Katara was thirsty.
This was, not in and of itself, a damning realization: a turtle-duck egg sported higher chances of escaping a sordid ending as scramble than her under the midday sun. A water bender she was, impervious to the needs of humans she was not. So it was adorned in Fire Nation silk, eyeing her yunomi cup of hot tea with distaste and wondering when the kitchens would deign produce colder libations for their ambassadors, while Fire Lord Zuko brandished a half-finished map, that she realized she was quite utterly parched.
In a wide gesture, if somewhat awkward, Zuko started. "Updates, Councilor Jin?"
"King Kuei has agreed to meet again. Yu Dao has now resisted disbanding even longer than the Hu Xin provinces." A scraggly old lady, Councilor Jin was the newest member of Zuko's cabinet and most vocal defender of the Harmony Restoration Movement. Her father had led multiple Fire Nation sieges as a General so she seemed to operate on a bottomless pit of guilt, which lent her credence in Katara's eyes. "He, of course, will travel here with Avatar Aang. Your security is paramount."
Years of acquaintance and friendship with Zuko made Katara particularly adept in noticing the spectrum of his emotions despite his extensive training with Iroh in leadership. The flash of conflict darkening his face, the slight tremble to his hand, and a bead of sweat on his chin that he banished with a firey hand wave, and nervous chuckle, one the others would interpret as approval.
She knew better.
"And Mayor Morishita's missive?"
"Unanswered, Fire Lord Zuko. We will not respond to rabble-rousers. We must be principled where your father wasn't."
"We should answer, still. Maybe King Kuei can meet with him. We could call him here for an audience."
The Councilor proved herself a wise woman and did not scoff, but Katara, using her privileges as an enemy-turned-friend-turned-ambassador, set down her yunomi cup so gently the occupants of the table flinched.
She took a single breath, one that succinctly encapsulated her ire at Fire Nation colonies sitting on Earth Kingdom soil. The Restoration movement was to right all wrongs, especially the long-established colonies the Fire Nation had used to establish their occupation and entrench their claws into others' resources like leeches.
"Kindly, Lord Zuko, you're out of your mind."
The councilors' eyebrows flew to their aging hairlines.
Zuko leaned forward with crossed arms, eyes gleaming despite the lack of fire in the room. He refused to tower over his people the way his father did, and Toph once declared that the most intimidating thing about him was his tea-brewing skills so it wouldn't matter anyway, Sparky.
This was not the boy chasing them across nations. This was a man hardened by his family's evils and willingly embraced the crimes his nation doled out on others. Their friends' and her insistence otherwise, Zuko reiterated that he lived in permanent imbalance. Outside the palace, they were all friends. Within his capacity as Fire Lord, he owed their nations.
Despite her objections and hesitation in agreeing with Aang's monk philosophy, Katara understood this in a way even Sokka could not as the only one to have sought revenge and nearly fulfilled it. Though he could not remember her face, Sokka at least had a few years with their mother. She was left bereft of a mother, a community, because of the Fire Nation.
She continued. "I read the letters. The Mayor is a presumptuous man who thinks comparing you to your father will change your mind. In fact, where was he during the war? Does he want to remain complicit in Fire Nation occupation?"
Councilor Jin nodded vigorously. Smellerbee, who's presence in today's meeting was more curious than Toph in shoes, grinned so wide that her teeth shone in the dim lights.
Zuko narrowed his eyes, rapt and curious. His hair was tied into a topknot, a few strands falling over his forehead in protest of orderly Fire Nation traditions; his robes were layered and dark, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she should have asked Yagoda about elements messing with homeostasis because how in Tui's name was he not sweating buckets. The scar over his face crinkled in deep thought.
Her tongue was stuck in her mouth. She really was parched and itched to leave. Her father and Kanna were waiting for them in the Northern Water Tribe.
The tea was scalding and accelerated her sweat levels to astronomical heights but allowed her tongue to loosen and finish the rest of her speech. "My advice is to stick to the cabinet's plan. All of the leaders support you and it won't come to battle. We just need to extradite all of the soldiers before moving the civilians."
Zuko gave her a single nod. Next to him, Mai looked bored, though Katara had come to respect the woman's ability to handle mercurial cabinet members in her own way.
Unfortunately, Katara was not as blessed.
"And who are you to speak on the difficult matter of resettlements?" Intones the new voice of her headaches.
She gave Councilor Yang a side-eye. "Zuko already—"
"Fire Lord Zuko may tolerate your eagerness but you know little about our economy. Sudden influx of civilians and loss of jobs post-war will plunder us into scarcity. As…righteous as this endeavor is," Councilor Yang's sneer was a sorry imitation of Sokka's new hawky, "the Fire Nation's loyalty is to our own first. Leaving us decrepit for a foolish impulse to hasten our ostracization will destroy us."
"It's not ostracization, it's reparations. Three years after the war, Fire Nation soldiers still walk on land that is not theirs!"
"A hundred years of war is not undone in three years. You are young, Lady Katara—"
"Yes, thank you for that observation—"
"—and Fire Lord Zuko is gracious enough to host you here on the treasury's expenses—"
"Oh, fine dining truly makes up for the slaughter of my people—"
"But I think your haughty crusade against our people—"
"Crusade! I am here in service of Lord Zuko, you enormous, pompous—"
"Enough!" Zuko stood up, hands splayed against his latest enemy of choice: wooden tables. Smoke rose from his fingertips. "Meeting adjourned."
Councilor Omori, representative of the Ministry for Education, bowed his head. His beard grazed the heating table. "We still haven't gained your explicit approval, Fire Lord Zuko."
Zuko deflated while Katara jettisoned a spiral of water at his hands before they made mulch out of another piece of furniture and the palace carpenter quit his job. It splashed Mai, who simply rubbed her eyes at the contact but her clenching fingers promised a verbal evisceration after.
"Right—er, Councilor Jin, confirm with the Ministry of Transportation and Smellerbee's group for King Kuei's and Avatar Aang's security plans. Councilor Yang, draw up plans for migrant resettlement across the districts. Meeting adjourned."
A collective sigh and spill into the parlor later, Zuko and Smellerbee waited for Katara to bottle the sweat in the room and lob the stinky orb out the window. After Councilor Jin, the cleaners were probably her only fans in the palace.
"Katara." Zuko started, a weary smile growing on his face. Mai loosened his topknot. His hair was less shaggy now, usually cut only by the most practiced of barbers until recent budget cuts motivated him to shed with extraneous services. Hence, Katara's side duty in cleaning. "I write to my uncle often about how grateful I am to you and Toph, even though she charges a piggyback ride per consultation, but sometimes I think your temper is worse than mine."
"I am not temperamental," she protested calmly.
The sparrows outside shrieked and left the gardens.
She delicately plucked at the hem of her top. "I get stuff done. Tui, Zuko, your council moves at the pace of a sea prune. In the Southern Water Tribe this would've taken one day instead of a week to negotiate."
"Yeah, well, considering five assassination attempts on me in three years, the unfortunate size of the Southern Water Tribe because of us, and your father's word as law, a week is a miracle."
Self-deprecation crept into his tone all too regularly. She bit the inside of her cheek. Concluding that it was best to ignore it and keep her anger funneled at the drudgery of bureaucracy, she pointed out: "Your word is law too."
A curtain of hair fell over his eyes. "I'd rather it not be."
"I will hit you with more water if you say that again."
The palace guard behind them hissed. A Ty Lee sister—Katara couldn't remember who, half of them had joined the Kyoshi warriors over the years—giggled.
Mai fiddled with her dampened sweeping sleeves. "About that, master waterbender, can you fix your aim?"
She bristled. "It'll dry."
"I'll throw a dagger through your skirt and pin you to the wall."
"Scandalous, but keep it for the bedroom." Smellerbee cut in. Zuko sunk into a fantastic imitation of a red lily while Mai glared. "C'mon, the ship's waiting."
Katara waved a hand. "It'll be fine, whenever him and Suki meet he disappears for days."
"And I have a boyfriend to visit, so let's go."
Mai curtsied and left without a word. Ty Lee clone's choice of farewell was a kiss on the cheek and extortion of a promise that Katara returned before a rainy winter arrived. When Zuko bid her a stiff goodbye and expressed regret at his inability to escort her to the shores, she promptly reminded him that as Fire Lord he had better things to do and assassinations to avoid.
Sokka and Suki stood hand in hand at the pier, the latter having gained permission from Zuko for this oh-so important visit her father uncharacteristically called for in the Northern Water Tribe. Smellerbee was to be dropped off in one of the Fire Nation colonies in Earth Kingdom on the way. The stray thought that they should visit Toph crossed her mind, but the girl's latest shenanigans with her new metal bending academy had left Katara as target practice during her last visit. Her muscles still ached from the descent of twelve of Toph's minions flinging bits of metal at her.
Her brother seemed to have fared well after that episode, still roguishly good-looking (Suki's words), hilarious (Toph's), and a marginally less messy young man who smelled like blubber on a good day (Katara's). Sokka's travels had slowed after their father announced him as the next Southern Water Tribe chief, and he left only to market his designs, consult inventors, and build. His visit to the Fire Nation was shorter than Katara liked, cut short by their dad's summons.
"Aha! The women in red finally make their appearance."
Suki elbowed Sokka in the stomach. "All the women here wear red."
"Yes, but the women around me have a face paint kink."
"The only one with a kink for paint is you."
"Katara's paint-less." Smellerbee pointed out, to which Sokka immediately launched into an exposé of his sister's dashing days before a boring ambassador as the Painted Lady, to which Suki came to her honorable defense as the greatest form of entertainment at the palace in recent weeks, to which Katara preened at being valued more humorous than the King of Puns. The shipmaster threatened to leave without them and they scurried onto the deck.
Less than an hour later, the Fire Nation skyline embraced the horizon as the sun pulled the lid of a dark sky down. With it, Katara felt her body blessedly cool and water prickle at her fingertips. She spent quiet moments alone looking at the waves. Their pushing and pulling sped up as she breathed. It was difficult to remember a time when her limbs were so misaligned with the element, though her heart always beat as one with the water and moon, even when the rest of the tribe thought her an oddity.
Suki and Sokka cooed at each other in a corner over dinner. Having wrangled an agreement to borrow Hawky from Sokka, Smellerbee penned a long letter, presumably to her boyfriend by the look of her dopey face. The woman had softened over the years, whereas Katara felt she herself had become hard.
It was not as if she liked being the wet blanket in her newly solidified social circle.
The split with Aang was mutual: the transition from his boyhood years to early adulthood proved them incompatible. He was her best friend yet part of her wondered where the happy ending for her was.
Zuko had Mai. Sokka and Suki revolved around each other like Tui and La. Ty Lee charmed King Bumi's apprentice at Zuko's first, and only, official visit to Omashu, and her grandmother regularly wrote to her about her latest escapades with Pakku. Whenever Zuko groaned at an Uncle Iroh letter, Katara knew it was because of his latest dalliance with a female rival shop owner ("He's ranting again about that new drink called coffee, Katara, and spent only one line advising me about New Ozai Society.")
Aang's increasingly frequent visits to Toph's academy was also hair-raising (Sokka was sure the bald-headed monk finally found the one to tear him from his monastic ways: "How else is the Air Nation going to rise again? Through Appa?").
Well. She had her work and a world to help rebuild. At nearly eighteen, she was a world-renown waterbending Master, a healer who rivaled Yugoda's traditional methods, and a peacemaker between former enemy lands. It took less than a year to move her status as the Avatar's girl in the eyes of the people to third on her list of titles, not that titles mattered at any rate, and another two years for the Water Tribes' ire at potentially losing favor with Aang to settle to a simmer. After they split, Aang had repeatedly assured the leaders that Katara and Sokka were his family to the point Pakku had asked Kanna when she had adopted a grandchild.
She was happy. There was no need to risk another Jet or even Aang, as kind and gentle as he was.
As a particularly large wave crested to her gentle sways, she absently registered a hawkish screech and Sokka's subsequent yelp.
"It's from Dad. I'll send him a message we..."
Sokka never trailed off. In fact, one of Toph's projects was to think of ways to lodge metal in his throat that kept him breathing yet closed his vocal cords as needed.
"Sokka?" She turned to watch Suki, equally concerned, touch a sinewy, battle-hardened hand to his elbow.
A wavering smile grew on her brother's face at the letter in his hands. "Dad's getting married. He wanted to give us a heads up about his Northern Water Tribe fiancé."
Immediately, the two turned to Katara.
She did not explode. No. She kept the waves moving behind her, a heavy rock slowly making purchase in her stomach.
Despite the water, she was thirsty again.
Sokka laughed nervously to fill the silence. "Our family has a thing for Northern Water Tribe folks, Suki. Maybe Katara will find someone there too."
The wave behind her shimmied. Suki sent Sokka a warning look.
"Why the worried faces?" Katara bit out, turning her back to them. "Good for Dad."
Good for dad, moving past mom. La, was she the only one who bore her mother's memories?
"Katara."
"Nothing against him, really. He missed a lot of our childhoods. Maybe he'll have children he can be with more often." Unfair, and she really didn't hold it against him anymore, but it had been a sweaty day full of irritating meetings.
"Katara." The mirth was gone from Sokka's voice. He had this habit of being absolutely ridiculous ninety-percent of the time, and then becoming the leader she couldn't naturally be when time called for it. It was an eerie feeling to witness the command of future chiefdom on his face. She saw the hints of her father in him and wondered when she would stop chasing the shadow of her mother in other women and see it in herself. "I'm going to get some jerky from the kitchens. Come with me."
Damnit.
"Your muscles are plenty fine to carry it by yourself," she sniffed. His look pulled her forward anyway. After the stairs sunk them past Suki's concerned eyes, Sokka started.
"It's not Dad's fault."
She closed her eyes, feeling the tiniest bit guilty. "I know that."
"You're not acting like it."
Okay, a lot guilty. "Does anyone want to remind me how, despite being younger than you, I took care of you all? And I would do it again."
She opened her eyes to Sokka's softening ones.
"You're so good, Katara. An annoying goody two-shoes who took off in paint to save people who didn't even like us. Every time Toph giggled about how high-strung you could be, I remembered how quickly we'd fall apart if you weren't there. Ozai's battle against Aang would've gone down in the books as woops, a bunch of kids and giant flying bear found dead in a cave from starvation, if it weren't for you. You beat Azula when Zuko and Iroh couldn't."
"Only after he weakened her. She was already psychotic," she clarified, but a smile was beginning to grow on her face. To be and cherished and loved instead of admired was a rare thing in her wandering lifestyle.
"Nah, you blasted her with a water cannon. I forget that you're only seventeen sometimes."
"Who was implying I could get married just a second ago?"
"It's not a half-bad idea. No one's good enough for you, obviously, but would it be so bad to depend on someone?" At her scathing look he backtracked. "Not that you need someone to find meaning or whatever, I just...look. With Suki, all my battles feel easier. Whenever I'm down I think about you, Dad, and Suki, and how much I have to protect, and she's there to help me work through things. I want you to have better than I have."
There were multiple jibes on her tongue to send his way, when did she become like Toph? Hiding vulnerabilities with sarcasm?, stopped only by the earnestness on Sokka's face. He looked at Suki often with this expression. It was one she daydreamed a man would one day look at her with.
The desire to skewer him into jerky slowly dissipated.
"I appreciate it. Find me someone if you want. But tell Dad I won't be there for another month. I'm going back to the Fire Nation." She continued down in their long overdue search of jerky. Her brother attempted to grab her by the arm; an amateur mistake as she pooled lingering rivulets from the ocean's spray in her clothes to her arm. His hands slipped.
"C'mon, Katara! Something big's happening in the Water Tribes. Hoko can handle the meeting."
Hoko was the competent and charming Northern Water Tribe ambassador. He was also a bit of a misogynistic jerk that kept dodging her repeated challenges to spar.
"Hoko tried to waterbend with soy sauce. Aang has enough on his plate with the colony issue. If someone tries to assassinate Zuko, they'll need me."
Sokka grew serious again. "Who's trying to off my boy this time?"
"I don't know, it's a possibility. Mai's father sent a gardener to kill him with an orange. Luckily was there to cure him of his allergies last year."
"You're a terrible liar."
"It's the truth!"
Mai's father was currently on trial, though under Ozai's reign he would have been roundly executed (Aang was in the process of convincing Zuko to banish death penalties altogether, Katara was not entirely convinced attempted assassins going after her friends deserved that leniency).
"Alright, alright. Don't say I never do anything for you, but you better return with a smile on your face. I'll send all the details of Dad's new girlfriend when I can." Thankfully, Sokka had a habit of writing once in a week with at least three oily jerky smudges, so she had no worry that her eyes would be burnt by grisly retellings of her dad's romance.
She was not ready for that.
After an expeditious letter to Aang that interrupted Smellerbee's love letter affair with the colony boy, and a ride on Appa, the next morning deposited the two former members of Team Avatar past the jagged volcano edge and in the center of Caldera City. Aang had departed the Earth Kingdom at the same time as King Kuei, whose actual bear of a pet refused to travel by air bison and thus would arrive by ship in a few days' time.
A mousy emissary greeted them, tutted at the unforeseen return of Lady Katara, which would require another guest room to be set up, extra meals to be planned for, a female attendant...
"I'm not a Princess. I can stay in any hotel."
The emissary spluttered as though he expected his waffling to send her back to sea. "Of course not! The Fire Lord will not have it said by your father that the Chief's daughter was treated any less than her status requires."
A status of an ambassadorial sort, and if that were the case, then her old room was fine and the fussing unnecessary. For that matter, had the Fire Lord been informed? Before she could ask, Aang tugged her into the garden to watch the turtle-ducks. They used to spend a lot of time in this garden: a private one for members of the royal family that Zuko offered them during their early stages of dating for private walks and hand-holding away from palace whispers.
Katara found it to still be a place she frequented during her visits here. She observed Aang with a healer's eye and friend's fondness. The bittersweet breakup never tainted the sweet beginnings of their relationship, and he grew into a fine young man, if still gangly and ebullient to an irritating degree.
"They look smaller! Katara, are you sure Zuko's feeding them?" Aang gesticulated wildly to a turtle-duck wading towards them.
"They're babies!" She tried not to coo. It was impossible, they were adorable. "Remember the eggs from last time? They hatched. The mother turtle-duck is over there."
The turtle-duck in question squeaked and lifted a wing over the head of a tiny one. Aang leaned forward. "Aw, watch her clean the babies. Reminds me of you mothering us when we were camping out."
She suppressed a wince. Aang meant well and she appreciated the compliment but it was a statement that repeated so often with negative connotations that it reminded her of all her shortcomings and anger at the others seldom helping without her explicit asks.
"Don't say that. We dated. It makes it weird."
Aang laughed. It sounded like bells in the wind or penguins sledding. "Okay, okay. Maternal, then."
A thought occurred to her, on this random day, that only faintly did during their sojourns around the world.
"Aang…you… had parents, right?"
The boy blinked. A faint tinge of red creeped up his cheeks. "You're the healer. You know how…all that works."
"Right." She cleared her throat. She had helped give birth to at least a dozen babies over the years. "Do you remember them at all?"
He peered at his rounded orange shoes. Having the blessing of controlling air and the title of Avatar meant he escaped the whims of Fire Nation fashion.
"I saw them once in a while. Our families weren't organized the way you all are. All Air Nomad children were sent to the temples, girls to the Western and Eastern Air temples, and boys to the North and South. The monks collectively raised me…but Gyatso was…"
He sighed from his little bubble of cooling air. She scooted towards it, craning her neck to feel the embrace of gentle winds against his forlorn words.
"Gyatso was the closest to you." She said quietly. He nodded and met her with round eyes and a harder jawline than she had ever seen. It seemed he grew two inches taller every month and now he was as tall as her.
"Yeah. Not a day goes by that I don't think of him."
She thought of her mother. His eyes flickered to her neck and she knew he thought the same. Perhaps it was the mother turtle-duck flapping around her young-ins or the recent discussions of family and partnership that lingered in her mind that propelled her next question.
"If you have kids, would that change?"
He laughed again. "When, Katara, when. I haven't found another Air Nomad other than me. I have to keep my line going or we'll be lost forever to history."
She frowned. "Do you want to?"
A small pause. Then, "Yes. I thought about it when we were dating. I'd be both dad and an Air master, but with you as their mother they might have ended up as water benders too, so we'd start a new mixed culture. I looked at some of our old books and it wasn't impossible: plenty of people in the past intermarried. Remember the cave of two lovers? But impending war and fears that bending might die out kept people to themselves."
Katara believed it more complicated than that yet opted to keep it to herself. Aang's fresh and simple way of viewing the world taught her that realism needn't be so ugly all the time. It also never surprised her that as genial and boyish Aang was, he had a sort of confidence that enabled him to initiate and say things openly, like about their nonexistent children. His infectious smile finally wormed its way onto her.
She placed a hand over his bald head and grinned. Once he towered over them, this would be harder to do.
"You think our kids would wear yellow or blue?"
"Yellow!" He puffed up his chest. "There's not enough waterbenders, sure, but come on. Blue in the temples? Temples are places of light!"
She thought hard about this. "Blue when they stay in the water tribe and yellow in the temples."
"No, we have to represent. What if we did both? Or, oh, I know—green."
She smacked him upside the head at his riveting knowledge of the color wheel. He yelped louder than warranted and dramatically rubbed his temples. "Toph would skin you for that."
His cheek dissipated with a stiffening stance. He bowed. "Fire Lord Zuko."
She followed his line of sight and despite having seen him mere days ago, having sat in his presence countless times for a few weeks per year, and at a loss as to what changed the ocean and moon in her, but she paused and a single thought verbalized behind her eyes.
La, he is beautiful.
He was shirtless.
In actuality, it was more than that—it had been years since she had seen his hair completely free of ornaments and his chest bare. She had even touched him, having planted her hands over him in desperate efforts to heal Azula's lightning strike, and it wasn't the first time seeing him like this: he was always one to train Aang with sompot chong kben pants (Katara knew what they were called now a la Ty Lee). But now he was a leader of the world's powerful nation, nineteen years old and able-bodied, and the sun, as Agni's medium, simply blessed its charge.
So naturally, as a healer, she attributed it to two things: hormones and exhaustion. It was not like she hadn't registered that he was attractive in the past. War simply made it difficult to think through those things at all, which she once so directly told Aang.
"Fire Lord Zuko." Katara offered with oratory competence.
"Uh, Katara. Welcome back." He said with equal oratory competence.
The Kyoshi Warriors lingering behind him exchanged curious glances but she was too busy reeling from the sudden mirage that equally as quickly faded away. After a few blinks, he was back to normal—brooding, prone to temperament, and the best Fire Lord in decades, surely centuries.
She bowed her head in apology. "I should have sent a letter but Appa would have arrived faster than a hawk anyway."
Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, dark eyebrows stitching together in concern. The hand holding both halves of his dao swords clenched. "Did something happen? Did the Earth Kingdom pull the water tribes into this issue? Hoko received a letter from the Northern Water Tribe last night confirming their neutrality with the Fire Nation colonies issue."
The North Water Tribe seldom disappointed in their politik. Katara had argued with Pakku multiple times over this point and part of her admitted his perspective had credence: decimation of the Southern Water Tribe was too fresh for them to engage at all even if the rest of the world agreed that the colonies needed to disband and risks were relatively moderate.
It was worth mentioning that the Southern Water Tribe would not have been what it was in the first place, had their Northern brethren not abandoned them at all.
"No, no, I just thought…it'd be better for me to be here." She gestured to him and his sweaty state. "Sorry, were we intruding?"
He seemed to only now notice his state of undress and did precisely nothing, as though there was nothing wrong with the scenario.
Which there wasn't, really.
"No—Piandao had me resume sword training due to possible unrest."
At this, she tilted her head. New Ozai Society was crippled after Mai's father, Ukano, was arrested, but if a master swordsman thought there was still risk…all the better that she was here.
"Master Piandao is here?" Aang bounced on the balls of his feet. "Can we go see him?"
He nodded and called forward a Kyoshi warrior. "I have a meeting with Councilor Jin now but he should still be in the training courtyard."
Aang leapt forward and made for the exit leaving Katara to follow on his heels. Zuko stopped her with an outstretched arm.
His eyes, usually muted in comparison to rich gold headpieces, glittered in the absence of heavy adornments.
"Are you sure everything is fine?"
His question was one borne of years on the throne coping with post-war scheming and rebuilding. It was not one meant to dig into whatever ailed her heart.
She responded in kind. "Everything is fine, but thank you. No update on the Water Tribes. Sokka sends his regrets and a pack of overaged jerky."
"So he found another hawk, huh? Your future sister-in-law didn't scare that one off too?"
"He told you?" She squeaked. Sokka had recently shared his intention to propose despite every avid news reader aware Suki was irrevocably in love with him and was to marry him years ago. "How do you have time to read our letters?"
He waved a hand, the tension gone from his face. She suppressed whatever errant part of her urged her to lower his eyes.
"Obviously. What else is a Fire Lord under lockdown supposed to do?" He raked a hand through his hair. "Plus, I'm losing my best warrior."
"You have three Ty Lees."
"Somehow that doesn't make me feel better."
She laughed. "Your father would have called off his plan if seven acrobats leapt at him in one go."
He chuckled with her and approached close enough to set a hand on her shoulder like he usually did.
Only now, his fingers twitched. The space between them remained.
He was nothing like Jet. Where Jet would have winked, swaggering towards her with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was, Zuko gave her a small smile and curled the slightest bit inward. Where he had stood tall in front of the whole city, sharing his platform with Aang in a celebration of unity and friendship, he still hung his head low whenever she stood in front of him, as if saving her life didn't fully repay his debt to her, if there ever was a debt after Yon Rha.
"Thank you for coming." He said. His voice took on a formal edge she despised. "I don't think I've ever…thanked you."
Thanks. All she ever wanted from people as their price for her serving them at beck and call was a sincere thank you.
"You just did." She tilted her head, deciding to relax despite the rock that weighed her gut for the last day and a half. "For what?"
"No—I. For the last few months. There is so much I need to do and the list of people I owe grows longer and longer. Rebuilding should have been the easier part."
"Stop thanking me." Her mouth felt dry again. "I forgave you. You helped me and the rest of the world is waiting for you, so we will do this correctly or not at all…as long as you want my help."
He smiled. "Of course I do."
The sun's rays shifted again, and within it, something in her.