AN: Eventually some originality returns to the work of WP. I said some – don't get too excited. I think next to 'Fluffy' this prompt was the one that had me most stumped. If I was doing a series of Hurt!Katara fics, then this one would have been a breeze. But seeing as Zuko is most definitely a man I could not take the easy route out. Curse you, Deffie. Curse you.
After going through a few situations in my head – each more ridiculous than the last – I decided to settle on a very, very, very ambiguous take on the prompt. In other words: Zuko will be whumped but it will have nothing to do with 'baby'. At all. 'Baby' will only get featured. If anybody has a problem with my disregard for the rules of prompts, rally with Deffie and try and find me.
I wish you good luck =D *scuttles off to go and hide*
Disclaimer: Doesn't belong to meeee!
Baby
"I hate the Fire Nation! I hate it! I hate it! I-"
The wailing, echoing voice of his wife broke off as she puked again, retching into the basin and making him shudder and wince. Awkwardly he hovered in the doorway to the lavish bathroom they shared, eyeing her bent-over form wearily. He had never been good at the comfort thing, and that much had not changed in recent years. He usually left the soothing – both physical and verbal – to his wife. But as she was the one currently in need of said comfort as she heaved and cursed he was thrown completely out of his depth.
Slowly and wearily the woman before him raised her head and gave him a weak glare. Even disheveled and pale and smelling of vomit she was still very possibly the most beautiful woman in the world to him. He knew from past experience (her slap from yesterday still stung slightly) that he could not say such a thing. And so he kept silent, staring at her and waiting.
"Your nation," she told him thickly, "totally sucks. No other place would ever have a sickness this messed up!"
"You're just not used to the idea of it," Zuko said, unable to stop himself from rising to the defense of the Fire Nation.
His words earned him a dark glare. "I'm used to the thought! I'm just not used to it ravaging through my body! I'm so sick and tired of having my dinner revisit me!" Shuddering suddenly, she leaned over the basin again. This time, however, nothing came up. After dry heaving for a while she just slumped to the ground dejectedly. "I hate you for bringing me here," she said miserably.
The Firelord just sighed long-sufferingly, having heard those words in varying degrees from her quite a few times in the three years since they'd been married and even more in the past few days since she'd gotten sick. Instead of replying he just made his way over to her and scooped her up gently into his arms, carrying her back to their bed and laying her down. She just sniffed and turned away from him, curling into a dejected ball. Rolling his eyes and biting back his irritation Zuko reached for the mug of tea he had placed next to the bed.
"Here." No response. "It's Uncle's secret recipe," he wheedled. "The one you really like."
He saw her perk up and smirked at his small victory. Slowly she turned again, sitting up and taking the tea from him. She took a small, tentative sip and then raised her eyebrows in delighted shock.
"But Iroh's still in Ba Sing Se…?" she questioned. At Zuko's affirmative nod she became even more confused. "Then how…?"
"I made it," Zuko responded a little tightly. At her wide-eyed shock he scowled even more. "I can make tea, you know!"
She just blinked and took another sip. And then another. Finally she looked up and asked, "How many tries did it take you to get it this near to perfect?" He scowled heavily and did not say anything, but she seemed to read his answer in his stony silence. Her expression softened and she placed the cup down before sitting up and wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him down next to her in the bed. "That was sweet," she murmured as she nuzzled into him. "Thank you."
His scowl turned into a smirk as she snuggled closer. Her breath was not the freshest despite the tea but it had been quite a few days since she'd been in such a happy mood with him and so he wisely stayed silent. Smugly he thanked his uncle for his good directions on how to make the tea. Who knew one of the old man's 'Getting Women' methods would actually work? Their peace, however, was short lived. Not three minutes later the door to their chambers flew open and the Avatar himself bounced in happily, all smiles and boyish enthusiasm despite the fact that he had left his teenage years behind him.
"Morning, Zuko!" he chirped brightly, folding himself into the settee at the bottom of their bed. "Morning, Katara! How're you feeling?"
Zuko had to snigger at the way Aang's huge grin faltered under the amazing power of Katara's glare. And she didn't even raise her head from where it was resting against his arm.
"Er… okay then…" The Airbender shifted rather nervously. "That's… actually why I'm here." He shifted his gray eyes to Zuko. "None of the books in the royal library really had any information about the disease and all the healers and sages are too busy with patients to sit down and explain…"
He trailed off hopefully and Zuko sighed, absently beginning to play with a wild lock of Katara's hair. It figured he'd be saddled with the role of storyteller.
"Well, nobody's really sure when the sickness started. For a long time it utterly perplexed our people because its beginning symptoms are identical to that of stomach flu. But this illness, if left untreated, spreads from the stomach to the lungs and starts eating away at the lining and, from what I've gathered, fills them with excess fluid and a whole lot of other nasty things. So in the old days this sickness claimed people left, right and center. By the time the healers realized that there was a new disease around many people had already died and many more had picked up the illness."
"But we were told it's not easily contagious?" Aang puzzled.
"No, nowadays it isn't. To get it in this day and age your blood has to mix with the infected blood of another." He scowled down at the lightly dozing Katara. "Which is why I wanted you to wear gloves."
She opened her eyes and glared at him. "I can't use my healing abilities if I'm wearing gloves," she snapped.
"You can't use your healing abilities at all if you're stuck in bed with the same illness you were so determined to help fight," he shot back at once.
"I didn't see him bleeding anywhere!" she protested. "And I wasn't bleeding either! I have no idea how it transferred!"
As Zuko opened his mouth to retort Aang hurriedly stepped in, knowing that if they began to argue it would be ages before he got the whole story. "But back then it was easier to get?"
Zuko and Katara scowled at each other for a moment longer before Zuko turned back to the younger man. "Yeah. Back then it was still airborne, or something. Or whatever actually causes the illness was plentiful. Even today, when we have medicine to destroy the illness, we don't know everything about it. Nobody can trace its origins further than the day it suddenly started appearing here. It's a complete mystery."
"Is that why it's not named?" the Avatar questioned next.
Zuko shrugged, causing Katara's head to rise and fall with his shoulder. She moaned her protest but didn't move. "Because they knew so little about it they couldn't find a name fitting. And so they left it until they could find out more. By the time they finally discovered the flower that proved to be the cure everybody had taken to calling it the Unnamed Curse. And they decided to just leave it like that."
"The worst I ever got in the Water Tribe," Katara piped up savagely, "was a cold. I come here and I get something that destroys my stomach and could potentially destroy my lungs and cause me to die from choking on my own bodily fluid."
"If you continue to take the medicine," Zuko replied in a growl, "then you'll be just fine."
Aang took this as his cue to leave, hurriedly making up some excuse that neither the Firelord nor the Firelady seemed to hear. As he scurried out the room and down the hall he had to shake his head in wonder at the great mystery that was the relationship between Zuko and Katara. About ten minutes after he left a very feminine shoe sailed through the open door, bounced on the opposite wall of the passage and then thudded to the floor with a satisfied smack. A moment later the Firelord retreated from the room, scowling and rather angry. He yelled something back into the chambers he had just backed out from, completely unaware of the blissfully ignorant servant that scurried around the corner. Just as the servant realized that she was not alone the missing mate to the previously flying shoe sailed from the room as well. Zuko gracefully leapt to the side to avoid it, and it instead rebounded and headed straight for the poor serving girl.
Said girl shrieked and promptly dropped the vase she was carrying. Zuko, alerted by the sound, spun around and caught sight of the girl being smacked through the face by his wife's shoe. Automatically, warrior instincts still perfectly honed, Zuko lunged forward and tried to grab the vase as it fell. The smooth material slipped through his fingers, though, and he was left to watch as it hit the floor and shattered. Because he hadn't anticipated just how much the vase would shatter, his hands remained outstretched in their futile attempt to stop the falling vase. A few moments later, though, he was cursing and pulling them to his chest as chunks of pottery flew everywhere, sharp and rather big. Only because of his desire to maintain his dignity did Zuko not put his suddenly cut and bleeding hand to his mouth.
The servant, for her part, just stood and stared, looking utterly dazed. But the sight of her Firelord's blood that assaulted her view when Zuko removed his fingers to assess the damage to his sliced hand seemed to snap her out of her daze. She dropped to the ground so fast Zuko was sure she had fainted. But even as he directed his gaze down to her in shock she began to move, swiftly picking up the pieces of vase as she howled apologies in every form a person could. Zuko, taken off guard by the situation, just stood and held his fingers over the cut on his hand.
As quickly as she had bent down the servant was up again, arms full of shattered vase. He opened his mouth to warn her to be careful with the sharp edges when some of the pieces slipped from her fingers. This time he managed to catch the falling objects and watched in amusement as the servant nearly died of embarrassment at her second slip and then utter mortification as she actually had to touch Zuko's hands to retrieve the broken shards from him. Before he could gruffly and awkwardly tell her it was okay she had bowed once more and had fled out of sight.
Shaking his head, Zuko just turned and headed toward his library and the stack of letters awaiting him. Only when he reached for his quill did he realize that blood had somehow dripped all across the back of his hand. He sighed and grumpily ordered an all-too-willing servant to fetch him a bowl of water. It was not, he decided as he waited in frustration, a very good day for him.
x-x-x
It was four days later when Zuko got subjected to a round of shock and surprise that quite leveled up to the incident with the servant and the vase. Between his usual duties, the added meetings scheduled daily to discuss the (thankfully dwindling) strain of the Unnamed Curse and his sick and cranky wife Zuko had had very little time to pay attention to mediocre things such as his daily eating habits. And, so, if he'd had a loss of appetite in the previous four days it was understandable that he had not noticed. And if he'd been slightly more tired than he usually was at the end of the day or not feeling completely one hundred percent fine, could one really blame him for putting it down to the abovementioned problems and pushing on with his day? Of course not. At times like the ones the Firelord found himself in, you had to ignore what you could and focus on the big things like not losing half your nation to disease and not getting yourself gutted by your wife.
However, as good as Zuko had grown at ignoring-and-prioritizing since his rein began, he could not ignore it when his breakfast decided to re-visit him.
Still, the Firelord's first reaction to his very undignified and rather sudden vomiting (after thanking Agni that nobody else was around, of course) was complete shock. And then, as he hung over the railing and stared at the mess he'd made in the flowerbed below him, the rut his brain had settled into so that he could focus only on the important things seemed to even out. And, suddenly, Zuko could see all the little signs he'd missed over the past four days. He'd steadily been growing sick, but his natural stubbornness and the happenings around him had made him refuse to acknowledge it. The Firelord suppressed a groan as another wave of nausea consumed him, gripping onto the railing as though it was his only support in life. By the way his legs were shaking, that assessment actually wouldn't be very far off.
Zuko's stubbornness kicked back: there was no way he could have caught the Unnamed Curse. The only person he'd come into contact with that had it was Katara. And both of them had been careful not to bleed around each other. Alright, yes, he'd bitten her lip when they'd made out the other night. But what, exactly, was he supposed to do when his wife suddenly found desire in her body that hadn't been there for many days? He wasn't a fool: he knew when to take what he could and be happy about it. And, anyway, he had not bitten her that hard. It was simply impossible that Katara's blood and his had mixed.
And if Katara hadn't given it to him, then there was no way he could have gotten it. Which logically meant –
Oh, Agni above. The servant. The falling vase. The sharp pieces. His cut. Damn it! Damn it all to Koh's lair and beyond!
Frustrated, the Firebender allowed his head to fall to the rails with a thunk. The impact barely registered: his head was throbbing already. He didn't remember Katara complaining of a headache, but boy was his head pounding. He lifted his hands from the railing to massage his temples and found the appendages to be shaking. At least, he reflected rather absently, his legs appeared to be holding him. Gritting his teeth, the Firelord grudgingly acknowledged that he'd have to see a healer. Honestly he'd rather eat Sea Prunes for a week but… Oh, how he hated admitting he was sick! If only –
"Firelord Zuko!" Said Firebender turned to the panting servant, thoughts of a healer driven from his mercifully clear-ish mind. "Sire, a riot has started in the lower town! Something about stolen medicine…"
Without another word Zuko pushed himself from the railing and whirled after the servant who was babbling something about leading him to the general of his guard. Alright, so he'd go to the healer later. After he'd sorted out the riot. That's what he'd do. Certainly.
And, if he didn't get to it that evening he'd simply go the next day. After all, there were many better things to do. Besides, he wasn't that sick.
x-x-x
He hated the Fire Nation. Honestly, he seriously hated it. Damn it and its stupid illnesses. Hadn't Katara said that the worst she'd gotten from the South Pole was a cold? He could handle a cold. A cold was an inconvenience and a nuisance but it did not make him unable to eat. A cold did not turn the images before his eyes hazy at inopportune moments. And a cold, while causing congestion, never caused heaviness like this in his chest.
Zuko couldn't breathe. He'd been trying to deny that knowledge since he'd awoken that morning. But no matter how much he told himself it would get better in a moment it really didn't. And while he'd still been able to inhale – albeit noisily and rather shallowly – at the beginning of the meeting now the oxygen seemed to fight to escape his lungs every step of the way.
And – yes, on top of all that – there was still his pounding head, his shaking body and his rolling stomach to deal with. The only parts of his body, it seemed, that were not rebelling against him were his feet. No, scratch that – they were turning numb because he was sitting on them. Brilliant. Some man from somewhere – Zuko seriously wasn't bothered about details – was saying something, captivating the attention of those present. Shutting his eyes against the light of the fire surrounding him, Zuko prayed for the earth to swallow him so he could lie down and sleep. He didn't care where it happened – he just wanted to close his eyes and…
The Firelord suddenly realized he was panting. And yet, even with his rapid breathing, darkness was flickering on the edges of his vision. There was some invisible, powerful thing atop his chest, and it was squeezing to the point of pain. And as the Firebender fought for breath the pressure increased, bringing more pain but no relief. Suddenly there was a hazy form before him – familiar but unidentifiable in his state. The form was bending before him and he got a flash of blue on white skin. Oh. It was Aang.
Oh wasn't it so funny? He was unable to take in air whilst an Airbender was right there in front of him. That was very funny. He should tell somebody about that.
This was the last coherent thing Zuko remembered thinking. After that it was just pain, throbbing, no oxygen and blackness.
x-x-x
Coughing. Terrible, hacking fits of coughing that seemed to do nothing but snatch away the little bit of oxygen he was mercifully being given. The light of the world burnt his eyes and sent his throbbing head into an overdrive of agony and so he kept his eyes closed. But even behind darkened lids he could see images that made no sense and that plagued him on and on without rest. He could not speak, could not move, could not breathe. The only thing that stopped him from giving in to the pressure and pain and senselessness was her. Her strong voice. Her cool hands. Her body supporting his shaking, aching one. She was there. And that was enough.
He could never quite grasp what she was saying, though, before unconsciousness claimed him again. When he was next allowed a brief moment of half-clarity, the cycle of coughing and pain would begin again.
x-x-x
Slowly, the sight of his ceiling came into focus. After a long moment he realized that his confusion was mostly attested to the fact that the light in the room was funny and his pounding head could not work out why. He let his head flop to the side and after a second he was able to attest that the light was weird because the curtains were drawn and only a small torch had been lit. How odd.
The next realization that trickled through was that the reason he was incoherent was quite possibly because he wasn't getting enough oxygen to his brain. That would also mean, then, that the strange ragged sound he was hearing was coming from his own attempts to draw breath. Blinking, he forced himself to take a deeper breath. To his relief, more oxygen obediently flowed into his lungs. It was not enough – not what he was used to getting – but it was enough and not nearly as painful as he'd expected.
Zuko's change in breathing seemed to be a trigger. No sooner had he gotten into the rhythm of breathing semi-normally than the bed beneath him shifted. Abruptly, he was looking up into the worried face of his wife.
"Hi." His voice sounded terrible even to his own ears.
Katara's eyes narrowed. "You," she snarled, "are an idiot! A stupid, moronic, idiot! You knew how the illness progressed! You sat right here, on this very bed, and told Aang about it! You kept hounding me about taking the medicine! And then what do you do? You go and let it progress until it's practically killing you! You're an idiot, Zuko! Idiot!"
A flare of indignation and anger flashed across the Firelord, but he didn't have the strength to do more than glare slightly at his ranting wife. Seeing he was not about to interrupt her Katara went into her fully-fledged rant mode, telling him off as though he were a retarded six-year-old. She only stopped when he began to cough, his lungs apparently not liking the extra work he was giving them.
"Easy." Soothingly she stroked his hair, inching closer so that she could be ready to lift him if he went into a coughing fit. "It's alright."
Only when he registered the coolness of her hands and the dampness of his hair did he understand the half-baked memories and his still-befuddled state. He frowned at the realization as Katara reached around him and brought a cup to his lips. He would have refused to drink if it weren't for the murderous look in her eye. As expected, the concoction tasted horrible. The flowered cure for the Unnamed Curse was definitely part of the brew – everybody insisted it was the only thing that smelt and tasted like rotting metal. Until he'd tasted it he'd thought that they were crazy: metal couldn't rot. After gagging down three mouthfuls of whatever Katara was forcing on him, the Firelord knew that if metal could rot, it would taste as dreadful as that.
He shut his eyes and Katara stroked his forehead again in soothing, rhythmic patterns. His breathing was easier but still a chore, something that was really beginning to irk him. And then the shivers came, and his frustration mounted.
"It's not fair." He could barely get the words out. "You didn't get a fever! I'm a Firebender! I shouldn't get fevers!"
The Waterbender shushed him, still stroking his forehead but now with a rather strange expression on her face. She looked… nervous. And strangely guilty. But he was sure his befuddled mind was just playing tricks on him.
"Zuko," she started suddenly. "I… er… when you were brought in…" She took a deep breath, seemingly needing it as much as he did. "I was confused by the fever, too. And by the fact that quite a few of your symptoms didn't match mine. Like how you were only sick for about three days and mine lasted longer. So I went to the healer and…"
She fidgeted. Zuko blinked. Silence reigned for a few moments while the Firelord tried to puzzle it out.
"You don't" – a raspy inhale – "have the Curse?" Katara shook her head, somehow not meeting his eyes even as she started to rub his chest soothingly. "But then… what? And…" He misread her nervous hesitation. "Contagious?" he gasped out.
Her soothing circles increased and she waited for him to breathe easier before she spoke again. "You have the Unnamed Curse," she told him quietly. "So relax: I can't get it unless you bleed on me." Zuko did relax a bit and she smiled slightly. "And you can't get what I have. Really. There's no way."
The Firelord's pounding, befuddled head was confused. "Y'okay?"
Katara fidgeted – actually fidgeted – and studied the blanket beneath her. "Yes." She dragged out the word.
"Cured?" Zuko insisted, befuddled and suspicious.
"Well… I… er… no." She blushed. "I… it…" The Water Tribe woman blew out a breath of air exasperatedly. "I'm going to be sick for a while still," she told Zuko's hands and not his face. "And, contrary to the name, it won't just be in the morning."
Zuko continued to look at her in incomprehension, even as she finally raised her eyes to lock with his. What was she going on about? Was she sick or not? Why hadn't she been cured yet? And why was that phrase she'd just used so familiar? Wait… Suki had used it once, hadn't she? Yes. Suki had been grousing about the misconception of the name that summer on Ember Island. The summer the Kyoshi Warrior had been…
Oh great spirits. Oh Agni. Sweet flames of the Firebending Masters.
The penny dropped, and Zuko was sure he'd stopped breathing again. His jaw nearly unhinged. "You're… you mean… you…" He gaped at Katara's stomach, expecting it to suddenly enlarge before his eyes.
"Zuko." Her voice was gentle, but the undercurrent she'd been hiding before was slipping through. And then her hidden emotions burst out and there was joy and pride and so much fierce love in her expression it rendered him speechless. "Zuko, we're going to have a baby."
A baby. Had she really just said baby? She had. She really had. He was going to have a baby. Some small explosion happened in the pit of his stomach and he felt as if he should be leaping around the room like a hyperactive toddler. Warmth that even he as a Firebender did not know raced across his aching body. At once, there were a million images rushing around in his pounding and still-confused mind. Most of them were memories of Sokka with his son altered to show himself and his unnamed, unborn child. His child. He was going to be a father.
And then that penny dropped too.
No. No! He was going to be a father? He couldn't be a father! He didn't know how! No, Agni, no! No, no, no!
"Zuko! Calm down! Zuko, you're hyperventilating. Zuko!"
He couldn't breathe again, and this time there was an absence of calm that told him to relax and just try and breathe as deeply as he could. No, this time there was panic. And the panic only increased as he caught the fear in Katara's eyes as his wife turned his head to look at her. Would that be what he'd be seeing in a few years? Would he terrify her and his child? Would she feel the need to run away too? Oh, Agni… what had he done?
He welcomed the darkness as it came rushing toward him.
What had he done?
x-x-x
The next time Zuko became aware he felt worse than before. Lingering images haunted the back of his eyes, and he had to open them to chase them away. He couldn't quite remember the full image or thought, but he knew the gist of them. He knew he'd turned to Ozai behind his own closed lids. He knew he'd made the most horrible things happen to some small child… After a few moments he surmised that his fever must have spiked over the unknown hours he'd slept for and robbed him of more of his strength while flinging terrible futures at his weary mind. Thankfully, though, while the pounding in his head was worse and his ability to move was even more deterred the pressure in his chest had lessoned. He could now breathe with a semblance of normalcy and without that much pain or coughing.
Just as that thought crossed his mind he began to cough, cursing the fates at their cruel humour. For a few heartbeats he was left to hack by himself, but as the fit continued a figure suddenly darted forward and gently hauled him into a sitting position, silently rubbing his back.
"Shh. It's alright. Easy. Just breathe."
Eventually the coughing ceased and Katara gently lowered him back into bed. She barely pulled the covers over him and then made as if to leave. Zuko managed to grab her wrist and feebly hold her back. When her eyes reluctantly met his they were met with confusion and bewilderment beneath the lingering haze. She sighed, resolve melting.
"I'll only stay if you promise not to get so excited again." Her lips thinned. "Do you realize you've been completely incoherent for the past two days?"
And then reality returned, and Zuko remembered what had caused him to give in to the darkness and relief of unconsciousness before. Oh, sweet Agni. He was going to be a father. His body tensed, and seeing his reaction and the dawning memory, Katara tensed too. Suddenly, she looked upset beyond words.
"You never said," she accused in a trembling voice, "that you didn't want kids. And seeing as the Fire Nation needs an heir I assumed… I mean… I thought…"
"Katara." It was forced but he was desperate. "Katara. I can't be… I don't…" He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. "You've seen Ozai," he finally wheezed out.
A beat of surprised silence "Let me get this straight." The Waterbender's voice was full of some barely-suppressed emotion that Zuko didn't have the strength to figure out. "You want kids, but you don't because you're scared of yourself. You think," she was accusing now, "that you'll somehow ruin their lives."
"Not think. Know."
There was a moment where nothing happened. And then Katara's hand brushed across his cheek in the dull parody of a slap. Zuko's eyes popped open in utter shock. The Firelady's eyes were on fire: smoldering, terrifying shards of blue that molded into an inferno.
"You're a moron," she snarled at him. "Look at Toph. Is she completely like either of her parents? Is she?" Zuko, shocked into silence, shook his head. "And Ty Lee? Mai? Heru? No. Nobody suddenly becomes like their parents overnight! Now I cannot speak about your mother because I have not had the privilege of meeting her. But I do know one thing." She glared daggers at her husband. "You, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, are not Ozai. And if you ever think like that again I will hang you out to dry like I did with Sokka. Try me!"
The two rulers stared at each other for a long while before Katara's gaze softened. "Zuko. You're going to make mistakes. I will, too. Being a parent doesn't have a theory or method or science to it. But you'll do so many right things that the mistakes will also turn to blessings, somehow. I love you. I know you. I trust you. You would make a good father." She swallowed, clasping his hand in hers and suddenly imploring him. "You are going to make a good father."
Zuko shut his eyes with a muted groan that had nothing to do with his illness. Not realizing this, Katara leapt up and returned shortly with the disgusting remedy, trying to hide her sniffing and failing. When he was done swallowing obediently he allowed Katara to put down the cup before he yanked her down beside him. She was weary to place her head on his chest, still conscious of his laboured breathing. But when he did not relent his tugs she cautiously laid her cheek on his shoulder.
They lay like that for ages. Or perhaps it seemed like ages only to Zuko's mind. All he did know was that in that time – however long it was – images sultrily danced across his closed eyelids. Images that were very unlike those that had plagued his fevered dreams over the previous two days. Suddenly he allowed his eyes to open and he looked at his wife.
"Katara?" She gazed up quickly, eyes watery.
"What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"'Tara. We're gonna have a baby." His first reaction to the news was back. He couldn't stop his smile. "We are going to have a baby."
She didn't miss the smile or the stressed word. Her answering beam was enough to light up the world. "Yes, love. We are."
And despite the lingering pain and doubt and the horrid images, Zuko was happy and assured.
AN 2: *remains in super secret hiding place*Why is it that I seem to be very keen to give Zuko respiratory ailments these days? That's just odd…