Author's Note: I tried so, SO hard to make Zutara fit into the canon world of Korra, but in order for that to work, Aang and Katara have to have produced some sort of offspring. Which is just downright nasty. So I decided to blatantly ignore Korra altogether and pretend that canon doesn't exist. And I'm not going to apologize for it. YAY ZUTARA!
This is a slightly longer chapter with more background. I know the first one was pretty vague about team avatar's post-war situation, and since this is a multi-chapter fic, I decided I should probably get on cleaning that up before I get confused myself, ha (:
I'm aiming for around 5-6 chapters? Maybe less, maybe more! It's gonna be a go-with-the-flow sort of thing. Alrighty, I'll shut up and let you read, now! Please review!
Although he didn't like to admit it, Zuko was relieved that it was his Uncle Iroh, and not himself, that took up the position as Fire Lord after the war. In the first eighteen years of his life, he learned to be a prince and behave as royalty, was permanently scarred and banished from said life of royalty, traveled the world in search of the avatar, aided the avatar in defeating his own father, found his mother and finally regained his honor.
Learning how to be a Fire Lord, however, did not make this list.
This was why Zuko panicked at the thought of having to rule a war-torn nation crawling with rebels and ragtag armies of creepy Ozai-followers secretly plotting to end his life.
So he kept his title as Crown Prince, took up the position of Ambassador to the Fire Nation and moved to Ba Sing Se.
Two years into Katara's move back to the Southern Water Tribe, she was sent to Ba Sing Se as well to take on the position of the Southern Water Tribe's Ambassador. There, she found her best friend in the person she least expected: Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation.
Katara complained to Zuko about work and stuffy old council members, drank with Zuko until the two of them could no longer remember their names, laughed with Zuko until tears came out of her nose, and cried on Zuko's shoulder when Aang dumped her to master his chakras and become a full-fledged monk.
It was that night that Katara had complained, drank, laughed and cried with Zuko, until he finally grabbed her tear-streaked face with both hands and kissed her salty lips with all the passion any firebender could ever possibly possess.
And it was that night that Katara slept over for the first time, buried in a pile of their clothes and random cushions from his couch, waking up the next morning to the world's worst possible hangover, a warm, shirtless Zuko spooning her, and no memories of the previous night, whatsoever. She really didn't needed to be reminded, though, because that morning, half asleep, she could already feel him placing a trail of kisses down her neck and her shoulder. She was melting. And it was so good.
Everything changed. At first, they kept it secret, because they didn't want Sokka, or even Hakoda at that matter, blowing up on them. They kept it going for a pretty long time but Toph blew their cover, probably on purpose, at Sokka's twentieth birthday party. (YOU TWO HAVE BEEN GOING AT IT FOR TWO WHOLE YEARS AND I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW?)
He eventually accepted it, and Katara moved in with Zuko, Sokka and Suki got married, Aang became a fully-realized Avatar, Toph started an Earthbending School with her new title as Avatar's Sifu, and Fire Lord Iroh worked hard to rebuild the Fire Nation into a balanced, harmonious society.
Katara was the only Ambassador in Ba Sing Se for the Southern Water Tribe, which made her job excruciatingly tedious.
For Zuko, however, the title of Ambassador was really just a formality. There were plenty of other Fire Nation Ambassadors. As Crown Prince, he was required to visit the Fire Nation and observe his Uncle's Fire Lord duties every once in a while, but that was really it.
Most of the time, he didn't have much to do.
This left him, and not Katara, with most of the Foo Foo-sitting responsibilities.
The morning after Sokka left, he woke up with the moose lion cub sleeping on his head and Katara sleeping on his chest.
This was a problem.
Katara hated being woken up.
He started poking her lightly to try and shake her awake without disturbing Foo Foo on his head.
She opened her eyes groggily and looked up at him.
"Mmm . . . Zuko . . . It's so early. Go back to sleep."
She threw her arm around him and continued to bury her face in his chest but he shook her awake again and pointed to his head.
She frowned.
"Oh, yeah . . . Foo Foo."
She untangled herself from Zuko, carefully lifted the furball off his head and deposited the animal in the little corner they had set up for him. She tried to crawl back into bed as quietly as possible, but the mattress just had to squeak.
Foo Foo's eyes snapped open and he immediately started making a beeline for the bed again.
Katara slumped back into the pillows and threw the covers over her face.
"You rise with the sun. You take care of him."
And so the routine began.
Pissed off as he was, and putting up with it only because it would all be over in a week, Zuko woke up every morning to Foo Foo on his head, and obediently took him outside for his morning walk. By the time he returned, Katara would be out of bed and getting ready for another day of meetings and plans and ambassador duties.
For the most part, Zuko was responsible for feeding the thing, taking it out for more walks, and making sure it didn't make any moose-lion doodoo in the house.
By the end of the second day, he couldn't take it anymore. He kept sneezing all the time and Foo Foo kept peeing in random places. He could tell Katara was pissed, too. She was clearly not happy with the lack of morning-Zuko-time-in-bed. But she would never admit it. It was her fault Foo Foo was there. And Katara never accepts defeat.
So he decided to have some fun with it.
The next morning, after Foo Foo's morning walk, he came home to find Katara making breakfast with her hair all mashed up on one side of her head.
He crept up behind her and looped his arms around her waist.
"Zuko? wha- mmm . . ."
He had found that spot on her neck that made her forget how to breathe. His lips moved up from her neck to nuzzle her ear.
"Zuko . . . stop . . . Foo Foo's right there . . ."
He stopped.
"Seriously?. It's a moose lion cub. I'm pretty sure it's fucking color blind."
She turned around to face him.
"Yeah, I know, but it's still weird," she said as the two of them glanced over at Foo Foo, who was noisily enjoying breakfast in his special little moose lion cub bowl.
"Ha! You don't like him here, either!" Zuko said, pointing a finger at her. "I have the perfect plan. We can leave him in Aang's Zoo for the rest of the week! Sokka will never know!"
She smacked his hand away.
"Of course, not! Foo Foo is the cutest little moose lion and I love having him here. After you spend some more time with him, you'll like him, too. I promise. The two of you just need to bond. Look at Sokka! Foo Foo was about to be his lunch when they first met! And now Sokka loves him enough to have him as a pet."
Zuko raised an eyebrow.
She brushed his unruly hair out of his eyes and her hands ended up lacing around his neck.
"I do kinda miss this, too, though . . ."
Zuko smirked and put his hands on either side of the counter behind her, leaning in so that their foreheads were touching.
"Miss what?"
"Oh come on, you know perfectly well what I mean,"
"Well then, Miss Katara, I believe we have a problem on our hands. And it needs to be solved."
"Do we now, Prince Zuko?"
"Mhmm. I am willing to bet you that by the end of this week, you are going to be so sick of having the creepy moose lion around that you are personally going to hand it back to Sokka for good."
"Well I am willing to bet you that by the end of this week, you and Foo Foo will have bonded so much that you won't want to give him back to Sokka."
"HA. Not in a million years."
"We'll see about that, Zuzu. You are SO on."
He caught her gaze and lowered his voice to an almost-whisper.
"You know, I could beat you at anything, really. I'm just too crazy in love with you, so I always let you win . . ."
Katara was too busy thinking about how sexy his voice was to notice his hands slowly crawling up her waist.
" . . . even at tickling . . ."
All of a sudden, she was lost in a fit of laughter and she became a five-year-old again as Zuko chased her around the house in a tickle attack , finally getting himself tackled onto the couch by an extremely triumphant-looking Katara, who asserted her victory by straddling him.
"So you let me win, huh? You're really that crazy in love with me . . ." She ruffled his hair affectionately.
He took both of her hands and intertwined their fingers.
"More than you'll ever know."
She smiled and leaned in to kiss him, but she was stopped by Foo Foo making weird little squeak noises from the kitchen.
"Not in front of Foo Foo!" he said, grinning, knowing how much it would piss her off.
She flared her nostrils.
"Fine. Not in front of Foo Foo."
And before she could say anything else, he quickly leaned forward and captured her baby pink lips with his own.
"Starting now."
He got up and started making his way to the bedroom, leaving her flushed and fuming.
Game on.
No morning-Zuko-time-in-bed or hot make-outs for a whole five days? Poor Katara . . . but she really brought it on herself :)
Sorry if this chapter was a little slow. There was just a lot of stuff I had to get out of the way. I hope y'all enjoyed the last bit, though. That was fun to write. I'm kinda jealous of Katara. Not all of us get to wake up to delicious shirtless firebenders every morning.
Zuko might be slightly OOC . . . sorry! I just love this sweet, kinda love-drunk side of his. I feel like it's definitely there underneath all that mean!Zuko, and Katara's really the only one that can get him whipped enough to bring it out.
It might be a while until the next chapter is out, just cuz this next week is going to be SUUUPPPEER busy for me, so I apologize in advance. But I hope you guys will all stick with me on this fic! I promise I won't abandon it.
Your reviews are my INSPIRATION. So please, take the time to leave a lovely little comment in that pretty, shiny box below. I'll give you virtual brownies!