A/N: Hey this has been a year and a half coming, but I haven't abandoned this story. If you're still with me, I want to thank you. Please leave reviews. Let me know if I've lost my touch!
The tension in the air was suffocatingly thick. Zuko and Katara had entered together to break the news to everyone else as a united front. To Katara's surprise, no one reacted how she'd expected when the words came out of her mouth: "So Zuko and I have agreed to a marriage alliance to pacify the Earth Kingdom."
Azula was the only who spoke after several seconds, "Huh.." she mused with a raised eyebrow.
The rest was a blur. Sokka yelled. Aang was sad but understanding. Katara found herself longing for Toph's alleviating, if brash, sense of humor. Iroh attempted to calm the storm. All this over dinner. Katara focused all her energy into not crying. She ended up eating nothing. Zuko sat, straight-spined next to her.
Her future husband. That was all she could think of. She wondered what her family would think, wondered if her father already knew, or maybe hoped. She wondered if Sokka had secretly hoped as well. He'd never admit it. It might have just been his last resort. No, she knew better than that. He would have kept her as far from the Fire Nation as possible if he had even considered this a possibility.
Time moved fast around her, everything in her periphery. The dining staff seemed to swarm around the edges of her vision, the conversation penetrated her thoughts only in inintelligible echos.
Toward the end of the night, when everyone had made their sentiments known, Zuko placed his hand on Katara's elbow. It startled her, but she realized she knew exactly what it meant. After the storm of the evening, she only wanted to talk to him. And he wanted to talk to only her.
"It's been an incredibly long day. And I'd like to thank you all for trudging through it with us. But I think we all could use some rest." He wasn't making a suggestion. Katara made eye contact with him as he sat back down. He nodded and turned to Azula as the plates were cleared by the staff, "Azula would you please escort Katara to her new rooms?"
Azula smiled knowingly and nodded. Before anyone could protest, Azula turned to Katara. When the two women rose and nodded farewell, Azula took Katara by the arm. The scene came back into focus almost suddenly. Katara had entered this place yesterday as an ambassador, staying in an ambassador's head-quarters. Today she was… well, she didn't really know what she was.
To her family and her tribe, she was a sister and a daughter of the Water Tribe; though that seemed to be the problem, the thing that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. To her son, she was also a mother, the thing she had been most terrified and grateful for in her entire life. And now the thing she was most worried about. She'd decided to shove that thought away for now. She couldn't deal with it quite yet, couldn't deal with it alone.
She realized that she was almost looking forward to the prospect of making a difficult parenting decision, but with help, for the first time in her parenting life. And that led her back to what she was to Zuko, and jarringly back to where she was headed in this exact moment.
After they'd cleared the dining room, Katara turned to her sister-in-law-to-be, "Wha-"
"Zuko and I may have had a rough childhood," Azula answered the unspoken question, almost as if she had been waiting for the prompt, "But in the palace, where there are eyes and ears everywhere, two mischievous children learn to communicate discreetly."
Katara recalled the similar language she and Sokka had developed. Looking out for each other, covering for each other, sneaking off, getting into trouble. Things changed when dad left. Aside from the tribe elders who were more teachers than parents, there were no authority figures for the motherless siblings. They started to become adults in some sense of the word. All of that culminated in their fishing trips to keep food on their table, Gran Gran being too old to hunt and gather. It was one such fishing trip that their lives, and the world, was forever changed. But those were days passed.
"I was hoping to avoid further drama tonight.." Katara said.
"Well, Zuko heard you, and sent me in. You'll fit right into our family." Azula patted her arm reassuringly.
Katara considered that thought. She was to become a member of the Fire Nation Royal Family, a family that has been riddled with corruption for all of rememberable history. A family known for their cut-throat ambition and who have even killed each other to get ahead. It was enough to make her heart race.
And yet, Azula and Zuko, despite their shared history, had founded between them such a closeness that they were practically telepathic. She imagined the raven haired children scurrying between the grand pillars of the palace, still innocent, without scars, physical nor emotional.
Katara felt suddenly guilty for trying to avoid her own brother.
"Sokka loves you very much. Nakedly. Foolishly." Azula mused aloud, "But endearingly, nonetheless." The woman was telepathic, Katara decided. Azula's torments had, more likely, stripped the fatality away from her natural intuition.
"New rooms…?" Katara remembered suddenly.
"Well, you're a royal consort now. There are rooms for that."
"There's an official 'fiancee room'?" Katara scoffed. So that's what I am to him now. She didn't like the phrase. It was too clinical, not romantic enough. Though she wasn't exactly sure why she was searching for romance in her current situation.
"There's a room for everything."Azula laughed. "I had them prepared after the meeting, just in case. It's been awhile since they've been occupied."
Katara followed Azula's lead around a corner, "Just in case?"
Azula smirked, or maybe that was just her default expression. "I make a point to know about all of the Fire Nation's affairs, domestic and foreign. There's trouble with the Water Tribe. You're the answer, and you have such a bleeding heart, it didn't take much guesswork to figure out that you'd agree to marry my poor brother."
Katara bristled at her apparent predictability. But before she could say something, Azula untangled her arm from Katara's and stopped in front of a guarded door. The guards stepped aside and Azula withdrew a key from her sleeve and unlocked the door.
Katara's breath fell out of her for not the first time that day. And she thought her other room was incredible. This room was east facing with giant, draped windows. The decor was decidedly more Fire Nation which was to be expected. The pluralization of room was definitely not a hyperbole. They entered into a beautiful sitting room. To the left was a bedroom that she wandered into. Attached to the bedroom was a bathroom. To the right of the sitting room was a dressing room, the walls lined with racks of beautiful, old gowns. Azula followed around the dumbfounded water bender from room to room supplying explanations along the way, none of which Katara absorbed.
"Wow…" Katara finally sighed. The two women finally settled across from each other back in the sitting room. A maid appeared from seemingly out of nowhere with wine and two glasses.
Once the women each had a drink in hand, Azula leaned back against her chair and kicked one leg over the other, "My mother was the last woman to live in these rooms."
"Not Mai?" Katara wondered.
"No," Azula replied, "Her father was a councilman so they lived in the Upper Ring of the capital. Mai slept in the room she was born in until her wedding day." She punctuated the explanation with a long swig of wine.
"I imagine your mother must have been just as floored by the… grandeur."
Azula smiled sadly, "I imagine so. But she was scared. And rightfully so. Our father was a monster. And I was his monster." She stared far away at nothing in particular.
Katara was quiet. She had never seen Azula display such self-awareness. She wondered again what the princess had been through in the past fifteen years.
"She loved you," Katara heard herself say.
Azula turned back to the girl in front of her, "You don't know that. You never met her," she whispered. It wasn't mean. It was just a statement.
"No…" Katara conceded. "But I am a mother."
"Your son would never do the things I've done." She sounded ashamed, Katara realized.
"No, probably not." Katara knew her son's heart. And she knew she wasn't a perfect parent but she also knew that she hadn't ever hurt her son the way Ozai had hurt Azula. He'd broken her and manipulated her. "But I also know I would love my son no matter what."
Azula held her gaze and finally smirked again, slowly. "I can't wait to meet my new nephew."
Katara was again faced with the weight of the inevitable. She would have to finally tell her son the truth. How? She wondered. "I don't know what I'm going to do," Katara whispered, bewildered.
Azula guffawed. "Well, he has to find out sometime." She refilled her empty glass.
Katara threw her hands up, "I'll have to tell him face to face. I have to go back south and…"
"Oh no, sister." Azula interrupted. "You can't leave the Fire Nation until you're married. It's law."
"What?!" Katara shrieked.
A rumbling come from the dressing room to the right, followed by a creaking sound. The women turned toward the commotion. The Fire Lord strode out from the room moments later.
"Ha! Still crawling in the walls, Fire Lord?" Azula shouted.
He looked at Katara, "I thought she'd be gone by now."
Katara sprang from her seat, "What's this about my being confined to the Fire Nation until our wedding?!"
Zuko recoiled. "Ah… yeah, about that…" He shifted his posture to stare daggers at his sister. She smiled back at him innocently.
"It's traditional procedure." He finally supplied.
"Well, I have to go home to get my son!" Katara shot back, still irate.
"Our son." Zuko corrected, quietly.
"That's my cue!" Azula peeped as she downed the glass of wine and slipped through the door.
Zuko took her place on the opposite sofa and poured himself a glass of wine. "I can try to find a way around it." He said.
"Oh! Can you?!" She was still standing, still shouting, still incredulous. "Can you find a way around the terms of my imprisonment?! Is this what my life is going to be now?"
"Yes!" Zuko fumed, " This is how you have to live when you have responsibilities to others, here in the real world. Your self-imposed exile is over. You can't hide anymore. Don't act like you didn't know what you were signing up for."
Katara was speechless. It took her a moment to collect herself.
Only a moment, " How dare you?! You want to talk to me about taking responsibility? Who took fourteen years worth of responsibility for our actions?"
He breathed deeply and put his hands on her shoulders. "We can't be like this," he said softly, "We have to be on the same team."
She stared into his eyes and felt the anger drain out of her. He was right. She was going to have to trust him a little bit.
"I need your help figuring out what to do about Lee," She finally conceded.
He smiled slightly, "Good, because I need your help figuring out what to do about Zula and Zan."
She almost gasped. Sister, daughter, mother, royal consort, and now, future stepmother. In all her selfish frustration, she had forgotten about his children. Katara chastised herself.
"Yes, we're in this together now," she answered.
He smiled fully now, and he hugged her. And it felt… right.