What the heck is pizza? Zuko wondered. It didn't really matter what it was, since he was pretty confident he wasn't it.
"Ah, no. I'm not pizza. Is Katara here…?" He tried to peer around the man blockading the door—Katara's brother, Zuko realized—as much as he could without being rude.
Sokka blinked cluelessly at him. He did not move from the doorway.
"You're Zuko," he said finally.
"You're Sokka."
A meaningful silence stretched on for several beats before Sokka pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
"Holy shit," he muttered, to himself more than anyone else, and then made a visible effort to perk up before addressing Zuko again. "Um. Yeah, wow. Would you like to come in?" He stepped aside to allow Zuko to cross the threshold.
Zuko did, hands folded behind his back and nodding politely at Sokka as he passed. Across the street, Cheng drove off once he saw that Zuko had been safely admitted. Sokka shut the door behind him.
"Katara!" Sokka hollered down the hall and into a room hidden from view. "There's someone here to see you!"
There was no sign of movement, but Katara's familiar voice carried into the foyer in response. "Sokka, I really don't feel like entertaining visitors right now! Can you tell them to leave?"
"I really think you should come down here!" Sokka and Zuko locked eyes. Sokka smiled, just a little. Zuko gulped.
"I'm in sweatpants! My hair is dirty!"
"He's not going to care!" Sokka shouted back, almost sing-songy.
"He?" Katara inquired, appearing at the top of the stairs. True to her word, she sported a pair of dark blue sweatpants and a slightly greasy topknot. True to Sokka's word, Zuko didn't care in the slightest. He was elated to see her again.
Katara descended slowly and uncertainly at first, then spotted Zuko, and then hurried down the stairs to meet him.
"Zuko!"
Probably before she could think better of it, she ran to his arms. When she pulled away, there was an awkwardness that hadn't been there before. Zuko guessed that the details of their short-lived and deeply fraught time together were returning to her, just like they were for him.
"What are you doing here…?" She marveled, punctuating her query with incredulous laughter.
"I had an epiphany! I must share it with you," Zuko explained.
She laughed again. "And you couldn't have just called me?"
"No. I had to see you in reality." In reality? In actuality? In person? Zuko was too nervous to properly recall common Earth Tongue expressions.
Several feet away, Sokka was watching their exchange bemusedly. The doorbell's chime resounded through the house for the second time that day.
"This had better be the pizza," remarked Sokka as he made for the door. "I'll get it. You two go sit down."
Katara led him to the sitting room, where he settled into a squashy leather recliner that felt like it was trying to swallow him. Katara situated herself on the adjacent sofa.
"Still not pizza!" Came Sokka's exasperated cry from down the hall. He joined them in the sitting room, toting a small child in his arms, and was accompanied by whom Zuko recognized to be his wife Suki. Suki juggled the other two squirming children.
"I'm sorry, I forgot my key!" Suki confessed, flush faced, when she made her entrance. Upon seeing her, Zuko was reminded of the photos from the housewarming party he saw on his deep dive into Katara's online presence. He suddenly felt like a voyeur, certainly not someone with any legitimate business in this nice family's suburban home. But nobody else knew about that, he supposed.
"Suki, meet Zuko," said Sokka. He sounded business-like, almost bored, like he wasn't hosting the dictator of a facist nation state in his living room. Suki gasped and tried to interject, but Sokka barged on, "Zuko, meet Suki, Kaskae, Arluk and Wei."
He gestured toward each of the toddlers when he listed their names. Zuko prayed he wouldn't be expected to remember that.
The doorbell rang a third time.
"If that's not pizza, I'm going to scream!" Sokka handed the child off to Katara and scrambled out of the room.
"You're—the fire lord, right? From Katara's podcast?" Suki stammered by way of greeting. Zuko nodded. He noticed people had a tendency to talk about him like that, like he only existed within the confines of Katara's podcast, and ceased to exist when they'd stopped listening. "I'd shake your hand, but…" Suki lightly bounced the children in her arms.
"That's okay. It is very nice to meet you."
"Pizza!" Sokka screeched, barreling into the room with a flat cardboard box. The scent of whatever was in it made Zuko's mouth water.
"Zuko, would you like to stay for dinner?" Suki offered.
So he stayed for dinner. It was the most chaotic meal Zuko had ever attended. The family dinners he was accustomed to (back when he still had a family) were always a rigid, formal affair. He had been expected to look his very best. Once he'd forgotten to have his slacks ironed, and his father forbade him from eating with the family that night. He was sent back to his chambers without food, and only later scarfed down an apple and some cold tofu thanks to Preeda's intervention.
Sokka and Suki's household operated differently. They sat not in upright chairs at a neatly set table, but on the plush furniture of their living room. The toddlers were wrestled and then fastened into plastic highchairs. They dined not on porcelain plates with gold leaf detailing, but on mismatched dishware pulled haphazardly from the cabinets. Zuko's plate had a chip on the rim. Katara drank from a lidless sippy cup when they ran out of "adult" glassware. They ate not gourmet food cooked by an army of private chefs, but pizza from a box. Pizza, as it turned out, was incredible.
One of the toddlers' cups burst open unexpectedly. The boy giggled as the water dribbled across the plastic tray and onto the floor. Except, it wasn't dripping normally, Zuko observed. It swirled, circuitous and unhurried, before it hit the ground.
"Wei's a waterbender," Katara informed him as Sokka made to clean up the spill. She stopped him, lazily flicking a wrist in his direction. It was like the spill had happened again, but backwards. The water rushed in reverse, trickling back up the chair and gathering in Wei's cup. All Sokka had to do was screw the lid back on.
Zuko had seen Katara's waterbending before, but it still captivated him every time. It was so much gentler and more artful than fire.
"So I see."
"Dad says you were even worse when you were a kid," Sokka jested.
"I probably was. I still am," Katara answered primly, taking a dainty bite from the corner of her pizza slice.
Everyone laughed except for Zuko. It wasn't that he didn't think it was funny, just that he was still digesting the idea of being here.
"So, Zuko, you were saying that you had an epiphany?" Katara quizzed, once they had mostly polished off the pizza.
Zuko hesitated. When he rehearsed this conversation in his head, he and Katara had been alone. He hadn't predicted having to stand and deliver in front of an audience. Then again, Katara would have to tell her family eventually if she accepted his offer. It made just as much sense to say it in front of them. He just didn't like the three pairs of eyes blinking at him expectantly.
He cleared his throat.
"Yes, I, uh…" He paused to order his thoughts. They came out disordered anyway. "You have a doctorate in political science!"
"I do…" Katara acknowledged carefully. So Zuko had sounded as daft as he felt.
"Yes! And that's significant because, well you see, I always thought it was in journalism."
Katara frowned. Behind her, Sokka and Suki exchanged twin curious glances.
"Zuko, I appreciate that you've been thinking about me, but generally epiphanies contain some kind of insight that isn't just an indisputable fact…"
"I want you to come back to the Fire Nation as my minister of international relations."
When no one else spoke, Zuko found the willpower to continue.
"The position has been vacant ever since Minister Hansuke resigned, I know you know that already, and well, this way you don't have a conflict of interest! There's no journalistic integrity since you wouldn't be a journalist anymore. You could come back to the Fire Nation, and we could work together, and we could… feel however we want to feel."
Well, there it was. He couldn't even think of anything else to ramble about, otherwise he would have. Anything to put off facing her reaction.
"Wow," she said finally, fiddling with the remnants of pizza crust on her plate.
Suki subtly nudged her husband, and two of them wordlessly gathered their children and cleared the room.
"Cheng told me you're not at EKPR anymore. Have you moved onto something else?"
"I'm kind of between things right now… wait, when did you talk to Cheng?"
"I went to EKPR trying to find you. He's the one who drove me here."
She tucked her knees into her chest and cradled her cup in her hands.
"This is big," she stated simply.
"It could be."
"I need some time to think about it."
"I thought you might," he admitted, but he hadn't expected that she would take that time right here and right now. She stood up and strode out of the room without warning, leaving Zuko alone in what was effectively a stranger's living room.
She headed to a different part of the house Zuko hadn't yet seen, to wherever Sokka and Suki had gone to give their guests some privacy. He heard voices, low and muffled, but couldn't make out what they were saying. Even if he could hear them properly, it felt like a violation. Katara deserved to confide in her family without him. He was left by himself for what felt like a half hour, but was probably actually less than that. He occupied himself by looking at the wall hangings, inspecting a nearby bookshelf that contained just as many movies and video games as it did books, and overanalyzing the pattern on the carpet.
When Katara returned with Suki tailing behind her, Zuko made a point to speak before either of them had the chance.
"I can leave, if you would like. That way you can have more time to decide," he announced. He desperately craved her answer, but it felt chivalrous somehow to give her the space she needed. He'd never really been in the position to accommodate someone else's needs before.
Katara and Suki seemed amused by his overly formal manner. Katara shook her head.
"There's no need. I'll do it."
"You will?" He'd anticipated more resistance. The arguments he'd planned in his mind crumbled to dust. He felt happy, sure, but also a good deal more anxious than he imagined he would. The vision he'd had ended here. He didn't know what came next.
"Yes," she confirmed, smiling now.
"Congratulations, Madam Minister," Suki smirked. Sokka joined her seconds later.
"You're doing it then?" He questioned, his attention on Katara. He said it very neutrally; Zuko couldn't tell if that had been calculated or not.
"I am. It's… well it's the offer of a lifetime, really. Years of mingling with politicians and I still never imagined I'd actually be one," said Katara, a hint of awe in her voice. She turned back to Zuko.
"I missed you," he said, quietly. The others were still in earshot, he knew, and he didn't mind, but the statement was only intended for Katara.
"I missed you too." She was starting to drop the brisk manner she sometimes adopted when she was under pressure. Now that the surprise had worn off, she was turning back into herself. He didn't hold it against her. He got weird when he was stressed, too. Actually, he was weird all the time, he'd been told. Apparently Katara didn't mind.
"Then you'd better pack your bags so you crazy kids can make your flight back to the Fire Nation!" Sokka bellowed, draping an arm around Katara and Zuko, respectively, forcing them into a mandatory moment of shared tenderness.
"Actually," Zuko corrected, squirming out from underneath Sokka's grasp, "It's a private jet. It leaves whenever I say it does."
"Oh!" Sokka exclaimed with raised eyebrows, "Right. Royalty and all that jazz. That's handy."
Zuko shrugged. "It has its moments."
Katara piped up, "Sokka's right, though. We should make plans. What hotel are you staying in, Zuko?"
"I don't actually know yet. I arrived only this morning."
"You should stay with us!" Sokka declared. It didn't sound like an empty gesture. In fact, it didn't sound terribly optional.
"Ah," Zuko scanned Katara and Suki's faces for any cues he might follow, "Well if no one objects to this idea…"
Katara seemed to approve.
"You'll have to sleep on the couch, probably, but we certainly don't mind. But you should get a hotel if that'll be more comfortable."
Of course it would be more comfortable. But Zuko was trying to appear amiable in front of Katara's family. If they were to become coworkers, and possibly… Well, if they were to become more significant parts of each other's lives, then surely Zuko should do his best to not come across like a spoiled brat.
"I'll pack my things quickly. Hopefully you'll only have to spend one night on that lumpy old thing," Katara promised, tilting her head in the direction of the couch that was to be Zuko's bed.
"I can help you," Zuko offered.
Katara didn't have many belongings anymore. She explained that she'd sold many of them before moving to the Fire Nation the first time, and the rest were in a storage unit several miles away.
"I don't mind it," she'd said as they placed her meager possessions into boxes, "It means I travel lighter, and it makes me a less obtrusive houseguest."
She'd scarcely unpacked in the first place since moving in with Sokka and Suki, so together they made quick work of packing everything back up again. Zuko was travelling even lighter, with a single change of clothes and some toiletries crammed into a valise. He stowed it on the armchair when he went to sleep that night.
"You're absolutely sure about this," Zuko verified when they were nearly on their way.
"Yes!" She pushed him playfully on the shoulder. "It's like you don't want me to come!"
"Of course I do! I just want you to want to."
"And I'm capable of determining what I do and don't want, alright?"
So she bid her family goodbye and then they boarded the jet. It wasn't too long ago they'd taken this same jet the other direction for the peace summit. It was the first time they'd really been able to enjoy each other's company without the pretense of an interview. It was when they were learning how to be around each other still. They'd made so much progress since then, and yet, the air around them seemed charged with that same nervous energy.
The Caldera's brilliant reds and oranges were obscured by a thick layer of fog when the plane landed. It was Zuko's natal home, the only place he'd ever lived, and only now was he growing used to seeing it from above like this. It was a strange notion, that he and Katara were equally used to beholding this same view. He wondered if the sight made her nervous. It certainly had when she first arrived here many months ago, but did it still? Was she anxious about the direction her career was taking?
"Welcome back," Zuko said when the plane came to a halt on the runway.
Katara, who had been gazing out the window with a mask of vague disinterest, slowly turned to face him.
"Good to be back," she replied.