Starts off as Zuko's perspective and shifts in the middle, and again near the end .
He had seen the look on her face when the maid had called her away. It destroyed him. Ming kept talking to his right, and he played along, laughing at her small jokes about fire nation politics and trying to seem as if he were not itching to bolt right after the waterbender. She thought she'd hidden her discomfort from him, but he knew her well after all the time they'd spent together in this very room, manoeuvring the tricky politics that surrounded the fire nation's rebuilding efforts. Zuko had caught Katara's eye as she was introduced to Ming. The sudden emptiness in them was nothing short of debilitating. She had to understand why he was going to marry her, but she would also have also 'understood' that Zuko didn't need her anymore. They'd barely talked since she arrived, their only real conversation turning into an argument. His apology hadn't changed very much, because the thing that he'd said was still fresh in both their minds.
He hadn't even needed to think about the question she'd posed to him. He did not love Ming, and he never would. He chose her because there was nobody better that he could pick. He did it out of duty and a lack of time; he chose her because nine months ago Katara had announced that she was pregnant with the Avatar's child. There was nothing else he could do, so he gave in to his council's long-standing demand that he marry and produce an heir. Maybe Katara didn't know exactly why she was upset, but he knew that the feeling of being shattered from the inside out was named heartbreak. She could keep denying it all she wanted, but he recognized the look in her eyes very well. He'd made the same face on numerous occasions. The first was when she left his palace with Aang, the second was when she told him she was pregnant with an impersonal letter, and now, after he'd received her most recent correspondence and had to realize that it wasn't just a sick joke played on him by La.
Ming left after breakfast, saying that she had just missed him lately, and that she had to go attend to some other business for now. He nodded, they embraced, and she left.
Zuko had all but sprinted halfway across the palace to Katara's room, stopping for only a moment to wonder if this was really a good idea. Before he'd even made up his mind fully, he was knocking, and he didn't have a chance to catch his breath before she answered the door, fully expecting him, conflicting feelings written all over her.
"Come with me."
And she did.
"Then would you still have picked the Avatar?"
Katara was confused, though at the same time she knew exactly what he meant by that question. Her brows knitted together. The look on his face was unreadable. His hands were resting on his lap, and she could see the tension in his knuckles. She wanted badly to reach out and soothe his worries. The waterbender looked directly into his eyes, unfazed by the fierce amber.
"I told you. I was never able to pick anybody but him."
Zuko stood up, and she could feel the anger radiating from him.
"Yes you can, even now, you can!" He stopped suddenly, sighing. He looked very defeated, and very tired.
She had known; she was just in denial the whole time. She'd never stop being in denial, and that was why she shoved the way her heart jumped in her ribcage down.
They stood at the edge of his private garden, the quacking of the turtle ducks filling the silence around them.
Katara started to speak. "Do you remember…?"
"I do." The Fire Lord often relived the secrets they had spoken that night. He turned to look at her, really look, like he'd avoided doing for a week now. He found himself staring at somebody changed. Katara had bags under her eyes, and her face was no longer in perpetual smile-mode. The magnificent blue in her eyes hadn't been diluted, but they no longer reflected her raw emotion like they used too. Of all of the Gaang, time seemed to have hurt the waterbender most. It was strange, because despite their ages she had been taking care of them, and if anything she should have only grown more capable in time.
But years of denial and resistance tended to wear down on a person's spirit. He could see that clear as day, written on the fine lines on her face that hadn't been there before, and the shadow of a frown.
"I'm sorry, Katara."
She lifted her head. "For what?"
He didn't know what he was apologizing for, really. There were too many things. One was not being brave enough to steal her away from a life he knew she wouldn't enjoy, for not writing her back because it hurt him too much to keep imagining her with the Avatar, or for having to wear this stupid golden band on his finger and pretend it was all okay.
Zuko stood frozen, feet rooted to the ground. Regret filled him from head-toe, and a slow grimace lifted up the corners of his mouth.
"I don't know why I took you here."
He threaded his fingers through his hair awkwardly, but never severed the contact they'd established.
Never once did either of their gazes wander, he looked purposefully into the troubled sea of her eyes; he knew that there could be a storm raging in them, or a serene peace in rapid alternation. Katara broke away first, walking past him to the stone bench, underneath the shade of the apple blossom tree. She twirled one of the pale flowers between her fingers contemplatively. She changed the subject.
"So why did you choose to marry Ming after all?"
Zuko decided there was no longer any point in hiding the truth of the matter, not now, when the time they had left was so short. Maybe Katara didn't know it, but Aang had finished his business much earlier than expected, and was on his way back to the fire kingdom. He'd arrive within a day. Zuko felt a sense of déjà vu overwhelm him.
He stared into the distance. "I married her because there wasn't any time left to wait for you."
He'd answered without turning around, he didn't have to look to know that she had paused; shocked to hear the words tumble so carelessly out of his mouth. He'd spent six years hiding it, and now there was no more either of them could do to change the course of their lives.
During every celebration, he and Toph pretended not to notice Katara's decline, and every celebration, Zuko had also pretended that he didn't wish with all his heart to see her at his garden like old times. It was impossible, now that she and Aang shared a bedroom. He knew she was unhappy, perhaps deep inside everybody knew except for the great Avatar. She probably thought she was fooling them all with her cheerful laughter and her mothering smile. She was fooling nothing and nobody, except for the person who had never been able to understand her in the first place.
"What do you mean by that?" She replied quietly, when he knew by the sound of her voice that she knew exactly what he'd meant.
Zuko had crushed the bread, there were now crumbs scattered all over the grass in his little garden.
She was feeling choked up, and she closed her eyes because her vision had gotten blurry.
"I just… can't. I can't."
In her mind's eye, she relived the events of the past year. Seeing Zuko work himself halfway to exhaustion on a regular basis, hearing Zuko doubt every single decision he made, being his solitary shoulder to metaphorically cry upon. She remembered him talking about the spider's web that was politics and how much every meeting drained him. She was shocked again by the numbers he'd recited to her about what the Earth Kingdom wanted in retribution, she was even there every single time his guard captain had reported a new riot to him.
It had crushed her every inch as much as it crushed him.
"You know already, Katara." He walked closer to her, voice softer now. "You've always known."
She looked away from him, focusing on the pillar in the corner.
"I don't love you, Zuko."
It was a thinly veiled lie, at best. He wondered if that was what she had been telling herself long enough to think it was true. They both knew.
"You don't have to protect him anymore Katara, he's not here."
Zuko said it with the cold of an iceberg in his voice and the edge of a blade.
She got angry; she stood up and faced him, a tempest raging in her eyes. "What makes you think I've just been protecting him this whole time?"
"Don't deny it! Toph noticed, Suki noticed, La knows even Sokka has noticed by now. Do you really think that your closest friends would believe that you were still the same Katara they remembered?"
She shook her head, and Zuko knew she was trying to pretend it away like she had been doing for an age.
"I do love Aang."
"You didn't love him the night before you left this place, and you don't love him now. Nothing has changed, Katara."
He was very quiet for a moment. "Nothing except you." The words came out like broken glass, and every one of them cut his heart. He had finally said what he felt for so long, but it didn't make him feel any better, because Katara's eyes were drifting away once more. There was a tangible pain in his chest, an aching that lay between the shatter and the squeeze.
"Am I supposed to feel like I've made the wrong choice, Zuko? Am I supposed to believe that Tenzin was just a mistake because I was too afraid to tell Aang that I didn't want to go with him five years ago?"
And there it was, the best confession he'd ever get out of her. Zuko knew that the slight waterbender's façade was quietly crashing down around her.
"I never said that, Katara."
She knew that he hadn't and she said it anyway, because those were the doubts that had been lingering in her mind for months.
"Why are you doing this to me now?"
The words were nothing but a whisper on the wind, but Zuko caught them easily.
So many things had been left unsaid for so long, so many loose ends that needed to be tied up neatly. They all needed to move on. That was why he was putting it all out in the open one last time, to let the water wash away everything that they had been too afraid to say. He'd been clinging onto the dream for years, of her by his side, being his Fire Lady, and she'd been running away from that same dream for the same amount of time. Maybe these things should never be spoken out loud, but it had eaten at them both from the inside out. They had to meet in the middle instead of perpetually moving apart.
"We both need this." He answered.
He caught the contemplative look in her eyes. It gave him a vague hope, she knew.
She shouldn't be giving him hope, because she'd always been destined to make little airbender babies with the Avatar. She knew it from the moment they'd met that she wouldn't have a choice. She needed to invest everything she had into him.
What she found herself feeling for Zuko was dangerous; it would upset the balance they'd worked so hard for. She didn't want to hurt Aang. She didn't want to turn Avatar and Fire Lord against each other.
The deadline to change her mind had been long ago, when they were still camping at the air temple together- maybe even underneath Ba Sing Se was the deadline. She didn't know.
He sat down on the bench again, closer than before. Katara didn't back away. They had a connection that couldn't be described. Everything he felt, she felt with him.
If he loved her, she had to love him back. That had not been a choice either.
Zuko knew that the past and the present were intertwined, and he tried to avoid it by fighting with her outright, by ignoring her overtures of friendship, but he couldn't avoid it any more than he could avoid the future that would not have her in it. Was it selfish of him to want her for just a brief moment now? Aang could have her for the rest of both their lives if La threw him a bone right now.
"When is he coming back?" She asked, quietly reading his mind.
"… Tomorrow."
She nodded solemnly, and crouched down by the pond, forming a miniature hurricane that lifted a turtle duck out of the water. They were like that for a long time, Fire Lord standing rigid, watching her indecipherable face as she weighed her options against one another.
"What's your opinion of Tenzin?"
Zuko was surprised at her question.
"I think he'll grow up to be strong, because he has you for a mother and an Avatar for a father."
Zuko said the words without any hint of bitterness.
"I think so too. You know, you're also his godfather."
"Really?"
"Aang and I decided that a while ago. Who else could be a godfather, after all? Sokka is already an uncle."
"…It's an honour, really."
There was a long period of silence before the next word was spoken. They had what felt like all the time in world until tomorrow, but they knew that by the time Aang came back the week and a half they had together would feel like no time at all, and they would wonder why they wasted so much of it.
He kissed her, for what would probably be the first, last and only time he would.
Dawn was fast approaching, and he tasted like spice.
It felt like an eternity had passed, but in the end they both went back to their rooms to await midday, where Aang would be waiting in the courtyard to take her away from the fire nation.
Everything in her screamed for her not to leave, not to forget the Fire Lord who'd taught her so much about herself and about the world she lived in. She didn't want to sever the bond they had, but like it had been said, time and time again, she didn't have any other choice.
"Maybe I should-"
Zuko cut her off, swiftly and precisely. His lips were softer than the petals of the apple blossoms blooming above them, and she forgot about Aang, forgot about even Tenzin. He was right, of course. The both needed this.
The knot inside her chest gradually unrolled itself, because she could finally admit it now that the cards had been placed before her: She loved Zuko, yet she was tied to Aang. It was just the truth of things. Katara was done lying to herself. Maybe she was selfish for feeling the way she did, but she'd dedicated five years of her life to being everything that Aang wanted in a bride and forgetting everything that made her Katara. She'd spent five years pining for and rejecting Zuko in turn.
His arm curled around her waist, and a tanned hand wound itself up in his hair.
They separated for a moment, golden orbs staring into sea blue. They both understood.
Firebender and waterbender left the garden to tie up their unfinished business, and Katara didn't feel the slightest bit ashamed. She had been ashamed for so long trying to beat back this emotion and pretend it wasn't there. Pretend that she didn't feel like her and Aang's relationship was a mistake.
It was no more a mistake than how she fell in love with Zuko, she knew now.
Aang was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps to the palace. Katara found that she couldn't move, as if her being was bound to the place behind her- or rather, the person beside her.
She wasn't ready to go. There were things she hadn't said to him that he should probably know.
But now it was too late.
Aang was confused at why she didn't move. He climbed up the steps, tugging on her hand.
"Katara, we need to leave."
She felt numb all over, and she strained hard not to turn around to look at Zuko.
The Fire Lord watched the scene with forced detachment. This is where it ended; this is where their paths would no longer intersect. He kept any emotion off of his face, be it regret or sadness.
"Katara…" Aang pleaded.
Zuko frowned, placing his hand on her delicate shoulder. She snapped around immediately. They exchanged a look that nobody would understand, except those that had found love and then lost it.
"Katara." The Fire Lord said.
And this time she turned to Aang, smiling. She waved Zuko goodbye and got on the flying bison, and from then on they pretended that nothing had been said, and nothing had been done.
History had repeated itself, but at least this was the last time.
Katara held Tenzin in her arms, a quiet peace settling over her long stressed features. Just like five years ago, Aang would never know about the things that had been said last night.
"Goodbye, Zuko."
"I'll see you in two months."
And they were off; this time, there was nothing left in the air. The Fire Lord breathed in and felt free, the ring on his finger no longer a ball and chain- the weight she had held over his heart vanished, leaving behind only a ghost of itself.