"Protection and power are overrated. I think you are very wise to choose happiness and love." – Uncle Iroh

Katara didn't see Zuko again until after he'd said his vows. Until after Ming Na had been crowned Fire Lady. It was all a blur, the wedding, the celebration after. It went on for days with fireworks and dances and displays of bending. The waterbender was always wherever she was supposed to be and she always slipped away before the bride and groom got too close.

Except for once.

Katara had begged off of dancing with Aang and ducked away from the festivities on the second night. She'd slipped into a washroom that seemed unoccupied and collapsed onto a tufted bench, dropped her face in her hands. She no longer worried about her makeup smearing. Suki really did know how to keep it perfectly in place.

"It is overwhelming, is it not?" Said a voice that was lovely and just familiar enough that Katara recognized it; she wished she'd chosen any other room in this damned palace.

Now

She stayed gone until after the sun had set and the moon had risen. Then, of course, she went to the water. A storm was brewing and the ocean was showing out, waves rising high and breaking angry. She went to the water because she too wanted to rage; she stripped and dove into the foam and the dark. She didn't fear it or the creatures swimming the depths. She knew she had a place there when it seemed like she never had a place anywhere else, not since her mother had died. Not since she'd fallen in love with the Fire Lord and watched him marry someone else.

She swam out and out, fought with the waves; she reveled in bending herself part of them. At some point, when she broke the surface and rose high as part of a swell, she thought she heard a voice, desperate, calling her name. She twisted in the water, looking back to the shore, and saw Zuko struggling into the water, the breakers he couldn't control hitting him hard. What the hell was he doing?

She lifted a hand out of the water to wave him back, but he seemed to move even more quickly, more determinedly through the raging ocean towards her. He was the most infuriating….He was going to drown. He couldn't burn away the ocean.

She dove under the water again, propelling herself through the dark not by swimming but by bending, came up on the crest of a wave and caught him up in it as well. "Have you lost your mind?"

Zuko shook his head, his long hair soaked and gleaming in the moonlight. He was breathless from his fight with the turbulent waters. "I saw you dive in and you didn't come back up."

"I'm a waterbender, Zuko! It's fine. I'm fine!"

"I didn't know!"

"Well, you really should have figured out that I'd be fine. Water is kind of my thing."

She propelled them back and dropped his royal highness unceremoniously on the beach. But he was graceful, damn him, and righted himself easily enough.

Snide, he retorted, "If I ever walk into a volcano erupting, do me a favor and don't assume I'm okay."

"Wow." Katara wrung the water out of her heavy hair while Zuko steamed himself dry. She didn't bother bending the water off of her skin and sarashi, out of her hair. She liked the feel of it, the smell of the salt. "I wasn't trying to hurt myself, Zuko, just...to clear my head."

He had that look again, the one from the morning. Inscrutable but also, also it worried her, twisted her up. "I still have more to say Katara."

"I can't make you feel better by hearing your apologies or your explanations, Zuko." She dismissed him, the past, all of it; she began walking back towards the house, towards Toph and Sokka and Aang. If they were close enough he'd stop talking, stop dredging up this painful history so much of which the others might suspect but didn't know.

Zuko caught her, turned her toward him. They were all fire and power sparking the storm that was threatening. "What I've been trying to say isn't an apology."

Then

Katara lifted her hands from her face and straightened to find Ming Na seated on the bench mirroring the one Katara had claimed. She'd likely been there when Katara had walked in but Katara hadn't even noticed.

"Weddings in the South Pole are...not like this," Katara eventually said, hoping the comment would also offer an excuse for her less than jubilant partaking of the revelries.

Ming-Na just looked at Katara, not allowing the words to brush away the awkwardness. "You marry for love in the South Pole."

Katara thought her heart might've stopped. "Y-yes. Usually."

The new Fire Lady had a dreamy sort of look on her face, witfl somehow. "Anyone you want?"

Katara's brows drew slightly together. Didn't she want to be Fire Lady? "I...if your family approves."

"And if they don't?"

"Well, you could still...it would be more difficult but…" Katara let it drift, feeling like she was having a conversation but not hearing everything that was being said.

"That is Very Different than the Fire Nation." Katara had no idea what to say to that, so she said nothing. Ming-Na didn't continue that line, but she also didn't simply let the quiet take over. "Do you plan to stay long?"

Katara shook her head slowly, forcing the action to be measured. She was not staying long and still she was staying longer than she wanted.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Ming-na sounded and looked genuinely sorrowful. "I'd hoped you and I would have time to know one another, to become friends."

Again, Katara had no idea what to say to this woman who'd married the man she loved, whose husband Katara had shared a bed with only a few hours before. Maybe she did need the washroom for more than getting away from the celebration after all. She thought she might be sick.

"He'll miss you."

Katara wanted to cry. To rage? She definitely did not want to have this conversation in a washroom with Zuko's wife. "He has you now."

Ming Na's smile was sweet. "He's a good man. I'll do everything I can to support him."

The words felt odd to Katara; she wanted to say: How about to love him? Will you be able to make him laugh when he goes to the darkness Ozai left him with? Do you know that he likes having someone on his left side he can count on? Will he be able to count on you?

"I'm sure..I hope..you'll be very happy together." Katara stood then. "Is there anything I can do for you, before I go?"

"You could stay," Ming-Na said, her smile odd and just a little cheeky.

"I, um, Aang wanted a dance. I need to find him before the musicians stop for the night. Uh, I'm sure we'll talk again soon. It was a…" beautiful wedding? She didn't know. Couldn't really remember. "Goodbye."

Katara left the next day. She never spoke to Ming Na again.

Now

Katara's chest rose with heavy breaths, emotion making it a struggle rather than the exertion of getting them back to shore. "Please, Katara, I have to say this." He was close, closer than she'd allowed him to get all day. Zuko's hand curled lightly around her ribs, his hand warm against her cool skin, solid and still though around them the world seemed to throb and thrash, all wind and water and furious change. "Katara, please."

It shot through her, that touch. Like lightning, she imagined, striking the ground: It turned sand to glass, caught fire to prairies and forests. First made her heart glass, then shattered it. "Fine. I'm standing still. I'm listening. What? What?"

"You forgave me before, for everything. Forgive me again."

"There's nothing to forgive. I told you that." She took a deep breath and it trembled but her hand was steady when she brought it up and pressed fingertips to his scarred cheek. "You were always in such a difficult position. It was never about forgiving you, Zuko. I've just...never been able to let you go." She shrugged helplessly, embarrassed color washing her cheeks as she let her hand fall. "And it isn't easier knowing, knowing there was a way I could have had a piece of you. Or that Ming Na wasn't...that you and she weren't…" She stopped talking, helpless with it. "Maybe its worse? I never made an effort with her. I ...couldn't stand to look at her. She had what I wanted. She had you."

"She didn't want me, Katara." Zuko caught one of her hands and pressed her palm to his cheek. "But she did want me to have you. I never let you go either."

Blue eyes shot back to his like lightning. "You were married. You had a child. And a..a few..or at least a... consort. I know. Sokka told me."

"No. I had a lover. I had," now he felt embarrassment staining his cheeks, twisting in his belly as he let her hand fall, "lovers. Mai and I...we...and there were a few others over the years. It was...Ming Na was a wonderful partner in raising Izumi and in working towards healing the Fire Nation. She and Lan became my friends and my family, but they were their own family too.

"It was lonely for me and I thought that would be my entire life. I'd never have asked you to give up a marriage and children. I know the Water Tribe doesn't respect Consorts or any form of an extra-marital relationship. But I never stopped loving you, cherishing every scrap of your life I heard about second or third hand."

Why was he breaking both of them this way? As relentless as the ocean, slamming their past and everything they still couldn't have at their feet. "Nothing has changed, Zuko. You're still the Fire Lord and I'm still a Waterbender." Close as they were, she had to lift her voice to be heard. Her hair whipped wildly, so she caught it back with one hand. "This just hurts, Zuko. Please."

"The world changed, Katara. You helped change it. You do every day." He tipped forward until their foreheads touched. "What I've been trying to say, messing up saying," his voice was raw and low, tangled with the wind so the words felt every bit as elemental, "is that you are the love of my life. I know we're different people now. I know it's been a long time since we knew everything about each other. That you have a life without me But if, if you were willing…. " He stepped back from her, dropped his hands from her waist.

"Before I came, I set things in motion. I've told the Fire Sages that I was going to ask you, that I was going to beg you, to honor me with a chance to know you again. And if you fell in love with me I'd ask you to marry me, to have children with me.

He didn't give her time to breathe between one shocking confession and the next. "And even though Izumi is the heir, if she doesn't want it, then our children would be next in line and they were going to find a way to live with it.

"But if they don't? If I had to abdicate the throne and serve as Izumi's regent until she's ready to assume the throne, that's what I'll do."

"Zuko-"

"If Ming Na had lived-We talked about separation. Even, even a divorce."

"Zuko!" Katara had been thrown by what he was telling her of the now, of his feelings and hopes, one after another, but divorce? That, that he'd planned to throw everything into total disarray for her, to risk his honor by getting a divorce, by pursuing a Water Tribe woman from the South?

"I was going to come to you three years ago. I was going to tell you everything. Ming Na and Lan, they supported all of it. We knew Izumi was a Firebender, by then. They'd get married and live in the palace and the three of us would raise our daughter. And if I could convince you to forgive me, then, I'd court you.

"I was tired of the lies and tired of Lan and Ming Na having to hide. Then she got sick. And I couldn't…It would have been too much to put her through and Izumi. Then there was the mourning period.

"I will never speak of it again if that's what you tell me you want tonight. But I had to do this. I had to say this: There won't be another wedding unless it's to you. There won't be another Fire Lady at my side unless she's a Southern Waterbender. There won't be any more children unless they have your eyes. We can live without each other. We have. But I hate it, Katara. I hate it more than I've hated anything ever."

She laughed thickly, her eyes shimmering with tears. "And you've hated a lot of things."

His mouth curled just a little and the storm seemed to settle, just a little. He took a tentative step toward her. "But I've loved you more and truer. I can make you happy, Katara. I can be the man you deserve."

"You've always been a man I'd be honored to have as mine, Zuko."

"Then let me try to make you love me again."

Katara lifted her chin and pressed her mouth to Zuko's; he could taste the saltiness of tears. He didn't know what it meant but he kissed her with years of missing this, of missing her, even though he was terrified this was just another goodbye. He wanted to deepen the kiss, to hold her tight and to him. But when she moved back he released her hand so she could slip away. He'd survive this and he'd know, at least.

But Katara brought both her hands up and cupped his cheeks. "I never stopped." Zuko smiled, that slow, sideways shy smile of his that broke her heart open. "I-"

He scooped her up, pulled her in, and kissed her hard and deep. When they broke apart she was laughing, her hair whipping in the wild wind; Zuko ignored it, peppered her face with kisses. "Zuko-"

"I know you'll be giving up so much to come to the Fire Nation. You are coming to the palace, aren't you? Or, if you want apartments in the city, I can get that for you."

"Zuko!" He stopped, looking up at her as he held her just high enough that it was necessary. "I'll stay in the palace as long as I can work in the hospital in the city. I'll still be traveling to help where I can while we..we..get reacquainted."

Slowly, he slid her down his body until her toes touched the ground. "And as Fire Lady-"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Katara cautioned.

"We're going to fight, Katara, but let's not start with this. I want you for the rest of my life. If that's not what you choose I will respect that, respect you but I want you to know I've made my decision."

"Definitely don't tell Sokka that."

Zuko was smiling when their lips met again.

A/N: Sorry for the Ming-Na spellings. I have some vision issues and decided I'd rather post these chapters than fix the inconsistency. I will eventually go back and straighten that out.

Finally, the song title is from lyrics in "Saint Honesty" by Sara Bareilles