a different sort of amazement entirely. It was the subject of many hours of contemplation, some spent with his head resting on some part of her side, her ribs, her waist, her hip. Foremost in his mind was the ability to be near her, to breathe her in. But there, there was the evidence of someone new. They did not speak of what would happen after the birth. There was a certain amount of denial that lived in him that the birth would ever occur. That was the climax of this particular story, and he was not sure he was ready. Babies did not get delivered in baskets. Somehow, that little person had to make its way from in there, and out here. As she had said, she needed some sort of stamina to make it through labor. And should he maintain consciousness, or succeed in not calling the whole thing a wash and declaring she'd just have to be pregnant forever, he was going to have to find some of that stamina as well. Since he had promised her.

"If you can, will you stay with me when she's being born?" she had asked, her face close to his as they sat together at the low slung table.

He had chewed whatever bite of dinner that had wended its way to his mouth as his mind went in two rather distinct directions at once: abject terror, and leaping joy. She wanted him there, and oh sprits, she wanted him there. That little "if you can" was her deference to the possibility that something greater or more disastrous than one small life might appear and require his immediate handling. He kissed her for that, and she hummed, a little formless tune of appreciation. Every time he thought he was completely insane for the thought of making her his wife, for her own sake, she said something that made him absolutely certain he could never send her back to the South Pole without living there part of the year himself.

"If you want me there, I'll be there."

And for that, she had kissed him.

He smiled from his current position, his head resting lightly at the juncture of her waist and ribs, her forearm a delicate scarf over his neck. He wished he could make this gentle time go on forever, he and Katara and the nebulous child, bound together in this room where she was safe, and the world so rarely intruded. Except, he conceded, her brother. Who was a nice deviation, he supposed, to the routine and the routine they could hardly discuss, as they were so hyper aware of it. He had woken from a doze more than once, his nose pressed to the back of Katara's neck, to find Sokka there. He had merely closed his eyes. He knew his place now. And he was in it.

Sokka had, as he could, complained that when he went to hug his sister, he had to avoid hugging Zuko to do it. Katara told him later that the smirk on his face hadn't been very nice.

"What do you want in your life?" she asked as they sat, knees barely touching beneath the table as the tea cooled.

"Besides shooting lightning out of my fingertips, ruling a nation, and having everyone claim the words from my mouth are true and wise? What else could a little boy wish for?"

She raised an eyebrow. He was being glib, and the situation far from called for it.

"Of course a family was something I always expected. Less ideally, just an heir. Plenty of fire lords before more passed on their thrones without a family."

"Do you think you can have both?"

"How much can one person expect in life?"

Where had that come from? Amidst all this hope, sitting here across form him even, he could be this jaded. Could he even offer her enough to satisfy her? Could he make her happy? What he hoped for, and what he expected were growing farther apart. He gritted his teeth, and shoved down the pessimism that threatened to engulf him. She was here now. She was his. For now.

"Is Sokka excited about being an uncle?"

"He wants to teach her to boat," she said, a tiny chuckle escaping even as she watched him. "We discussed the need for her to walk first."

To boat. In the ice. Far away from here. She might as well have kicked him instead. And yet, Sokka could still teach the child. A visit, nothing more, to the land of her heritage. She could still do that, even living here. The things he wanted to teach… It was too much now to consider where that Katara might choose to go. He could ask, get a feel for her desires, but… No, he was still too much of a coward to ask her now.

He stood, and his fingers brushed the booties that he still carried with him.

He struggled with himself for a moment. Should he give them back? It was silly, a grown man feeling possessive over such a thing. Perhaps… Perhaps now they would bring him luck. She deserved to know they were safe. He gripped them tightly, unfolding his hand slowly as he showed her what he had found.

"Zuko," she said, staring from the booties to his face.

He offered them, but she did not move to take them.

"They're inside out," she said softly.

His eyes focused from hers to his hands. He slid his thumbs into the soft wool, tucking it into itself to turn it right side out. The red lining, for the baby's unknown Fire Nation father he assumed, disappeared, fading into a soft blue weave. He smiled. Her colors. He felt small ridges on the soles of the booties. He tilted it to make out the lines and curves.

Zuko. It read Zuko.

He realized that when she had said his name before, she had not really just been saying it. She had been remembering what she had sewn onto the wool.

He saw rather than felt her arms slip around his numb body. Nothing in this moment was real, he thought. Not the sweet press of her lips, not the hammer of his heart. If he stood there, silent and still, the world would right itself for him in a moment, and they would be standing there, just two people in a strange situation.

"I…" He pulled her arms down from around him, gripping her wrists tightly as he struggled to speak. He could not look at her face.

"I'll be right back."

In reality he walked, but in his mind he ran, dashing to catch up with his thoughts that would not stop, not a moment. He nodded to the guard and veered sharply into a hall. He needed outside. He needed air.

He remembered ever so vaguely the murmured conversations between her and the healers, discussing dates and figures. He remembered her quiet insistence… what had it been? That the child had been conceived before the equinox.

He paced the garden faster. The child had been conceived before the equinox. He had left the day of the equinox. He had stood on the ship and watched a group of people wave goodbye. Katara had not been among that group. He had said his goodbyes to her earlier, in the privacy of her home. She had been quiet, almost reserved, as if she were waiting for him to speak. And he did speak, of the weather, of the tide that was rapidly coming to a change. He invited her to his damn birthday party, while she watched his face with an amount of expectation that was uncharacteristic even of Katara. He had given it little thought at the time, his head still clamoring from a night he had thought ill spent.

In the dream, she had wriggled her way over him, skin like honey as she pressed to him in all right places. Just a little tentative, he pondered, as she had parted his lips with hers. Just a bit, until he had touched the tip of his tongue to hers. He felt the shudder sweep down her body like a wave. There had been little for him to do but lay back, transfixed by her mouth, her hands. Until he could take it no longer, his hands bracketing her wrists as he trapped her, willing and warm, beneath him.

And in a moment, all the details of his dream, the curves and plains of her naked body, the taste of her, the grip of her hands, the feel of the fur between his fingers as he lost himself in her, fell into him with a startling realization. And yet, was it possible that it had been not a dream or a vision, but a memory?

The proof of it was in the stitching on the bottom of a tiny bootie.

They had seduced each other, against the white furs of her bed in her father's home. He had wanted her. From the moment he had stepped off the ship, from the moment it sailed away, he had her lodged in his mind, and for a great deal of time after. And when it had been reality, he thought it had been a dream. A hazy, alcohol-induced dream that had given him two things that he had never expected. She had come to tell him. She had come to share with him. She loved him.

Adara was his.

This time, he did run, past the guard, down the hall to the half open door. First his mind had been exploding, so much, too much. Now it was too focused. He had something to tell Katara. He had something to ask her. Part of him laughed with it.

He stopped short, scanned quickly. She wasn't there. He checked behind the bed, the chairs, the window. Nor was she in the baths, or his room, or the reliquary.

His heart took a quick, and rapid turn in his chest.

"Where is she?" he demanded of the guard. "Where's Katara? She's not in her room."

"Sir? No one came out."

Zuko paused. Something was missing. "Did someone go in?"

"She brought your ring! You said not without your ring." The guard's face had started to take on a ghastly shade. Zuko raised his hand where the ring in question still rested.

If they had not come out this way, then they had gone somewhere below. There were escape routes, if one knew how, to find a way into the depths, and even to the outside. Routes long barred since his mother had gone, that had been deliberately and carefully blocked. It was on a to-do list somewhere, to free up those passages, but he knew for certain that they were still unusable, since he had not yet wed. Unless someone had been prepared.

In her room, yes, the rug had been bent back, just a little. And the hidden tunnel that led straight down had been cleared. He raced down the steps, mindful only of the stones under his feet.

They had been prepared, as they had already tried to kill the child of the waterbender because it might be his. Only this time, he knew it was.

To be concluded...