ARC 4: They Built A Path To Be Together
DAY 28: Soulmates
The party rages on for a week.
At some point during that time, a drunken Sokka manages to gamble Aikka away to The Boulder (who is surprisingly good at Pai Sho). His spoils (including Iroh's left shoe) are paraded around the palace until the baby poops (she's quickly relinquished to her mother at that point). A combination of Iroh, Toph, and Ty Lee sing the worst rendition of The Girls in Ba Sing Se not once, but seven times. The Fire Lord is frozen to a wall at some point and Aang declares his reparation for the war to be a single turtle-duck (until Katara freezes him to a wall and the suit is hastily dropped).
The insanity is a little overwhelming and so Zuko leaves the baby with a reliably sober Hakoda. He flees to the one quiet place he knows will be empty; too bad that someone else had already concluded the same thing.
"We always seem to meet here." Katara tells her husband.
Zuko smiles, but says nothing. She leans against him, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of a late summer night. They enjoy the silence together, watching as the moon rises and shines in the sky.
Ducks quack in contentment, party goers laugh in the distance. Katara counts the stars aloud, tells him how comforting it is that the moon looks the same no matter what nation you stand in. She regales him with the tale of the princess who supposedly sacrificed herself for the moon.
"And Yue, named for the moon itself," she concludes, "Wanders across the sky and shines her moonlight only on the most worthy."
Zuko takes her hand. He doesn't have a legend to tell; he is, unfortunately, a man of few happy stories, but he reminds her of a story she once told him.
"You were wrong," Katara says and he is glad that she can, "There may be a monument in our name yet."
"Someday," he says, then leers suggestively, "Or maybe more children?"
Katara pushes him away, "You carry them in your womb this time, of powerful Fire Lord."
She still warms up to the idea after a few lingering kisses (though she insists that many years will pass before their next monster—the one they have isn't even teething yet).
"We can practice for them, though." Zuko wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and Katara groans (his pickup lines aren't that lousy, are they?).
"I don't think you'd know subtlety if it hit you with a brick." She remarks.
His efforts seem to work, however, because he managed to coax her to her feet in anticipation of a mad dash to their chambers (spirits help the souls that cross their path). Zuko leans down to kiss her (he need all the enthusiasm he can get from her) and stops short.
There, in the distance, a boy stares at him.
Yellow eyes, crooked phoenix plume. Smooth face, little white hands holding brown hands that are even smaller.
A little prince stands beside a water tribe girl.
His own Katara takes his hands and the memory comes back to him, a vague vision buried by time and tragedy, the memory of a scarred man holding a beautiful woman in the moonlight.
Zuko smiles at the boy he once was, reassures him with calm eyes and clutches his own wife a little tighter. The Fire Lord nods goodbye to the Prince, a man lets go of the past.
Zuko kisses Katara and they flee into the night.