The Crown Prince Kuzon is the heir to his father's throne, but he's also the son of a boy named Zuko and girl named Katara, which is why he's also a huge dork.

Takes place in the same universe as First Kiss, Tea, and Turtleduck, along with all of the stories associated with them.

And no content warning required!

Crystals

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE CROWN PRINCE KUZON, HEIR TO THE SCARLET THRONE, WAS DAZZLED. The curator of the Royal Museum, an outrageously eccentric old woman whom Kuzon knew only as Higashi-sensei, has really outdone herself. Kuzon had watched the exhibit being put together, had been dragged here by Iroh, his eight-year-old youngest sibling, only the gods knew how many times, had even taken part in the special tour given to the Royal Family the night before opening day. And yet, it really did look, Agni, he almost felt, like he was walking through a winding, twisting, intricately interlocked series of caves, deep within the bowels of the earth, the darkened world around him set ablaze by the seemingly endless patterns and complex colors of luminous rocks and sparkling crystals from all over the world.

So yes, Kuzon, the twenty-one-year-old eldest son of war heroes, a young man who called the Avatar uncle, was dazzled.

Then, he looked to his right, at the beautiful young woman who was leaning close to one of the more intricate displays, snapping her fingers and bringing the flame thus produced closer to the plaque beside the crystals, and remembered – with a quick tug at the collar of his Royal Military Academy cadet uniform – that he was also nervous.

Almost debilitatingly so.

He shouldn't have been. He knew that, even he didn't feel it. He had known this the Lady Akiyama Kumiko, daughter of the Duke and Duchess Akiyama, practically his entire life. In many ways, their lives – and the lives of their families – were strangely parallel. Her clan, the Akiyama, had suffered at the hands of his grandfather, the Tyrant, just as his parents had. Their parents had all gotten married at around the same time, they had born in the same year, their brothers were classmates at the Royal Naval Academy, they even had the same number of siblings (though the Duchess Akiyama had born no twins, unlike Kuzon's mother).

And yet…

He realized with a start that she was looking at him, that there was a strange glimmer in her eyes, an odd little smile on her lips. His heart started to thud somewhere down in his boots, and he realized with a shock that his hand was rubbing at the back of his neck. He tore the hand away, clamped it hard to the hilt of his cadet's katana, and somehow resisted the impulse to shove the other hand into his pocket.

He leaned close to the wall and discovered just how interesting a museum plaque could be.

"You seem on edge, Kuzon."

He almost jumped into the air with fright. Somehow, she had teleported to a spot perilously close to him, and in his surprise he had turned and now his eyes were locked on hers and he could not look away.

"I…um…uh…who," he stammered out, his mouth dry, his tongue a thick lump in his throat, "me? Why would I be nervous?"

She shrugged, that strange, soft smile still creasing her lips. "Yes, you, you big goof."

He tried to smile, he really did. Uncle Sokka had taken him for a walk, his arm draped over Kuzon's shoulders, his other arm gesturing madly through the air. Listen to you Uncle Sokka, buddy, he had said, in his ghastly Nihongo, which he insisted on speaking even though Kuzon and his siblings all spoke both Inuktitut and Yuupik, his mother's tribal tongue, because Uncle Sokka was convinced that his Nihongo was perfect and no one, not even Kuzon's mother, the man's own sister, could convince him otherwise. Listen to me, and I will tell you all the secrets of womankind. The lecture that had followed had been long, tangled, and had included many a confusing digression, but in the end had boiled down to be natural and be confident.

Kuzon had found none of it helpful. He was far from confident, and his natural self was something of an awkward dork. How could that advice possibly help him?

In a fit of exasperated madness after that lecture, he had even asked Auntie Toph for advice. Her response had included a detailed rundown of female anatomy, and the haunting admonition that he should just strip down to his undergarments, because, quote, it worked for ole' Sparky. Every time stripped off his shirt and started a firebending lesson with Twinkletoes, I swear, your mom had to struggle not to slide out of her seat. Kuzon had quailed before this knowledge, his parents had always been very affectionate, and he was old enough to know that he and his siblings had not been delivered by storks, but that didn't mean he wanted it spelled out for him.

He had considered talking to Uncle Aang, but rejected the idea out of hand. He loved Uncle Aang, but the man was becoming more and more…Avatar-like these days, which was a lot like how Kuzon imagined talking to a god would be.

Naturally, he never once considered talking to his parents. The Fire Lord Zuko and the Fire Lady Katara would just gaze at each other across their shared desk and Kuzon would find himself wondering how he only had four siblings.

"You know, you still haven't answered my question."

Kuzon blinked, and tried to flash a confident smile. He really did. Honest. "Oh," he managed, somehow, "I'm not on edge. How could I be on edge?"

Kumiko's smile grew wider, and he started to get the sneaking suspicion that the young woman he was starting to think of as more than a friend was teasing him. "Well, you tell me! I'm not the one compulsively fiddling with my belt buckle."

Kuzon quickly snatched the offending hand away from the offending belt buckle. "That's not quite fair, Kumiko. After all, you're not wearing a belt."

Kuzon kept his eyes firmly locked on Kumiko's face. There was no way he was going to let the rogues drift down the length of Kumiko's dress. Indeed, he was so preoccupied with this effort that he almost missed the blush that bloomed on her cheeks.

Did I…did I…did I just successfully flirt…? He considered the possibility, and immediately rejected it. After all, the idea of him successfully flirting was utterly absent.

Kumiko had turned away from him, to face a wall of intricately arranged green crystals, crystals that glowed with a strange, almost supernatural light. He watched her, as she reached up and tucked a few hairs behind her ear, and then she looked at him out of the corner of his eyes and smiled and he almost fainted.

"These are from Ba Sing Se, are they not?"

He turned to the crystals, leaned close, carefully examined them. "I believe so, yes, from the Crystal Catacombs."

"Where your mother and father fell in love, right?"

He couldn't help but chuckle. "Depends on who you ask, really. Everyone seems to have a different theory on where it all started."

"Oh? And what do Their Majesties have to say about the subject?"

"Well, Father likes to claim it started when he first laid eyes on her, and Mother says that her journey started in the Spirit Oasis up in the North."

Kumiko leaned back, and turned towards him, until half her face was bathed in the soft green light of the crystals. "Did they know they loved each other, right from the start?"

Kuzon could only shrug. "I don't think so, no."

"I suppose it can take a while, sometimes, to realize the direction your heart is trying to pull you."

Kuzon smiled. "Yes, it can, can't it? A whole lifetime, even."

"Yes, it can take what feels like a lifetime, but we…I like to think that we always get there in the end."

He would never be able to say what shocked him most, in the moments that followed. Was it the simple fact that she was sliding his hand into his? Or was it the way his own hand tightened around hers, as if by some primal instinct over which he had no control?

Or was it the fact that her palm was just as clammy as his own, or that she seemed to be trembling just as badly as he was?

Years later, they would both decide, together, that it probably didn't really matter.

-0-

The next morning, Kuzon was back at his desk, in the office that his parents shared. The arrangement was a simple one. His parents had a specially made desk, the size and shape of two desks place back-to-back, so that they could face each other across the surface. His own desk had been jammed up against one side, so that he face the window across the middle of the desk, his father to his left, his mother to his right. The surface of their shared workspace was piled with papers and materials, with dispatch boxes and notes and pens and pencils. His mother was sipping her tea and his father was lighting a fresh cigarette with a snap of his fingers and he was off in a world of his own, barely able to focus on the minutes from the latest debate in the Diet before him.

"You seem in a good mood."

Kuzon's head snapped up, to find his father looking at him with a bizarre smirk on his face.

Kuzon could not remember ever having seen his father smirk. His mother, definitely, but never his father.

"What makes you say that, Dad?"

The Fire Lord Zuko chuckled, but it was the Fire Lady Katara who answered.

"Because you're humming a rather jaunty tune, my dear."

Kuzon blinked in surprise. "I was?"

His mother nodded, but it was his father who answered. "It sounded a lot like The Girls from Ba Sing Se, unless I'm mistaken."

"Care to share with the class?" his mother asked.

Kuzon shrugged and blushed and stammered over several possible responses, before finally choking out, "Oh, nothing, just…in a good mood, I suppose…oh! I…um…I almost forgot, can we have the Akiyamas to dinner this evening?"

His father smiled, taking a long drag from his cigarette while his mother said, "I don't see why not. Any reason in particular?"

Kuzon stumbled over something along the lines of how he was due back at the Academy in a week, and it had been so long, their families were all friends, surely it was as good a time as any, and these minutes are really interesting, I should really get back to them, whereupon he buried his head back in his papers.

Which was why he missed both his mother throwing a wink at his father, and his father throwing a wink right back.

Okay, guys, here I am again, sliding right under the wire. Shame on me. I really should've written all of these ahead of time, though, I do have a few excuses.

For one thing, I completely threw out my planned story, because like Zuko, I seem hellbent on making my life as difficult as humanly possible.

For another thing, my brother. You see, earlier this summer, my little brother gave my wife and I his Hulu password (not for free; boy got our HBO Now password in return). My wife is really bad about binge-watching shows, and since we tend to have the same taste in entertainment, I always end up watching shows over her shoulder. Today's show was Fresh Off the Boat, which is really good and really distracting.

So, really, not my fault at all.

Anyhoo, I really have to hustle to get this uploaded and submitted to the Zutara Week blog. I apologize for the lack of decent proofreading; I promise to...oh, who am I kidding? I'll never have the time to come back and fix it. Bring out the Shame Nun!

Moving on! In tomorrow's thrilling episode...oh, who am I kidding? I haven't a clue. Let's find out together! Stay tuned!