Daylight Moon
Prologue, Part III
113 AG
In her faintest, most absurd imagination, he comes by before the wedding.
Snow falling all around
Sneaks out to see her, their oldest habit, when they were teenagers pretending to be just that, miscellaneous in the moonlight and their old Southern Raider uniforms, t. His hair still shaggy and undone from its topknot, her hair loopies out, laughing in the window, down the sloping rooftops, breathless in the night; the best of friends and nothing else; one engaged, and it wasn't her, when she still wrote him letters (easy letters, simple letters) in the months and years between.
But, of course, he didn't.
In the whirl of weeks leading up to the main ceremony, Zuko blended wordlessly into the crowd of friends and family around them: Sokka and Suki and their ever-growing, shrieking brood of five kids and counting; Toph mercilessly teasing Aang like he wasn't 26 and a good head taller than her now; Aang, robed in his usual layers of orange and yellow, who after dinner one night clasped her hands earnestly between his and looked her steadily in the eye, their old love long-turned into an easy friendship again, by time and distance if nothing else, and offered up a gentle "Congratulations, Katara. I'm happy for you," before she had laughed and thanked him just as earnestly, then asked him about his newest findings on a newfound Air Bison species, a topic he happily dove into.
The last time she saw the Fire Lord, he was just one small flash of red in the enormous crowd cheering around them as she and Nonraq, the ground white and perfectly even beneath them, exchanged the ceremonial cups, and her new husband bent down to place a light kiss on her fingers.
Early the next day, the Fire Lord was called back home for a general's emergency. There were so many emergencies in their line of work, Toph had remarked at breakfast, and Katara wondered if her friend could sense the weariness of her entire body agreeing.
The feeling in her chest, once familiar as the memory of an old summer day, rose, one last time, and disappeared.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading y'all! This marks the end of the prologue, next chapter the actual story arc begins... stay tuned.
A few S/O's:
- to leelow for beta'ing and threatening to leak HAHA if i didn't get over myself and just release it :')
- to Naladot's beautiful story "poetry of politics" ( s/10427723/1/poetry-of-politics) which really got me thinking about World Leader!Katara and World Leaders!angstyZutara in the first place. Def top 5 fanfics I've read