Sorry it took so long to update - I was finishing off The Gift, doing some manips, icons, new fanvids... aww heck, just check out my profile and all the ATLA LJ communities out there and you'll all know I've been busy feeding the fandom.
Meanwhile, I've just been hired by Harlequin as their new proofreader! It's a dream come true, and I think I owe the community for a good part of my editing experience. So thank you all for letting me beta your work, communicating with me about my own, and generally being very supportive. You guys all rock. I'll do my best to keep writing and doing stuff once I start work.
Now sit back and enjoy: because it's...
The Big Day
The day arrived as all days do – the moon set, and the dusty silver gauze of dawn daubed the sky as the fiery sliver of the sun kissed the stars away. The great orange-gold globe slowly bloated to reveal the fierce face of Agni himself, first to smile down on the wedding day of the Fire Lord to a mighty Waterbender warrior woman.
You know, all that poetic stuff.
Katara watched the sky and mooned over the perfect space of time between night and day. She stood on the balcony of her suite in the Fire Lord's palace, having been unable to get a wink of sleep the whole night.
The day had, after all, FINALLY arrived.
There were still stars in the sky when the maids entered to begin preparing the bride for the wedding – a sumptuous and thorough bath, a ruthlessly meticulous styling of her hair, and the precise application of make up would be followed by the careful donning of the twelve layers of her wedding gown. The maids continued to frown a little at the white dress – white was the colour of death in the Fire Nation, after all. Still, Zuko would not deny his beloved her traditions, and so she got to wore it, along with the half dozen other gowns Fire Nation customs dictated she would have to change into over the course of the day.
The Waterbender smiled to herself. She and Zuko were already married, yes, but this day would make their union complete. It would be the day they declared their love for each other in front of the whole world, and defy anyone who tried to get in their way.
With a gentle, sleep-deprived, but fully satisfied sigh, Katara turned from the view and went in to face the rest of her wonderful, romantic, love-filled life with Fire Lord Zuko.
In his spare bedchamber on the other side of the palace (he'd moved there for the night because Katara had insisted they couldn't risk seeing each other before the wedding), Zuko snored.
"Nephew! Nephew WAKE UP!" Iroh shook the young man's shoulder.
"Mrrr… five more minutes…" he grumbled and stuffed the pillow over his head.
Iroh huffed and set the blankets on fire.
When the flames had been put out seconds later by an irate Fire Lord who was now fully awake, the retired general grinned.
"If I had let you sleep in any longer, Katara would have killed me!" Iroh chuckled a little nervously. His hands were uncharacteristically sweaty and he was fidgeting with the embroidered cuffs of his robe.
Still wiping soot off his hands and onto his pants, Zuko looked out the window and let forth a plaintive moan.
"It's barely dawn!" He wailed.
"You have to prepare for the wedding, or have you forgotten?" His uncle raised an eyebrow.
"What's to prepare? The wedding isn't until two hours before noon! I brush my teeth, take a shower, and my clothes are hung up over there. Seriously, I can be ready in fifteen minutes. Whatever." He yawned and plopped down onto a plush settee. He closed his eyes and folded his arms behind his head.
"But you have to do your hair and… and… uh… other things…" Iroh fumbled. "Like… um…"
"Like what?" Zuko grunted, popping one eye open.
Iroh shrugged. "Like suffer with the rest of us who have to be awake at this ungodly hour?"
Zuko stared at his uncle. He pointed to the other settee. "Five more minutes, okay?"
Iroh gratefully stumbled into the other sofa and promptly fell asleep.
Zuko stirred at the banging on his door.
"Zuko! ZUKO!" Someone cried. The Fire Lord fell off the couch as the Avatar burst the doors open with a powerful gust of air. Half a dozen guards rushed in after him, weapons at the ready.
"Wuzzit? Is't pirates?" Iroh snorted awake. He blinked blearily around him, getting his bearings.
"Man, I've been knocking for full minute! I thought you might have been dead or something."
Zuko rubbed his eyes. "Whu… Wha' time s'it?"
Aang stared. "YOU'RE NOT READY? THE CEREMONY'S STARTING IN TEN MINUTES!"
The Firebender's eyes widened. He had never emitted a more Sokka-ish cry of terror in his life.
With the Avatar's help, the groom was ready in five minutes, with just enough time to run to the altar and catch his breath. It had been the most uncomfortable shower in his life, with Aang using Waterbending to wash the Fire Lord, and a combination of Air and Firebending to dry him off; worse yet was that the little monk was seeing him completely naked.
"Don't worry Zuko old buddy," Aang grinned, briskly whipping the cold waves of water over the shivering Firebender. "You don't have anything I haven't seen before. Back when I lived at the temple with all the other monks, we all used to go swimming and bathing together all the time. No big."
Zuko was not flattered by this statement.
They practically flew to the enormous auditorium where the ceremony was taking place – they probably were flying with the help of Aang's Airbending – with exactly three minutes to spare.
If anyone noticed the Fire Lord's hasty entrance, they took it simply for being "fashionably late." Of course, Zuko spotted the few disapproving glares his way, Sokka's being one of them.
"Cutting it a bit close, aren't we?" The usher growled, tugging at his blue and grey dress robes. "Great start to your married life, huh?"
Iroh jogged in a second later, his cheeks flushed. "Just had to freshen up," he said, grinning sheepishly. Zuko smelled strong sake on his breath and rolled his eyes. His uncle had been having the jitters about this day for weeks now, and cold sake was the only thing that could steady his nerves.
No wonder.
A murmur punctuated by a few gasps ran through the crowd as a side door opened to reveal none other than ex-Fire Lord Ozai himself. He was wearing a clean, loose white tunic and breeches, but remained barefoot. Four Firebending guards, the best the palace had to offer, flanked Ozai on all sides, but Zuko's father was not shackled or restrained in any way. He was, however, swaying ever-so slightly, and his eyelids drooped: as instructed, the servants had doubled the dose of the drug that suppressed Firebending abilities. He wasn't entirely lucid, but he wasn't deadly now either.
Zuko regarded his father coolly. He heard a high-pitched noise to his left, and realized it was coming from his uncle's strained throat.
The guards guided the senior member of the royal family to the front bench and sat the prisoner-guest down. They took up positions around Zuko's father, keeping watchful eyes on him from all corners. The guests sitting around Ozai scooted away from him.
Ozai blearily looked up at his son.
He waved. And smiled.
And suddenly, Zuko thought he'd never been more terrified in his life.
And then the processional began, a lovely lilting tune that Chong and The Nomads, discreetly hidden away in a niche to the side beyond the audience's sight, played with uncharacteristic sweetness.
Don't fall in love
with the traveling girl
She'll leave you
broken-broken hearted…
But follow your dreams and you will find
A world where you'll
never be parted…
Everyone turned.
The doors opened, flooding the room with golden sunlight.
In came the flower girls. A dozen young girls from all the nations, arranged according to age and height, walked in two-by-two. The shortest and youngest of the girls were barely 4 years old. They clutched their tiny bouquets of cream coloured silk roses as they pattered down the long aisle. One girl picked her nose with abandon, while the other paused to pick up something shiny off the floor, causing the whole procession to pause as an adult ushered her to keep moving. She did so, as if remembering the importance of her role, but about three steps in, she began pulling up the skirt of her dress to show everyone her underwear.
Apart from the frilly lace undergarment, the fashion statement down the line of flower girls was "Look, Fire and Water, together at last!" One girl wore red and gold, while the other wore silver and blue. The more dexterous girls scattered matching flowers in their wake, leaving a carpet of blazing crimson, indigo, goldenrod, and cream petals behind them. A few commented how the symbolism was far too obvious and just a little tacky, but the dresses at least were nice on their own and could be worn again.
As the eldest and most disciplined of the flower girls demurely reached the front of the great hall, Azula came forth in all her resplendent maid-of-honour glory. The princess's downcast eyes and rosy cheeks spoke more about the humiliation she was experiencing in that craptacular bridesmaid's dress than it did about any feelings of joy or happiness she might have felt if she were human. That, or the fur collar was making her break out into rashes. Or maybe she was just suffering from the summer's intense heat. In any case, she wasn't happy, and it made Zuko feel warm and fuzzy inside as she approached the dais, her delicate brow bespangled with sweat, her slender neck crawling with hives.
The Fire Lord was suddenly glad Katara had few female friends and had decided on having only one bridesmaid; it had taken Zuko's sister an eternity to reach the front of the enormous auditorium. If she had had three or four more bridesmaids walking down that aisle, they would probably be standing there until sunset.
And the whole auditorium fell into a hush and turned as the bride and her father stepped into view.
Something in Zuko's brain broke at that moment, because when Katara stepped into view, the only thing he could see was her.
She walked toward him slowly, smiling radiantly as she flowed down the aisle on her father's arm. She was a shining vision of something something, outshining something, and looking like a something something something. Zuko's brain was too muddled by happiness to put his feelings into words, and the poetry centre of his brain had been shut off. Suffice to say, Katara looked really, really good in that ridiculously expensive white dress.
The Firebender barely registered as Hakoda stepped up to him and murmured in his ear before smilingly giving him his daughter's arm. Zuko simply gazed down into Katara's indescribably beautiful blue eyes and nearly squealed with delight.
And the ceremony began.
A very long speech by the minister later, they got to the nut of the matter.
"…So if anyone has any objections—"
A handful of people got to their feet, all shouting at once.
"Oh boy, here we go…" the minister groaned.
The resentful nay-sayers to the union were dispatched with post-haste by various bending methods, courtesy of the Avatar. It was really quite entertaining, Zuko thought, as his best man happily tossed a stuck-up elitist Fire Nation noble out the skylight after saying some unpleasant things about Katara and the Water Tribes in general. Heck, even Ozai seemed to approve of the Avatar's bouncing tactics, sniggering from his seat at the front.
It might come back to haunt him later, politics and all that, but Zuko didn't care, and neither did anyone else. Fire Lord Zuko was well within his rights to eject any arrogant bastards who thought they could rain on his parade. After all, this was Zuko's wedding, too. And he wasn't going to let anyone stop him from marrying the woman he loved. Again.
"Anyone… else?" The minister asked in challenge. Aang dusted his hands off and smirked at the crowd menacingly. Azula watched him with one eyebrow arched in intrigue, her already flushed cheeks turning even rosier with lust.
"Do you have the necklace?"
Aang handed Zuko Katara's mother's necklace. He clasped it around her neck, running his fingers over the ribbon and touching the cool stone.
Katara touched the all-too-familiar pendant, gazing up into her husband's eyes, her own brimming with tears.
"And the ring?"
It had been a compromise; Zuko had really wanted to carve his own token of love for Katara, but in the end, he had given up the arduous task and made her a plain band of gold to wear on her finger. The soft and malleable metal was much easier to work with than the hard crystals the Water Tribe used for their jewellery. All he had to do was pound the gold into submission, unlike the crystals, which required patience and a delicate carving hand. The Fire Lord didn't really have either – ten broken jewels had proven that. But Katara didn't mind: Zuko had made the ring himself. That was more than she could ask for.
He slipped the wedding band around Katara's slender finger, and she smiled.
He didn't know it now, but the plain gold band would become fashionable among young couples, especially among cross-cultural marriages. In a few decades, all other matrimonial tokens would be abandoned, but Zuko's gold band would endure.
It was only one of the many wonderful things that came of their union.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife," the minister declared. "You may—"
Katara's veil was torn from her head and cast aside as she grabbed her husband by the collar and devoured his mouth hungrily to the sound of rapturous applause and a few retches, most of them coming from her brother.
"Ugh… flashbacks…" Sokka said, his face going a little green.
Azula wrinkled her nose and looked away, gagging. "Don't remind me."
And the next minute, the two newly-reweds were marching back down the aisle, arm-in-arm, waving and grinning and overjoyed like everyone else. As they made the long walk down the centre aisle, they were showered with rice (a Fire Nation tradition), flower petals (an Earth Kingdom custom), and blessed water (a Water Tribe ritual). Aang, who had never been to a wedding but decided to represent the Air Nomads with his own invented traditions, added a liberal amount of glittering fish scales and bison fur he had collected into the downpour of crud raining down on the happy couple. He thought his concoction looked really pretty floating through the air, until a few Firebenders discovered they were allergic to bison and sneezed long gouts of flame, setting the decorations around the auditorium on fire.
Despite being covered with muck at the end of that long walk, Zuko and Katara were happy. They saw only each other and the life that awaited them together as Fire Lord and Lady.
Sadly, this would be the only happy, stress-free moment for the rest of the wedding day.
More to come! Stay tuned!
